The Piltdown Hoax Revisited: History’s Most Famous Scientific Fraud (original) (raw)

In 1912, the lawyer and amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson sent a letter to his friend Arthur Smith Woodward, head of geology at the prestigious British Museum. He told Woodward about a skull fragment he had found in a gravel pit near Piltdown Common, England. The fragment resembled the “Heidelberg Man”—a Neanderthal unearthed by workmen in Germany a few years earlier. If prehistoric human-like bones were buried near Piltdown, it would not be surprising to Woodward, because many geologists at the time believed that the gravel pit had been left behind by an Ice Age riverbed (Oakley and Weiner 1955).

That summer, the two men began a systematic excavation of the pit. Between 1912 and 1914, the trio excavated pieces of a human-like cranium, fragments of an ape-like jawbone, two teeth, animal bones, and several tools. However, in November 1912, before Woodward could formally present the first batch of fragments to his scientific peers, an unknown informant leaked news of the discovery to the Manchester Guardian (Goulden 2007; Goulden 2009).

“The Earliest Man? Remarkable Discovery in Sussex—A Skull ‘Millions of Years Old?’” was the headline. The apparent ape-human creature was “certainly from the beginning of the Pleistocene period,” and “there is no doubt of its authenticity” declared the newspaper. The cranium and jawbone were in fact the “earliest trace of mankind that has yet been found in England.” In comparison to Germany’s famous Heidelberg Man, these fragments suggested “a much lower and more primitive type of mankind” (“The Earliest Man?” 1912).

Bone fragments that were claimed to be evidence of Piltdown man. Credit: Judy BreckJ, CC BY-SA https://flic.kr/p/5pi9ta

But there was more: The discovery, according to the newspaper, promised to settle a debate that had raged since Charles Darwin’s 1871 publication of The Descent of Man. Darwin’s “theory of evolution applied to man suggest [_sic_] that he had a common origin with the apes,” The Guardian reminded readers. Yet to satisfy Darwin’s skeptics, the “need has been felt for discovering ‘the missing link’ between the highest apes and the lowest men’” (“The Earliest Man?” 1912).

In 1891, on the island of Java (part of present-day Indonesia), Dutchman Eugène Dubois had discovered fossilized remains of a small partial cranium, teeth, and a modern-looking femur indicative of an upright posture. Dubois named the species Pithecanthropus erectus (erect ape-man), claiming it was a “missing link.” Many geologists doubted the claim. But in contrast to “Java Man,” with the Piltdown discovery “there appears to be no doubt whatever of its genuineness” according to the newspaper, and “more than a possibility of its being the oldest remnant of a human frame yet discovered on this planet” (“The Earliest Man?” 1912).

Restoration of the head of Piltdown Man. Wellcome
Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

The Geological Society of London held a special December 1912 meeting so that Woodward could formally present the publicized discovery. Using lantern slides and diagrams, he argued that the bone fragments represented an ape-human individual from the early Pleistocene period, possibly the oldest such remains found in the world. He named the species Eoanthropus Dawsoni, “The Dawn Man” (“Piltdown Man” 1912; Dawson and Woodward 1913). The fragments, however, would become more popularly known as “Piltdown Man.”

In convincing the majority of his peers in attendance that day, Woodward likely benefited from the advance publicity. The Manchester Guardian had spun a vision of an early Pleistocene ape-man that resonated not only with British nationalism but also with the iconic quest to locate the “missing link.” The newspaper’s vivid account went well beyond the more cautious, tentative style of arguments that Woodward was permitted to present to his peers.

Status Seeker

Woodward and Dawson followed their 1912 presentation—and subsequent ones—by publishing the proceedings in the official journal of the Geological Society. But as news spread outside of Britain, foreign scientists voiced their skepticism about the authenticity of the alleged “missing link.” When requests to directly examine the fragments were denied, the decision deepened their suspicions (Oakley and Weiner 1955).

In 1915, “Piltdown Man II” was discovered a few miles away from the original pit. The fossil fragments included a human-like cranium and ape-like tooth with wear marks unlike any modern ape. The emergence of a second Piltdown Man silenced skeptics. However, over the next few decades—as more human-ape remains were found in South Africa, Java, and China—each were anatomically opposite to Piltdown Man. Their skulls were more ape-like and their jaw bones more human-like. These subsequent findings appeared to form a consistent evolutionary tree (though only if Piltdown Man was excluded from consideration). Piltdown Man supporters, however, could still reason away the mounting discrepancies by claiming that their favored bones were much older, thereby representing a separate man-ape species (Oakley and Weiner 1955).

