Trip to South Africa

Filmed during the AMNH Gregory-Hellman Transvaal Expedition, 1938. This film was made by William King Gregory, of the AMNH Department of Comparative and Human Anatomy, on the AMNH Gregory-Hellman Transvaal Expedition. Gregory and Milo Hellman, AMNH anthropologist), went to Transvaal to study the dentition of Australopithecus transvaalensis, fossil hominids, in the field near Johannesburg. They had been invited there by Robert Broom, a paleontologist at the Transvaal Museum, the discoverer of the specimens. The film begins on an ocean liner as it crosses the equator, and the crossing ceremony is performed on board. The ship must have docked at Cape Town, because the next piece of footage is the trip by rail to Karroo (Karoo). The topography of South Africa is recorded as the expedition travels northwest. They visit the Rubidge Farm, where caracul sheep and Australian rams are shown. Broom is filmed with the Rubidge family. The expedition party visits the australopithecine (Plesianthropus and Paranthropus, both fossil hominids) beds near Krugersdorp, in the Transvaal. The Hartbeespoor Dam near Pretoria and scenes of rickshaws in Pretoria or Johannesburg are seen. More footage of the topography of South Africa is shown. Gregory and Hellman are seen in a wooded area with magnifying glasses trailing Peripatus, small arthropods that prefer damp, dark habitats. The film closes, as it opened, on an ocean liner. The equator crossing ceremony is more fully depicted in this sequence: "Neptune" covers peoples faces with cream and "shaves" them with a wooden stick, after which the victims are dunked in the pool. This scene depicts a great deal of merriment.