New Gallery of Humankind opens at Museum for Natural Sciences

“All living things continuously transform and evolve. As does humankind,” proclaims a text on the wall of the Museum for Natural Sciences in Brussels. It’s one of the fundamental tenets of science, and the basis of all biology. You wouldn’t think it could be controversial in this third millennium, but it has turned out to be.

The statement can be read in the new Gallery of Humankind, which has made its home in the lower floor of the museum, next to the hall used for temporary exhibitions for children. The Gallery looks at the evolution of the ancestors of Man, from Sahelanthropus tchadensis about 6.8 million years ago to the appearance on the scene, in Ethiopia, of Homo sapiens about 200,000 years ago.

The exhibit does not go into great detail about anything that happened before Homo habilis, such as tracing our evolution back to a common ancestor with the primates. All the ancestors on show here are recognisably humanoid, their likenesses formed of a build-up of thin wooden plates.

Yet Brussels Airlines refused any advertising for the Gallery in its in-flight magazine, on the grounds that it might offend those whose religious beliefs reject evolution. The airline also refused the ad, it said, because it showed some nakedness. 

This doesn’t seem to be stopping parents, fortunately, from taking their children to see the new Gallery, and the kids were happily running around amid the museum’s new humanoids, which are indeed naked and anatomically correct – no surprise for a science museum.

Gruesome and smart

The Natural Sciences Museum has much expertise in staging exhibits that are approachable for children while still extremely interesting for teenagers and adults. For at least 15 years, they’ve been putting on exhibitions for children good enough to challenge the knowledge of accompanying parents.

And with the renovation of the dinosaur hall more recently, as well as the creation of the Gallery of Evolution on the top floor, the museum has been brought firmly into the 21st century.

The Gallery of Humankind, like all exhibitions, contains educational material: a timeline of human evolution on the wall (which you’ll need to keep referring back to); archaeological material like skulls, skeletons and artefacts, all with explanatory texts; videos and hands-on games such as the row of skulls which, when turned upside down, will pour out their brain capacity to show which was most “developed”.

Some things are gruesome, like an arm flayed to the shoulder to show the muscular system, or a row of foetuses in jars of formaldehyde. Others are extremely clever, such as the metal constructions showing how the various joints of the body work, or the game where you have to match skulls with the impressions of their teeth.

I could have done without the sections dealing with the growth of the embryo or the changes that come about at puberty – not because they’re not fascinating topics for children to learn about, but because they have nothing to do with the main topic of the Gallery, and somewhat dilute its impact. The evolution of a life-form is not the same as the development of a person from embryo to adult, and it could be misleading to place the two processes side-by-side.

The museum’s educational service also organises workshops and tours for schools, but if that’s not on the immediate agenda, the exhibit is certainly not to be missed.