• About Science in School
  • About EIROforum
  • Submit an article
Science in School
Science in School
  • Understand
    • Recent research and science topics
      • Astronomy / space
      • Biology
      • Chemistry
      • Earth science
      • Engineering
      • General science
      • Health
      • History
      • Mathematics
      • Physics
      • News from the EIROs
      • Science and society
  • Inspire
    • People, events and resources
      • Advertorials
      • Career focus
      • Competitions and events
      • Education focus
      • Resource reviews
      • Science and society
      • Science miscellany
      • Scientist profiles
      • Teacher profiles
  • Teach
    • Activities and projects
      • Astronomy / space
      • Biology
      • Chemistry
      • Earth science
      • Engineering
      • General science
      • Health
      • History
      • Mathematics
      • Physics
      • Science and society
  • Archive
  • Login
  • Contact
Ages:
16-19
Issue 8
 -  05/05/2008

Dance of the Tiger, By Björn Kurtén

Dean Madden

Teachers and many older school students will enjoy Dance of the Tiger, a very unusual fictional story written by a scientist about his own subject.

The author, Swedish/Finnish palaeontologist Björn Kurtén, did not create the literary genre ‘palaeofiction’, but he was certainly one of its better writers. As Stephen Jay Gould said in his introduction to Kurtén’s novel (first published in Swedish as Den Svarta Tigern in 1978, and then in English in 1980), well-informed fictional accounts are often equally as valid as Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Just So’ stories created by evolutionary biologists. By presenting such stories in a fictional setting, however, their speculative status is made clear. Could such fiction, on screen as well as in print, have a role in science education?

Shortly after their remains were first discovered, the Neanderthals became popular subjects for fiction. Often they were wrongly portrayed as stooped, brutish creatures of low intelligence — due in part to a flawed interpretation of early fossil evidence which has coloured popular perception of Neanderthal man ever since.

However, sympathetic literary portrayals of Neanderthals are also common, such as in the novel The Inheritors by Nobel Prize-winner William Golding or Kurtén's more serious treatment, Dance of the Tiger. The novel challenges the reader to speculate about possible reasons for the Neanderthals’ extinction, with clues to three possibilities scattered throughout the text. At the end of the story, Kurtén reveals the answers, as well as the research findings that inspired several aspects of the story.

Although Kurtén’s 1978 work pre-dates modern molecular studies, it highlights a possible method of teaching students about evolutionary processes in an entertaining manner.

Details

Publisher: University of California Press, Berkeley

Publication year: 1980

ISBN: 9780520202771

 

CC-BY-NC-ND
Log in to post a comment

Issues

  • Current issue
  • Archive

Tools

  • Download article (PDF)
  • Print
  • Share

Related articles

  • Nano: the Next Dimension and Nanotechnology
  • Fossils: A Very Short Introduction and Dinosaurs: A Very Short Introduction, By Keith Thomson and David Norman
  • Water – Humanity s Project: media collection for the classroom, By Siemens AG
  • The Periodic Table: its Story and Significance, By Eric R Scerri
  • The Astronaut’s Cookbook: Tales, Recipes, and More, by Charles T Bourland and Gregory L Vogt

Login / My account

Create new account
Forgot password


Contact us

Please contact us via our email address editor@scienceinschool.org.

  • More contact details

Get involved

  • Submit an article
  • Review articles
  • Translate articles

Support Science in School


EIROforum members:
CERN European Molecular Biology Laboratory European Space Agency European Southern Observatory
European Synchrotron Radiation Facility EUROfusion European XFEL Institut Laue-Langevin


EIROforum
Published and funded by EIROforum


  • About Science in School
  • About EIROforum
  • Imprint
  • Copyright
  • Safety note
  • Disclaimer
  • Archive
  • Donate
  • Contact
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
ISSN 1818-0361

CERN
European Molecular Biology Laboratory
European Space Agency
European Southern Observatory
European Synchrotron Radiation Facility
EUROfusion
European XFEL
Institut Laue-Langevin
EIROforum

Published and funded by EIROforum
  • About Science in School
  • About EIROforum
  • Imprint
  • Copyright
  • Safety note
  • Disclaimer
  • Archive
  • Donate
  • Contact
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
ISSN 1818-0361