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Visualizations in the Sciences of Human Origins and Evolution

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The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Human Sciences

Abstract

This chapter discusses literature about visualizations in the human origins sciences that were produced and published roughly during the last two centuries in fields like physical anthropology, paleoanthropology, prehistoric archeology, and human population genetics. It engages with scholarship on diagrammatic representations of skulls and other human remains for the purpose of comparative measurement as well as with graphic expressions of results. Following the discussion of such expert visualizations, the chapter moves on to treatments of kinds of images that had and continue to have more interdisciplinary and public impact: phylogenetic trees and migration maps. The origin and history of tree iconography, as well as the controversies surrounding it, are outlined up to the tree-building on the basis of molecular data, statistics, and information technology in human population genetics and its public projects such as the Genographic Project. In the second part of the chapter, popular illustrations and sites, from prehistoric life-scene paintings to museum exhibitions, take center stage. Possibly due to the fact that issues of gender and “racial” stereotypes as well as of teleological understandings of evolution are most evident in these media, they have gained more attention by scholars. Historians of the human origins sciences have also approached the reception and production of such visualizations, inquiring after the interactions between scientists and artists and/or after the strategies of authentication and authorization. While the collaboration between science and art seems to have presented challenges in reconstruction painting, sculpting, and in exhibition, other genres of prehistoric representation such as cartoons, popular films, video games, etc., are completely beyond the control of the experts.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department for Cultural and Sciences Studies, University of Lucerne, Luzern, Switzerland

    Marianne Sommer

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  1. Marianne Sommer
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Correspondence to Marianne Sommer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Victoria University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    David McCallum

Section Editor information

  1. University of Lucerne, Lucerne, Switzerland

    Marianne Sommer

  2. Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Staffan Müller-Wille

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Sommer, M. (2022). Visualizations in the Sciences of Human Origins and Evolution. In: McCallum, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Human Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7255-2_26

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