In the late 19th century and early 20th century, given the pervasiveness of racist attitudes about Africa, not to mention the popularity of racial theories such as Aryanism, or “Caucasoid/Negroid/Mongoloid” divisions, I would expect that the idea humanity originated in Africa would cause quite a stir. As this seems almost a given for the general public though, I’m more interested in how this played out within Academic circles specifically, where, presumably, they would be more willing to accept the evidence presented.
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This is an excellent question! And it is one that cuts across a lot of my own personal interests, late 19th and early 20th century science, the development of natural history/paleontology, “exploration”, and the reception of the Middle Ages!
The short answer is that there was a LOT of resistance to the idea that humans evolved and subsequently spread from Africa, especially within in academic circles. Many of the towering figures of paleontology around the turn of the 20th century were committed to the ideas of Darwinian evolution, but likewise committed to the ideas of eugenics and scientific racism. These were seen as inseparable and complimentary. This also allowed these figures to justify their own positions in society, and that of their countries in the world’s power structure. Evolution and struggle had produced the superior civilizations of the “Anglo-Saxon” countries, notably the USA and United Kingdom, and had also produced figures at the top of their respective societies.
In particular, British and American scientists recoiled at the idea that their own superior “Anglo-Saxon” civilization and the pure “Nordic” races that gave them vitality could have originated from Africa. While a full accounting of the Volkisch political movements and the idea of “Nordic” racial superiority are a bit beyond the scope of this question, the racialized views of scientists at this time were absolutely reflected in their own scientific examinations. The assumptions that they held about the superiority of “Anglo-Saxon” culture, science, and society were rooted in their racialist ideas that could not conceive of their shared origin with peoples from Africa or other parts of the world. Some scientists embraced different origin points for humanity, such as Asia or the supposed continent of “Lemuria”, and others proposed that human species arose independently from each other in different parts of the world. Ironically some of this was wrapped up in opposition to Biblical narratives and the idea that all of humanity could have possibly originated in a single location. Such ideas were dismissed as unscientific.
However, by the early 20th century these disparate views and visions started to coalesce into one major alternative to Africa as the cradle of mankind.
The central figure here is Henry Fairfield Osborn.
Osborn was the child of a major railway magnate and heir to a distinguished New York family of merchants on his mother’s side. He was born to the highest levels of fine society in New York, and his enthusiasm for social life was only matched by his dedication to the sciences that he so adored. His influence as president of the American Museum of Natural History is hard to understate. For over two decades he guided the institution and oversaw its vertebrate paleontology programs. He was a leading public academic who debated evolution, religion, the compatibility of the two, eugenics, mammalian tooth formation, the evolution of mankind, and the mechanisms by which evolution worked (he was a critic of natural selection as the means by which evolution functioned). His most famous contribution to science is undoubtedly the naming of one “Tyrant Lizard King”, or the only dinosaur that is widely known by both of its scientific names, Tyrannosaurus rex.
However one of his lesser known “contributions” to the field of paleontology is the development of his “Out of Asia” theory for the origins of mankind. This hypothesis placed the origin of human evolution in Asia, more specifically in Northern China/Mongolia. Now this idea was more reasonable to hold back then than it is today for a number of reasons. Some of these were scientific. The “Peking Man” fossil (Homo erectus) for example was discovered in the early 1920’s and was a major piece of evidence for the “Out of Asia” hypothesis as it was among the oldest hominid remains for several years. Later African discoveries such as “Lucy” (and older specimens of Homo erectus from Africa) were still decades away, and while fossil hominids from Africa were not unknown, they were not seen as conclusive evidence for an African origin for humanity. Scientists such as Osborn concluded that humanity arose in Asia due to the creation of the Himalayan mountain range. The subsequent rise in aridity, grasslands, and the loss of forests in Northern China encouraged early human ancestors to adopt bipedalism and tool usage. These early human communities then spread outwards as the climate warmed in the later parts of the Pliocene.
However valid, or not, the scientific evidence was for an Asian origin point at the time of his life, Henry Fairfield Osborn, and others of his ilk, were not solely following the path of scientific evidence. Throughout his life Osborn was a dedicated racist. He helped found the American Eugenics Society, was an ardent supported of “Nordic” racial theories, and collaborated with a whos’s who of American scientific racists and eugenicists. These views absolutely affected his scientific endeavors as well. One of the reasons that he helped fund the lavish expeditions to China and Mongolia in the interwar years was to try and find more evidence for his ideas on human evolution.
In one of the classic blunders of powerful and influential figures in an academic field, his opinions and beliefs were created and evidence was sought to support them. He conceived of the world around him as the result of evolutionary and spiritual struggle. The naturally and spiritually fit members of society rose to the top due to their greater capacities, intelligence, strength, and so on. These qualities resulted in a superior breed of humans taking the reigns of ruler in the most advanced countries of the day. Many of these scientists also embraced a view of guided evolution, one that was compatible with their racist visions, wherein human evolution was constantly improving towards a final perfected state, their own. Henry Fairfield Osborn believed in this teleological approach to evolution and sought to find evidence for it. Evidence that obviously could not be found in Asia, for how could the advanced races of the world possibly have come from such a degenerate region of the world?
The American Museum of Natural History sent numerous expeditions into the interior of China and Mongolia to help try and find evidence for his ideas. While they did not find the hoped for connections between ancient and modern humans, they did make a number of important discoveries. These included the first ever discovered dinosaur eggs, a number of new dinosaur and mammal species, and the first thorough investigations of fossil beds in central Asia. This of course did not result in a radical restructuring of the tree of human origins, and other pieces of “evidence” such as the “Piltdown Man”, were later proven to be forgeries.
The “Out of Asia” theory suffered from repeated body blows in subsequent decades as earlier and earlier hominid fossils were recovered from Africa. Scientific consensus around African origins for humanity slowly built in the middle of the 20th century and was conclusively decided by the end of the century. The discovery of the oldest human relatives in Africa, dating to millions of years before the expansion out of Africa were some of the most compelling pieces of fossil evidence. More recent genetic studies have backed up these conclusions. The African origins of humanity are accepted scientific facts for all but the most recalcitrant holdouts, largely among some extremely nationalistic biologists in China (where the “Out of Asia” hypothesis remained popular for decades longer than in the West) and among Neo-Nazis and other white supremacists who cling to their fantasies.