The Earliest Englishman who never was

• • 1912 – the meeting of the Geological Society, London. Charles Dawson, an amateur anthropologist, stuns the world by presenting bone fragments which, he claims, are that of an extinct species of ancestral humans!
  • The find – from a gravel pit at Piltdown village of Sussex – includes parts of a skull and lower jawbone, a canine and prehistoric tools made from bones. They are estimated to be about half a million years old.
  • Arthur Woodward, head of the department of Geology of the Natural History Museum, reconstructs the skull and announces that it had belonged to a ‘missing link’ between apes and humans – it is named Eoanthropus dawsoni, after the discoverer.

• • The crux of the discovery is that the skull indicates that the brain size would have been about two-thirds that of a modern human. It is quite similar to a human skull, except for the occiput (the part of the skull that sits on the vertebral column). BUT, apart from two human-like molar teeth, the jaw bone is identical to that of a modern, young chimpanzee.
  • ‘Piltdown Man’ stuns the world. And the British rejoice. Many of them had been sad that no fossils of ancestral humans had been unearthed in the British isles, while Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon fossils had been found in Germany and France respectively. Now, here is THE EARLIEST ENGLISHMAN AND THE EARLIEST EUROPEAN.

• • And of course, Piltdown Man is an EURASIAN and not of African origin. [in the days of colonial imperialism and racism, Darwin’s 1871-hypothesis that human origins lay in Africa had caused much controversy; here was proof that Darwin had been wrong].
  • And the evidence nicely fits into the predominant hypothesis that the cranium had evolved first followed by jaws i.e. the large brain preceded the omnivorous diet . That also implies that the British were the ‘first to be smart’ and the first to start eating like humans, not beasts.
  • And Piltdown Man loved sports too – a sculpted elephant bone, discovered alongside the skull and jaw, is even interpreted as being the prehistoric cricket bat!
  • But, not all is rosy – many scientists, including the famous anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith, are skeptical (some of them in continental Europe and the US had ‘extra-academic reasons’ to be so too). And even The Royal College of Surgeons demonstrates that the bone fragments can be reconstructed differently such that it’d be identical to a modern human skull.
  • It is even suggested that the skull bones and the jawbones belonged to two different species and had accidentally come in close juxtaposition in the pit!
  • Besides, could an ape-like canine snugly fit into a jawbone that had human-like molars?   Scientists doubt – heated debates rage.
  • But, in 1915, Dawson discovers 3 more skull fragments from a site 2 miles away from Piltdown. And they look convincing. Now, even skeptics have to accept the data…grudgingly.
  • Dawson dies in 1916. Woodward digs more, but the Piltdown pit has nothing more to unearth.
  • Over the decades, more fossils come up – predominantly in Africa…and the line-of-evidence they present is rather different from the Piltdown Man. ‘He’ seems to be a strange, ill-explained aberration – almost an outlier…odd…funny…but, 40 years go by…
  • November, 1953. TIME magazine publishes the findings of Kenneth Oakley, Sir Wilfrid Le Gros Clark and Joseph Weiner. The article is titled ‘End as a Man’. Using the latest techniques, including Fluorine absorption dating, the trio proves that the Piltdown Man is a forgery.
  • The paleoanthropological hoax-‘fossil’ is a composite of bones from 3 species – a medieval-era human skull, a medieval-era orangutan’s lower jaw and fossilized teeth of a chimpanzee!!!
  • They were made to look prehistoric by staining the bones in a solution of Iron and Chromic acid.
  • Microscopic examination of the teeth shows file-marks – they had been modified as if they used to chew a human diet – – Eoanthropus dawsoni had never existed. It was a scientific fraud, crafted with sinister care and then deliberately thrown at the world.
  • WHODUNIT?? – more than a century later, it is still unclear. Dawson was certainly involved (later investigations showed that many of the antiques and artifacts he had collected were hoaxes – a serial bluffmaster ? ), but probably there were others too.
  • WHY? – no one knows. Perhaps Dawson, an amateur, yearned for international recognition – maybe fellowship of the Royal Society….we will never be sure of the motive…
  • What had been achieved? People – researchers and commoners – had wasted a LOT of time and money and enthusiasm had been funneled into a ‘blind lane of knowledge’ for years. An estimated 250+ papers had been written on the topic!
  • No use at all? – well, it shows science can never compromise on its stringency – especially when cultural, natural or ideological emotions and the pursuit-of-glory may tend to cloud judgment. A successful hoax is one that ‘presents what one expects to see’ – and the Piltdown Man was just that.
  • And, of course, the great thing is that it was rigorous science that finally unearthed the hoax.

Author Profile:

Anirban Mitra, Ph.D

Anirban Mitra did his PhD from the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru and is now a teacher of biology, based in Kolkata. His interests range from biological evolution to history of science and facets of India’s past.

*This blog summarizes the findings from the research articles that can be found in this link. http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_prim_suspects/ABBOTT/Abbot_defense/piltman_englishmystery.html

*The overall conclusion derived from these studies have been voiced at the website of Natural History Museum http://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/departments-and-staff/library-and-archives/collections/piltdown-man.html