Piltdown Man

The portrait painted by John Cooke in 1915. Back row (from left): F O Barlow, G Elliot Smith, Charles Dawson, Arthur Smith Woodward. Front row: A S Underwood, Arthur Keith, W P Pycraft, and Sir Ray Lankester.

The "Piltdown Man" is a famous Anthropological hoax concerning the finding of the remains of a previously unknown early human. The hoax find consisted of fragments of a skull and jawbone collected in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, a village near Uckfield, East Sussex, England. The fragments were thought by many experts of the day to be the fossilised remains of a hitherto unknown form of early man. The Latin name Eoanthropus dawsoni ("Dawson's dawn-man", after the collector Charles Dawson) was given to the specimen. The significance of the specimen remained the subject of controversy until it was exposed in 1953 as a forgery, consisting of the lower jawbone of an orangutan that had been deliberately combined with the skull of a fully developed modern human.

The Piltdown hoax is perhaps the most famous paleontological hoax in history. It has been prominent for two reasons: the attention paid to the issue of human evolution, and the length of time (more than 40 years) that elapsed from its discovery to its full exposure as a forgery.

Contents

Find

The finding of the Piltdown skull was poorly documented, but at a meeting of the Geological Society of London held on December 18, 1912, Charles Dawson claimed to have been given a fragment of the skull four years earlier by a workman at the Piltdown gravel pit. According to Dawson, workmen at the site had discovered the skull shortly before his visit and had broken it up. Revisiting the site on several occasions, Dawson found further fragments of the skull and took them to Arthur Smith Woodward, keeper of the geological department at the British Museum. Greatly interested by the finds, Woodward accompanied Dawson to the site, where between June and September 1912 they together recovered more fragments of the skull and half of the lower jaw bone.[1]

Piltdown Man skull

At the same meeting, Woodward announced that a reconstruction of the fragments had been prepared that indicated that the skull was in many ways similar to that of modern man, except for the occiput (the part of the skull that sits on the spinal column) and for brain size, which was about two-thirds that of modern man. He then went on to indicate that save for the presence of two human-like molar teeth the jaw bone found would be indistinguishable from that of a modern, young chimpanzee. From the British Museum's reconstruction of the skull, Woodward proposed that Piltdown man represented an evolutionary missing link between ape and man, since the combination of a human-like cranium with an ape-like jaw tended to support the notion then prevailing in England that human evolution began with the brain.

Almost from the outset, Woodward's reconstruction of the Piltdown fragments was strongly challenged. At the Royal College of Surgeons copies of the same fragments used by the British Museum in their reconstruction were used to produce an entirely different model, one that in brain size and other features resembled modern man. Despite these differences however, it does not appear that the possibility of outright forgery arose in connection with the skull.

As early as 1915, French paleontologist Marcellin Boule concluded the jaw was from an ape. Similarly, American zoologist Gerrit Smith Miller concluded Piltdown's jaw came from a fossil ape. In 1923, Franz Weidenreich examined the remains and correctly reported that they consisted of a modern human cranium and an orangutan jaw with filed-down teeth. Weidenreich, being an anatomist, had easily exposed the hoax for what it was. However, it took thirty years for the scientific community to concede that Weidenreich was correct.

In 1915, Dawson claimed to have found fragments of a second skull (Piltdown II) at a site about two miles away from the original finds.[1] So far as is known the site has never been identified and the finds appear to be entirely undocumented. Woodward does not appear ever to have visited the site.

Memorial to the discovery

The Piltdown Man memorial stone.

On July 23, 1938, at Barkham Manor, Piltdown, Sir Arthur Keith unveiled a memorial to mark the site where Piltdown Man was discovered by Charles Dawson. Sir Arthur finished his speech saying:

So long as man is interested in his long past history, in the vicissitudes which our early forerunners passed through, and the varying fare which overtook them, the name of Charles Dawson is certain of remembrance. We do well to link his name to this picturesque corner of Sussex–the scene of his discovery. I have now the honour of unveiling this monolith dedicated to his memory.[2]

The inscription on the memorial stone reads:

Here in the old river gravel Mr Charles Dawson, FSA found the fossil skull of Piltdown Man, 1912-1913, The discovery was described by Mr Charles Dawson and Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 1913-15.