In 1953, Kenneth Oakley of the British Museum and J.S. Weiner of the University of Oxford published a study with colleagues that reexamined the Piltdown fragments using advanced stereomicroscope technology, a new fossil dating method, and other innovative techniques (Weiner et al. 1953). Their tests placed the skull as no older than 50,000 years, rendering Piltdown Man an “evolutionary absurdity,” with no known ancestor or descendant. They concluded that a “modern ape jaw had been deliberately placed with the more ancient brain-case, and that to disguise its modern character and link it with the human brain-case, the bone had been suitably stained, and the teeth deliberately ground down” (Oakley and Weiner 1955).

More than sixty years later, a team of anthropologists led by Isabelle de Groote published a follow up study describing their investigation of the Piltdown bone fragments using DNA analyses, CT scanning, and X-ray tomography. They concluded that the jawbone fragments for both Piltdown I and II came from a single Borneo orangutan, and the skull fragments from two or three possibly medieval humans. The bones and teeth had been cleverly loaded with gravel held in place with pebble plugs; this made them feel heavier and therefore more like fossils. Silicate dental putty was used to reconstruct the fragments and piece them together where needed (de Groote et al. 2016).

Since the 1950s, at least twenty individuals have been suspected of involvement in the hoax. However, based on their analysis, de Groote et al. (2016) concluded that Dawson was the lone perpetrator. He was the generator of the original fragment, and he either found the rest of the fragments or was conveniently present when they were discovered. The consistency in method for how the flints and bones were chiseled and manipulated also suggest that a lone person did the work. Dawson had the connections to obtain the skull, jawbone fragments, mammal fossils, and tools that he stained and manipulated. He likely knew who to talk to at the newspapers and was friends with Woodward, then head of geology at the prestigious British Museum. Notably, after Dawson’s death in 1916, no remains similar to those of Piltdown Man were ever again recovered (de Groote 2016).

Reconstruction of Eoanthropus dawsoni—illustration appearing in a 1913 edition of Popular Science Monthly. Credit: Public domain, Wikimedia

To pull off a scientific fraud, you have to give scientists what they are looking for. Dawson, as an experienced fossil hunter, knew that the British scientific community was searching for its own “missing link”—and that they believed it would take the form of a stained (thereby fossilized) human-like skull and an ape-like face and jaw. He also likely knew that to corroborate the Piltdown Man, fragments, adjacent tools, and mammal fossils would have to be recovered (de Groote 2016).

But why would Dawson commit such a deception? In 1909, when Dawson claimed the first Piltdown fragment had been handed to him by a worker, he was forty-four years old. By then he had authored or coauthored some fifty publications in geology, archaeology, and history, explains de Groote (2016). But as a prolific amateur, he felt he had never gained the recognition from the scientific establishment he thought he deserved. In a 1909 letter to Woodward, Dawson lamented he was “waiting for the big ‘find’ which never seems to come along.” Later that year, his naval officer brother received a knighthood. Dawson’s wife soon wrote to the British Home Secretary, whom she refers to as an “old friend,” suggesting that because of his quarter century of scientific service, her husband should receive the recognition he deserved. Before Dawson died, he was nominated for induction into the Royal Society—Britain’s highest scientific honor—but the nomination was rejected (de Groote 2016).

References

Dawson, C., and A.S. Woodward. 1913. On the discovery of a Palaeolithic human skull and mandible in a flint-bearing gravel overlying the Wealden (Hastings Beds) at Piltdown, Fletching (Sussex). Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 69(1–4): 117–123.

De Groote, I. 2016. Solving the Piltdown Man crime: How we worked out there was only one forger. The Conversation (August 10). Available online at https://theconversation.com/solving-the-piltdown-man-crime-how-we-worked-out-there-was-only-one-forger-63615.

De Groote, I., L.G. Flink, R. Abbas, et al. 2016. New genetic and morphological evidence suggests a single hoaxer created ‘Piltdown Man.’ Royal Society Open Science 3(8): 160328.

The earliest man? Remarkable discovery in Sussex. A skull ‘millions of years’ old. 1912. The Manchester Guardian (November 21). Available online at https://www2.clarku.edu/faculty/djoyce/piltdown/map_receptionfav/earliestman.html.

Goulden, M. 2007. Bringing bones to life: How science made Piltdown Man human. Science as Culture 16(4): 333–357.

———. 2009. Boundary-work and the human—animal binary: Piltdown Man, science and the media. Public Understanding of Science 18(3): 275–291.

Oakley, K.P., and J.S. Weiner. 1955. Piltdown Man. American Scientist 43(4): 573–583.

Piltdown Man ‘a hitherto unknown species.’ 1912. The Manchester Guardian (December 19). Available online at https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2012/dec/19/piltdown-man-hoax-archaeology-1912.

Weiner, J.S., K.P. Oakley, and W.E. Le Gros Clark. 1953. The solution of the Piltdown problem. In Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Geology 2(3): 139–146.

Matt Nisbet

Matthew Nisbet is Professor of Communication, Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University, a CSI technical consultant, and writes regularly on science, politics, and a more focused life at www.wealthofideas.org.

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