Piltdown man

Piltdown man, (Eoanthropus dawsoni), a proposed species of extinct hominins (members of the human lineage) that served as the subject one of the most successful hoaxes in the history of science. Fossil remains of Piltdown man were discovered in England in 1910–12; however, they were later proved to be fraudulent, despite being sufficiently convincing to generate a scholarly controversy that lasted more than 40 years. During the first half of the 20th century, the fraud of the Piltdown man impeded recognition of the importance of hominin fossils discovered in Africa, but its exposure starting in 1953 clarified the sequence of human evolution by removing the greatest anomaly in the fossil record.

Discoveries

In a series of discoveries in 1910–12, Charles Dawson, an English lawyer and amateur geologist, found what appeared to be the fossilized fragments of a cranium, a jawbone, and other specimens in a gravel formation at Barkham Manor on Piltdown Common near Lewes in Sussex. Dawson took the specimens to Arthur Smith Woodward, keeper of the British Museum’s paleontology department, who announced the find at a meeting of the Geological Society of London on December 18, 1912. Woodward claimed that the fossils represented a previously unknown species of extinct hominin (Eoanthropus dawsoni, or “dawn man”) that could be the missing evolutionary link between apes and early human beings, and he attested that the fossils were some 500,000 years old. His claims were eagerly and uncritically endorsed by some prominent English scientists, perhaps because the Piltdown fossils suggested that the British Isles had been an important site of early human evolution.

Additional excavations of the site followed in 1913–14, revealing the presence of stone tools, fragments of other animals, and a bone slab carved in such a way that scientists referred to it as the “cricket bat.” Before Dawson’s death in 1916, he informed Woodward that he had found additional remains (a tooth and bits of a skull that appeared to belong to the same individual) at a second site some 3 km (about 1.9 miles) away from the site of the initial finds.

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A deception revealed

As long as the remains were accorded a high antiquity, Piltdown man seemed a feasible alternative to Homo erectus (then known from scanty remains as Pithecanthropus) as an ancestor of modern humans. In 1926, however, the Piltdown gravels were found to be much less ancient than supposed, and, from 1930, more finds of Pithecanthropus, the discoveries of the more primitive Australopithecus, and further examples of Neanderthals left Piltdown man completely isolated in the evolutionary sequence.

In 1953–54, as an outcome of these discoveries, an intensive scientific reexamination of the Piltdown remains showed them to be the skillfully disguised fragments of a quite modern human cranium, the jaw and teeth of an orangutan, and the tooth probably of a chimpanzee, all fraudulently introduced into the shallow Pleistocene-age gravels. Chemical tests revealed that the fragments had been deliberately stained, some with chromium and others with acid iron sulfate solution (neither chromium nor sulfate occurs in the locality), and that, although the associated remains were of genuine extinct animals, they were not of British provenance. The teeth too had been subjected to artificial abrasion to simulate the human mode of flat wear. In addition, by 1959 the emerging technique of carbon-14 dating had determined that the cranium itself was between 520 and 720 years old.

Perpetrators and motivations

The identity of the chief perpetrator of the Piltdown hoax has remained a mystery. Speculation has most often focused on Dawson himself, who may have been motivated by a desire for a coup that would gain him entrance into the Royal Society. Some scholars have contended that Woodward, Dawson’s chief collaborator, was innocent, and others have suspected that he was the intended victim of the hoax (to make him look ridiculous upon exposure). Still others have contended that a friend of Dawson’s, Samuel Woodhead, was a confederate, having access to bones and to chemicals for supplying and doctoring the specimens. Another possible participant in the scheme was Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit priest and paleontologist who accompanied Dawson on his first joint excavations at Piltdown with Woodward. Still other candidates have included the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who lived near Piltdown, knew Dawson, and was interested in fossils, and Sir Arthur Keith, who was an anatomist and conservator of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons at the time.

The first solid evidence regarding the identity of the perpetrator emerged in 1996, two decades after a trunk marked with the initials M.A.C.H. had been discovered in storage at the British Museum. Upon analyzing bones found in the trunk, the British paleontologists Brian Gardiner and Andrew Currant found that they had been stained in the exact same way as the Piltdown fossils. The trunk apparently had belonged to Martin A.C. Hinton, who became keeper of zoology at the British Museum in 1936. Hinton, who in 1912 was working as a volunteer at the museum, may have treated and planted the Piltdown bones as a hoax in order to ensnare and embarrass Woodward, who had rebuffed Hinton’s request for a weekly wage. Hinton presumably used the bones in the steamer trunk for practice before treating the bones used in the actual hoax.

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A second study, released in 2016, appeared to shift the responsibility for the hoax to Dawson. A reexamination of the Piltdown remains, which included spectroscopy and DNA analysis, strongly suggested that the fabricated remains were made by combining the bones of a single orangutan and no fewer than two human specimens. The remains from both sites showed similar patterns of chemical staining, gravel packed into spaces both between and within the bones, bone abrasion from filing, and the use of a cementing material reminiscent of dental putty to bind various bone fragments together—all of which were likely the work of one person. Although other parties may have been involved at various stages of the ruse, the study implicated Dawson as the common element at all of the important points of the story. He discovered the fossil remains at both sites and first brought attention to them by delivering them to Woodward. Other fossils were not discovered at the first site after Dawson’s passing, and he failed to reveal the exact location of the second site before his death. In addition, Dawson’s knowledge of archaeology and geology could have given him access to the skills with which to disguise the remains, and his desire for recognition by the scientific community, as evidenced by his ambition to become a fellow of the Royal Society, could have been Dawson’s purpose for creating the hoax.