In 1925, Jan Smuts was both a prominent politician and an advocate for science. Just after the first of his two terms as prime minister of the Union of South Africa, Smuts served as president of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science. It was in this capacity that he spoke out about Raymond Dart’s discovery of Australopithecus africanus and his theories about the Taung skull, saying these ideas meant that
South Africa may yet figure as the cradle of mankind, or shall I rather, say, one of the cradles?
