Piltdown Man
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The so-called "Piltdown Man" consists of fragments of a skull and jawbone collected in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, a village near Uckfield, East Sussex. The fragments were claimed by experts of the day to be the fossilized remains of a hitherto unknown form of early human. The Latin name Eoanthropus dawsoni ("Dawson's dawn-man") was given to the specimen. They were displayed as an absolute proof of human evolution in several museums. For more than 40 years, many scientific articles were written on "Piltdown man", many interpretations and drawings were made, and the fossil was presented as important evidence for human evolution. It is claimed that no fewer than 500 doctoral theses were written on the subject[1]. However, others have refuted this claim, arguing that the annual output of doctoral theses in paleontology was, and is, too low to reach this number. Moreover, no such doctoral theses have ever been referred to in any scientific publication.[2]
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 combined with the skull of a fully developed, modern man. It has been suggested that the forgery was the work of the person said to be its finder, Charles Dawson, after whom it was named. This view is strongly disputed and many other candidates have been proposed as the true creators of the forgery.
The Piltdown hoax is perhaps the most famous archaeological hoax in history, with its prominence lasting over forty years. Its bearing on science is strong because of two factors, namely the weight of the link between humans and apes and second due to the duration of which it was a part of scientific “fact.”
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[edit] The find
The finding of the Piltdown skull was poorly documented, but at a meeting of the Geological Society of London held in December 1912, Dawson claimed to have been given a fragment of the skull four years earlier by a workman at the Piltdown stone quarry. 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.
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 was brain-led.
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.
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. 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.
[edit] Memorial to the discovery
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.'"[3]
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 in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 1913-15.
The nearby pub was renamed The Piltdown Man in honour of it.
[edit] The forgery exposed
[edit] Scientific investigation
In 1953, the exposure of the Piltdown forgery by workers at the British Museum and other institutions was greeted in many academic quarters with relief. Piltdown man had for some time become regarded as an aberration that was entirely inconsistent with the mainstream thrust of human evolution as demonstrated by fossil hominids found elsewhere. Piltdown Man was shown to be a composite forgery, part-ape and part-man. 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.
For the forger, the area where the jaw joined the skull posed problems that were overcome by the simple expedient of breaking off the terminals of the jaw. The teeth in the jaw had been filed to make them fit and it was this filing that led to doubts about the authenticity of the whole specimen, when, by chance, it was noticed that the top of one of the molars sloped at a very different angle from the other teeth. Microscopic examination revealed file-marks on the teeth and it was deduced from this that filing had taken place to change the shape of the teeth, as ape teeth are different in shape from human teeth.
The degree of technical competence exhibited by the Piltdown forgery continues to be the subject of debate; however, the genius of the forgery is generally regarded as being that it offered the experts of the day exactly what they wanted: convincing evidence that human evolution was brain-led. It is argued that because it gave them what they wanted, the experts taken in by the Piltdown forgery were prepared to ignore all of the rules that are normally applied to evidence. It has been suggested that nationalism and racism also played a role in the acceptance of the fossil as genuine, as it satisfied European expectations that the earliest humans would be found in Eurasia. The British, it has been claimed, also wanted a first Briton to set against fossil hominids found elsewhere in the world, including France and Germany.
[edit] Identity of the forger
The identity of the Piltdown forger remains unknown. The finger of suspicion has been pointed at Dawson, and Woodward. But Pierre Teilhard de Chardin remains a prime suspect as he rather incredibly "found" a conveniently confirmatory tooth - and had also travelled in the Ishkeul region of North Africa from which one of the anomalous finds (a rhinoceros tooth) originated. He was resident in the Wealden area from the date of the earliest finds and is reliably documented as working at the site in 1913 with Dawson. The name of Arthur Conan Doyle has been mentioned but is scarcely credible... . The motives of the forger also remain unknown, but it has been suggested that the hoax was a practical joke that rapidly ran out of hand. Thought by some to be a very promising candidate for the role of the Piltdown forger, Martin A.C. 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. In 2003, the Natural History Museum held an exhibition to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the exposure of the hoax.
[edit] Relevance
[edit] Piltdown 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.”[4] Eventually, in the 40s and 50s, more advanced dating technologies, such as the fluorine absorption test, scientifically proved that this skull was actually a fraud.