The nearby pub was renamed The Piltdown Man in honour of it. It is still in business under that name.[3]

Exposure of the hoax

Scientific investigation

From the outset, there were scientists who expressed skepticism about the Piltdown find. G.S. Miller, for example, observed in 1915 that "deliberate malice could hardly have been more successful than the hazards of deposition in so breaking the fossils as to give free scope to individual judgment in fitting the parts together." In the decades prior to its exposure as a forgery in 1953, scientists increasingly regarded Piltdown as an enigmatic aberration inconsistent with the path of hominid evolution as demonstrated by fossils found elsewhere.[1] Skeptical scientists only increased in number as more fossils were found.

In November 1953, The Times published evidence gathered variously by Kenneth Page Oakley, Sir Wilfrid Edward Le Gros Clark and Joseph Weiner proving that the Piltdown Man was a forgery and demonstrating that the fossil was a composite of three distinct species. It consisted of a human skull of medieval age, the 500-year-old lower jaw of a Sarawak orangutan and chimpanzee fossil teeth. The appearance of age had been created by staining the bones with an iron solution and chromic acid. Microscopic examination revealed file-marks on the teeth, and it was deduced from this someone had modified the teeth to give them a shape more suited to a human diet.

The Piltdown man hoax had succeeded so well because at the time of its discovery, the scientific establishment had believed that the large modern brain had preceded the modern omnivorous diet, and the forgery had provided exactly that evidence. It has also been thought that nationalism and cultural prejudice also played a role in the less-than-critical acceptance of the fossil as genuine by some British scientists.[4] It satisfied European expectations that the earliest humans would be found in Eurasia, and the British, it has been claimed,[4] also wanted a first Briton to set against fossil hominids found elsewhere in Europe, including France and Germany.

Identity of the forger

The identity of the Piltdown forger remains unknown, but suspects have included Dawson, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Arthur Keith, Martin A. C. Hinton, Horace de Vere Cole and Arthur Conan Doyle as well as numerous others.

Teilhard had traveled to regions of Africa where one of the anomalous finds originated, and was residing in the Wealden area from the date of the earliest finds. Hinton left a trunk in storage at the Natural History Museum in London that in 1970 was found to contain animal bones and teeth carved and stained in a manner similar to the carving and staining on the Piltdown finds. Phillip Tobias implicates Arthur Keith. Tobias details the history of the investigation of the hoax, dismissing other theories, and listing inconsistencies in Keith's statements and actions.[5] More recent evidence points to Martin Hinton.[6]

The recent focus on Charles Dawson as the sole forger is supported by the gradual accumulation of evidence regarding other archaeological hoaxes he perpetrated in the decade or two prior to the Piltdown discovery. Dr. Miles Russell of Bournemouth University has recently conducted a detailed analysis of Charles Dawson's antiquarian collection and it is clear at least 38 are obvious fakes. Among these are the teeth of a reptile/mammal hybrid, Plagiaulax dawsoni, "found" in 1895 (and whose teeth had been filed down in the same way that the teeth of Piltdown man would be some 20 years later), the so-called "shadow figures" on the walls of Hastings Castle, a unique hafted stone axe, the Bexhill boat (a hybrid sea faring vessel), the Pevensey bricks (allegedly the latest datable "finds" from Roman Britain), the contents of the Lavant Caves (a fraudulent "flint mine"), the Beauport Park "Roman" statuette (a hybrid iron object), the Bulverhythe Hammer (shaped with an iron knife in the same way as Piltdown elephant bone implement would later be), a fraudulent "Chinese" bronze vase, the Brighton "Toad in the Hole" (a toad entombed within a flint nodule), the English Channel sea serpent, the Uckfield Horseshoe (another hybrid iron object) and the Lewes Prick Spur. Of his antiquarian publications, most demonstrate evidence of plagiarism or at least naïve referencing. At Piltdown itself, of the faked skull, jaw, teeth, animal bone assemblage, flint tools, and other remains, Dr. Russell has shown that the only clear suspect is Charles Dawson, stating that: "Piltdown was not a 'one-off' hoax, more the culmination of a life's work."

