McClung Permanent Exhibits

THE ORIGINS OF HUMANITY —
SEARCHING FOR OUR FOSSIL ANCESTORS

above - Reproduction of cave painting in Lascaux Cave, Dordogne, France, ca. 25,000 years old. right - a reconstructed skeleton of 'Turkana Boy', a 1.5 million year old Homo Erectus

“Where did we come from?” has interested theologians for millennia and scientists for centuries. In the new permanent exhibition, Human Origins, the McClung Museum presents a comprehensive overview of the scientific understanding of the last 6 million years of the evolution of hominids—humans and our ancestors.
Guiding the Museum in the creation of this exhibition is Dr. Andrew Kramer, Head of the University of Tennessee’s Department of Anthropology. Dr. Kramer is a physical anthropologist who specializes in paleoanthropology, the study of human evolution. He has conducted field work and research in Indonesia, focusing on our fossil hominid ancestor, Homo erectus, who lived there more than one million years ago.
The exhibition employs numerous casts of fossil hominids, artists’ reconstructions of life scenes, maps, diagrams, videos, and artifacts. Of special interest are life-size reconstructions of two hominids by artist John Gurche. The earliest is that of a male Australopithecus afarensis (ca. 3-3.5 million years ago), and the other is that of “Turkana Boy,” a young Homo erectus (ca. 1.6 million years ago). The exhibit includes a DVD showing John Gurche recreating the fully-fleshed head and face of the A. afarensis individual by using modern forensic anthropological facial reconstruction techniques. These heads are so life-like that the visitor will expect them to speak!
Humans are just one of millions of animal species on this planet. Initially, the new exhibit places humans in the context of life on earth by displaying our commonalities and differences with other mammals, particularly other primates. Humans are primates and our closest living relative is the chimpanzee with whom we share over 99% of our genetic material. This means that chimpanzees and humans share a recent common ancestor, and current evidence indicates that ancestor lived 4-8 million years ago. From this common ancestor, living chimps and modern humans arose; the remainder of the exhibit traces the evolutionary history of humanity since that divergence.
Fiber optic lights on a large globe pinpoint the locations where fossils have been found that support the reconstruction of human origins, and a video segment illustrates some of these sites and excavations. The earliest sites are in Africa where hominid evolution began. Between one to two million years ago, populations of early humans spread out of Africa to populate the Old World from Europe to China and Southeast Asia.
In addition to the 14 exhibit cases, two “flip-books” answer commonly asked questions about science and evolution. Inseparable from the story of biological evolution of humans is the emergence of human culture—tool making, use of fire, language, art, and religion. These subjects are addressed in the exhibit as well.
The exhibition is made more dramatic by the ceiling installation of a reconstructed portion of the painted cave walls at Lascaux in the Dordogne, France. These colorful images of animals, a human, and abstract symbols were painted over 17,000 years ago. Beginning over 30,000 years ago, humans began to create representational art which reflects those human qualities of creativity, imagination, and abstract thought.
The Human Origins exhibition is made possible by grants from the Lucille S. Thompson Family Foundation, the UT Office of the Chancellor, the William B. Stokely, Jr. Foundation, Knox County, the Aslan Foundation, and the estate of Michael N. Walker.