The American Museum of Natural History Congo Expedition

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• Learn more about Africa, African history, animals, anthropology, Congo, culture, ecology, environmental science, geography, global education, music, natural history, and world history.

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The American Museum of Natural History presents this vast online collection of precious zoological and anthropological specimens that represent a significant portion of their holdings from James Chapin and Herbert Lang’s Congo expedition, which lasted from 1909-1915. The variety of formats and topics is enormous.Browse through biographies, anthropological and zoological articles, diaries, field notes, and literary works by Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad in the Reading section. Examine maps, photos and stereoscopic images, listen to recordings and music, watch video footage, and even read the popular children’s book Where are you going Manyoni? in the Galleries.

Explore other Congo topics such as the Mangbetu Art of Daily Life, the elusive okapi, the white rhinoceros, musical instruments, ants, bats, and primates.Other interesting features include watercolors by James Chapin, the United Nation’s television update on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the first comprehensive survey of the northeastern Congo.

If you have read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, you have some idea of the historic danger and mystery of the Congo region. The facts of exploration are even more powerful than fiction! The chronicle of two naturalists’ explorations in Africa in the early 1900s really comes to life in this digital exhibition from the American Museum of Natural History.In the second decade of the twentieth century, Herbert Lang and his assistant James P. Chapin led an expedition to the Belgian Congo that resulted in a wealth of anthropological objects and zoological records as well as photographs and watercolor sketches. Between 1909 and 1915, Lang and Chapin collected nearly 23,000 vertebrate specimens and more than 100,000 invertebrates. This rich historical and zoological record is made available online at the American Museum of Natural History’s Congo Expedition website. Audio and image-rich introductory materials and a Flash-enabled itineraryare just the beginning of the journey. Authentic travel logs are available full-text transcripts, with some images of the original documents and some sections dramatized in narrative form in the multimedia presentations. Text of the audio presentation is available also in print transcripts. Additional historical context is provided through excerpts from King Leopold’s Soliloquy by Mark Twain and King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild as well as biographical coverage of both James P. Chapin and Herbert Lang.The expedition’s results were significant in the work of naturalists for years to come. The elusive okapi was observed and collected, as were the already rare square-lipped rhinoceros, also known as the white rhinoceros. In addition, the expedition collected insects including a definitive collection of ants. The biological diversity of the region is reflected in the extensive collection of specimens indexed through this site. The expedition’s findings are all themore important as the environmental pressures in Africa reach crisis proportions and threaten the continued existence of animals and plants found there.Much of the multimedia content may be accessed directly through the Galleries. Children’s picture books, historical maps, James Chapin watercolors and other image-rich aspects of the site are listed here by title. There is even a stereographic area, where images taken in anaglyph form have been scanned to maintain their 3-D qualities. A free pair of the red/blue glasses are needed to get the effect. E-mail digital@amnh.org for information. Use the index or the search to locate specific information in this extensive collection.