Charles Dawson

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Charles Dawson
Charles Dawson
Born	1864
Died	August 10, 1916
Cause of death	sepsis
Nationality	British
Known for	Piltdown Man

Charles Dawson (1864 – 10 August 1916) was an amateur British archeologist who is credited and blamed with discoveries that turned out to be imaginative frauds, including that of the Piltdown man (Eoanthropus dawsoni), which he presented in 1912. Dawson was often present at finds in the archaeological digs, or was the finder himself.

Born the third of three sons near Hastings, Sussex, Charles initially studied as a lawyer following his father and pursed a hobby of collecting and studying fossils. He initially made a number of seemingly important fossil finds. For these important finds he elected a fellow of the Geological Society and a few years later after another find, to the Society of Antiquaries London 1895. The Sussex Daily News named him the "Wizard of Sussex" for his success. His most famous discovery was in 1912 with the discovery of the Piltdown man which was billed as the "missing link". Dawson died prematurely from septicaemia 1916.

Questions about the Piltdown find were raised from the beginning, first by Arthur Keith, but also by paleontologists and anatomists from the American Smithsonian and from Europe. Those disputing the find were attacked in very personal terms. Challenges arose again in the 1920s, but were again dismissed. In 1949, further questions were raised about the Piltdown Man and its authenticity, which led to Piltdown proven conclusively a hoax in 1953. Since then a number of Dawson's finds have also been proven to be fakes or planted.^[1]^[2]^[3]