Dawson was in fact a suspect from the very beginning. On one occasion, as an example, a collection of flints he exchanged with another collector, Hugh Morris, turned out to have been aged with chemicals, a point Morris noted down at the time and which was later unearthed. There were also numerous individuals in the Sussex area well-acquainted with Dawson who long held doubts about Piltdown and of Dawson's role in the matter, but given the sheer weight of scholarly affirmation regarding the find few if any were willing to publicly speak out for fear of being ridiculed for their trouble.

His initial motivations may well have lain along the lines of gaining further fame and notoriety in his native Sussex, but it is clear that his increasingly successful early frauds may well have emboldened him to pull off the master stroke that would have landed him his most cherished goal, that of a fellowship in the prestigious Royal Society. It was a long ambition that ultimately went unfulfilled.

Relevance

A replica of the Piltdown man skull

Piltdown Man and early humans

In 1912, the Piltdown man was believed to be the “missing link” between apes and humans by the majority of the scientific community. However, over time the Piltdown man lost its validity, as other discoveries such as Taung Child and Peking Man were found. R.W. Ehrich and G.M. Henderson note, “To those who are not completely disillusioned by the work of their predecessors, the disqualification of the Piltdown skull changes little in the broad evolutionary pattern. The validity of the specimen has always been questioned.”[7] Eventually, in the 1940s and 1950s, more advanced dating technologies, such as the fluorine absorption test, scientifically proved that this skull was actually a fraud.

Relative importance

The Piltdown man fraud had a significant impact on early research on human evolution. Notably, it led scientists down a blind alley in the belief that the human brain expanded in size before the jaw adapted to new types of food. Discoveries of Australopithecine fossils found in the 1920s in South Africa were ignored owing to Piltdown man, and the reconstruction of human evolution was thrown off track for decades. The examination and debate over Piltdown man led to a vast expenditure of time and effort on the fossil, with an estimated 250+ papers written on the topic.

The fossil was sufficiently influential for Clarence Darrow to introduce it as evidence in defense of Scopes during the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. Darrow died in 1938, more than ten years before Piltdown Man was exposed as a fraud.

The hoax is still cited by creationists in support of their view that the theory of evolution cannot address the origins of man. Many cite it as evidence of frequent acceptance in the scientific community of viewpoints with very little evidence. (Other fossils cited include Nebraska Man, Homo rudolfensis, Homo cepranensis, Homo antecessor, the Gawis cranium and Rhodesian Man.)[8][9] Though it has been pointed out that it was science and scientists that discovered it was a fraud, albeit after an extremely long time,[8] the notoriety of the hoax remains strong and in November 2003, the Natural History Museum held an exhibition to mark the fiftieth anniversary of its exposure.[10]

Timeline

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Lewin, Roger (1987), Bones of Contention, http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_expose/chain_of_fraud.html 
  2. ↑ The Piltdown Man Discovery, Nature, July 30, 1938
  3. ↑ The Piltdown Man, Uckfield - Pub Directory UK, your one stop Pub guide in the UK, retrieved 15 August 2008
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Gould, Stephen J. (1980), The Panda's Thumb, W. W. Norton and Co., pp. 108–124 
  5. ↑ Current Anthropology (June 1992)[1]. Retrieved on 2008-06-08.
  6. ↑ Piltdown 2003 TalkOrigins Archive. Retrieved on 2008-06-08.
  7. ↑ "Culture area", in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 3, pp. 563-568. (New York: Macmillan/The Free Press).
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Harter, Richard (1997). "Creationist Arguments: Piltdown Man". http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/piltdown.html. Retrieved 2007-08-29. 
  9. ↑ Caroll, Robert Todd (1996). "Piltdown Hoax". http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_expose/piltdown_hoax.html. Retrieved 2007-08-29. 
  10. ↑ "The Natural History Museum Annual Review 2003/2004". http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/corporate-information/annual-reports/report/report2004/text/ouryear.html. Retrieved 2007-11-17. 

References

External links