[edit] Relative Importance
According to Robert Parson, “Piltdown confirmed hypotheses about our early ancestors that were in fact wrong, specifically, that the brain case developed before the jaw. The early Australopithecine fossils found by Raymond Dart in South Africa in the 1920s failed to receive the attention due to them for this reason. The entire reconstruction of the history of the evolution of humanity was thrown off track until the 1930s.”[citation needed]
The discovery of Piltdown Man led to a vast expenditure of time and effort on the fossil. It has been estimated that over 250 papers were written on the topic. In fact, more than seventy were cited in G.S. Miller’s 1915 work on the topic (less than ten years after the discovery). Arthur Smith Woodward spent much of his career studying Piltdown Man. When it finally was proven as a hoax, much of his work came to naught, and became a permanent stain on his reputation.
The hoax is also now a popular target for creationists, who point out many reconstructions based on the hoax and the duration of time in which it was a major factor in archaeological (and evolutionary) decisions.
[edit] Historical Errors
Many early scientists actually pointed out this hoax before they were confirmed in 1953. These scientists include G.S. Miller, who wrote in 1915, “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.” It is believed that if Miller had been working with the actual Piltdown skull instead of a cast, he could have revealed the hoax before it was given overwhelming prominence. This skepticism was commonplace, as most researchers believed that the jaw and cranium were, in fact, from two animals. However, the scientific establishment held to the conviction that humans developed a larger braincase before other distinct characteristics like bipedalism. Since technologies did not exist at that time to date the skull accurately, the hoax was eventually accepted, and people simply ignored works like that of Miller.
In 1920 Louis S. B. Leakey wrote that "Piltdown is clearly much younger than reported, and is certainly not very important."
[edit] In popular culture
- Mike Oldfield, in his 1973 album Tubular Bells, lists "Piltdown man" as one of the instruments he plays in the album. This refers to one part of the album (found in the second track) that is undoubtedly inspired by early hominids and sung in a raw voice. In the 2003 reworking of the album, this part is titled "Caveman".
- In March 1994, Apple Computer introduced the Power Macintosh 6100, the first of the Power Macintosh line of computers, which carried the codename "Piltdown Man". Later that year, the Macintosh computer game Marathon 2 was released, which has a computer terminal with the word "piltdown" in a transmission's header. It is argued that this usage implies that the message from the terminal was not entirely true, and that the supposed sender did not exist.
- In his book Scientology: A History of Man, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard lists Piltdown Man as one of the ancestors of humanity, describing him as having "enormous" teeth and being "quite careless as to whom and what he bit". Piltdown Man was exposed as a hoax just months after the publication of Hubbard's book.
- There is a brief reference to the Piltdown Man in the X-Files episode 'Gethsemane'.
- Lovecraft's short stories Dagon and The Rats in the Walls refer to the Piltdown man.
- In The Psychiatrist, an episode of Fawlty Towers, Basil Fawlty refers to a lower class guest as a "Piltdown ponce".
- The Piltdown man is mentioned as a thought from Ellie Sattler in the novel Jurassic Park when she is considering that an x-ray may be a hoax (Found in the 'Second Iteration' within the section 'Skeleton').
- The hoax formed part of the inspiration for Angus Wilson's 1956 novel Anglo-Saxon Attitudes.
- In the 1958 movie "Monster On The Campus", Professor Donald Blake (Arthur Franz) has a collection of facial reconstructions depicting the ascent of man from the early hominids to modern man (or woman in this case, actress Joanna Moore). One of them is that of Piltdown Man.
[edit] Timeline
- 1908: Dawson discovers first Piltdown fragments
- 1912 February: Dawson contacts Woodward about first skull fragments
- 1912 June: Dawson, Woodward, and Teilhard form digging team
- 1912 June: Team finds elephant molar, skull fragment
- 1912 June: Right parietal skull bones and the jaw bone discovered
- 1912 November: News breaks in the popular press
- 1912 December: Official presentation of Piltdown man
- 1914: Talgai (Australia) man found, considered confirming of Piltdown
- 1925: Edmonds reports Piltdown geology error. Report ignored.
- 1943: Fluorine content test is first proposed.
- 1948: Woodward publishes The Earliest Englishman
- 1949: Fluorine content test establishes Piltdown man as relatively recent.
- 1953: Weiner, Le Gros Clark, and Oakley expose the hoax.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
[edit] External links
- Piltdown Man at the Natural History Museum, London
- The Piltdown Plot
- Archæological Forgeries
- The Unmasking of Piltdown Man: BBC
- Fossil fools: Return to Piltdown by BBC
- PBS NOVA: The Boldest Hoax (about Piltdown Man case)
- Talk.origins page on Piltdown Man
- Sarah Lyell, "Piltdown Man Hoaxer: Missing Link is Found", The New York Times, 25 May 1996 The case for Martin A. C. Hinton as the hoaxer.
