Missing Darwin Notebooks Return Safe & Sound At Same Place After 22 Years

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Charles Darwin may have cracked the code on the evolution of human society, but we now have a couple more mysteries that remain unsolved: Who took these notebooks in 2001, and who gave them back to the library that owned them more than 20 years later?

Those questions sit at the back of the minds of experts at the University of Cambridge. For now, they can at least let out a sigh of relief. Those two leather-bound notepads were carried around by Darwin himself after his return from the Galapagos Islands in the late 1830s, and he used them to pen his observations or ideas. Among the pages was a rough sketch dubbed the “tree of life,” which helped give rise to his theory of evolution.

Video screenshot via Cambridge University

Their vital role in explaining natural history has led to the books being valued at several millions of pounds, the University of Cambridge details.

“The most important theory in the natural sciences is probably the theory of evolution by natural selection, which was discovered by Charles Darwin,” explains Jim Secord, president of the Darwin Correspondence Project. “And these are the notebooks in which Charles Darwin worked out his theory.”

The notebooks were removed from the university’s library shelves in November 2000 for photography work, and they’d remain in the archives for two months tops, which was when they were discovered missing. Given that the library holds more than 10 million books, librarians at first thought a coworker had placed the manuscripts in the wrong section. They were concluded to have possibly been stolen in 2020.

After arriving at this verdict, Dr Jessica Gardner, Cambridge University Librarian and Director of Library Services, reported the loss to local police and Interpol, as well as made a worldwide appeal to locate the books.

Then, on March 9, 2022, a bright pink gift bag was left on the library’s floor, away from the scope of surveillance cameras. In it was the original blue box with the notepads still intact, along with a brown envelope containing the note: “Librarian, Happy Easter.”

Video screenshot via Cambridge University

“The notebooks were returned anonymously to the Library on March 9, 2022, and are in good condition, with no obvious signs of significant handling or damage sustained in the years since their disappearance,” the university was happy to confirm.

While librarians and Darwin experts have gotten some closure, Cambridgeshire Police are leaving the case open and are making an appeal to anyone with information about the notebooks’ whereabouts over the last two decades.

In the years since the notebooks went poof, the university’s security technology has evolved to become more sophisticated.

That’s all the better, because it intends to showcase the artifacts in front of the general public at a forthcoming Darwin in Conversation exhibition.

[via BBC and Smithsonian Magazine, images via various sources]