Today’s subject is not a building or nuclear disaster but that of a hoax, which drew in
many of the most Intelligent anthropologists at the time.
It offered a vital piece of evidence in human evolution, a missing link if you will, this
chance discovery would influence paleontological study down a dead end for over 30 years.
My research, investigation and journalistic spirit has led me here to a small hamlet in
East Sussex England.
At stupid o’clock in the morning parked outside a closed pub, rethinking my career
choices.
So whilst I calculate my HMRC mileage expenses claim, lets get on with the video!
My name is John and today we are looking at the fascinating story of the piltdown man
hoax.
Background a Discovery
It is 1908 and workmen are digging in a gravel pit, just over 1 mile from the town of Uckfield
east Sussex, aka the town that those class 170 DMU’s go to from London Bridge!
The area is known as the hamlet of piltdown.
As they pile up the gravel and spoil, a rounded object which they believe to be a fossilised
coconut was discovered, due to the workers assumption of the item it is broken up.
The fragments for whatever reason were collected and after initial examination by those on
site, the decision was made to seek professional advice.
The workers contacted English lawyer and local amatuer archaeologist Charles Dawson, the
fragments were handed over and for 4 years Dawson would hold on to them until February
1912, when he decided to show off the discovery to one of the most respected museums in the
UK, the natural history museum.
Charles Dawson was the co-founder of the Hastings and St Leonards Museum Association, in the
late 1880s and 1890s Dawson had become a prolific discoverer of spectacular artefacts, leading
to his nickname as penned in The Sussex Daily News as the "Wizard of Sussex".
Dawson at the start of 1912 sent a letter to the Keeper of Geology at the Natural History
Museum, Arthur Smith Woodward.
The letter outlined dawsons discoveries, now i should say dawson had some legitimacy to
his name having being made a fellow of the society of geologists, and Society of Antiquaries
of London in 1885 and 1895 respectively, thus having the official titles of Charles Dawson
F.G.S., F.S.A.
On top of that due to his many donations to the British museum he had also gained the
title of honorary collector.
With such credentials Dawson had a lot of credibility to his discoveries, than say one
of the workers who had dug up the skull fragments in the first place.
The chance of becoming part of a discovery as big as dawsons letter exclaimed, led Arthur
Smith Woodward to visit the Piltdown site in the summer of 1912.
The discovery offered a chance of proof of the first Englishman, the veritable two fingers
to the French and Germans, who had been discovering the remains of neanderthals for the best part
of the last century.
So throughout june to september 1912 Woodward dawson and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin a jesuit
priest and palentologist worked on the piltdown site, strangely every new find was unearthed
by dawson alone mostly amongst the soil heap from the gravel quarry.
Even though every find was discovered by just the one man, Dawson, Woodward took the artefacts
back to the natural history museum for evaluation and reconstruction.
Intotal five human skull fragments, an ape-like jawbone with two teeth had been found forming
the basis of the new discovery.
This showed a link of a human skull ape-like jaw with human-like teeth, which had been
worn down.
Interestingly the bones were stained a dark red-brown colour the same as the ancient gravel
that had been excavated.
It is important to say that none of the discoveries save for the skull fragments found in 1908
were actually discovered in situ, instead they were found in the already dug up spoil.
This would lead the two to present the piltdown man as the fragments had soon enough become
known as to the Geological Society of London on 18 December 1912.
During this meeting Dawson exclaimed that a reconstruction of the fragments indicated
that the skull was remarkably similar to that of a modern day human, albeit more ape like,
for example the brain size, was about two-thirds that of a modern human as well as the part
of the skull that sits on the spinal column looking not so human like.
The chimpanzee-like jaw bone, apparently housed the human-like teeth rather well, adding credence
to the idea of the piltdown discovery being a missing link.
Woodward explained that the discovery was a vital missing link in human evolution, estimated
to be 500,000 years old.
Further excavations on the site at piltdown found more artefacts, some more believable
than others, including a loose canine tooth and an elephant bone carved to look like a
cricket bat.
The narrative couldn't be any more perfect.
The ancient Englishman was a cricket player, all he really needed yet was a tea cup, a
monocle, and dated views on empire for the picture to be perfect, obviously the last
few things weren't found.
The Piltdown man would be given a latin scientific name of Eoanthropus dawsoni or Dawsons Dawn
man in english.
Dawson once again struck gold in 1915 when he discovered more skull fragments near sheffield
park, however when probed by Woodward, the exact location was not revealed.
The finds went undocumented intially, but would be eventually be seen as further proof
of the piltdown man, when woodward presented the fragments as new evidence after dawsons
death, in the process implying he knew where they had come from, even though he had never
seen the second site.
Dawson just 4 years after the discovery and taking British palaeontology by storm, passed
away in august 1916, with the main artefact finder's death, strongly no more fragments
were found.
Now due to the period that the piltdown man was found, international interrogation of
the facts were somewhat limited, this was due to the 1st world war, where the triple
entente ie the allies of ww1 were fighting the Central Empires which included germany,
one of the main sources of neanderthal discovery.
Even more important that the English piltdown man trump the European discoveries.
But although a big chunk of the scientific community was now the enemy due to 4 years
of bloody war, the missing link was not without its domestic detractors.
The Discovery Challenged.
Almost right from the get go Eoanthropus dawsoni had its critics, copies of the fragments had
been made and the Royal College of Surgeons under Prof. Arthur Keith managed to make a
completely different model with a larger estimated brain cavity.
However Keith became convinced after the Sheffield park discoveries, thinking that the odd occurrence
of a chimpanzee-like jaw and human-like skull couldn't happen twice by accident.
As a side note here Keith probably wanted it to be real, he was a eugenicist, who believed
that Africans and Europeans had evolved separately, and thus a British discovered English missing
link fitted his scientific racism views rather neatly.
But Keith was not the only initial detractor, as early as 1913, an article published by
David Waterston from King's College London in nature magazine Concluded that the sample
consisted of an ape mandible and human skull.
French palaeontologist Marcellin Boule also came to the same conclusion in 1915, and as
well as by American zoologist Gerrit Smith Miller Jr. who concluded that Piltdown's jaw
came from a fossil ape.
He even sated “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 judgement
in fitting the parts together"
Which was proven to be true with the Keith re arrangement being drastically different
to Woodward's original interpretation.
Later In 1923, German anatomist Franz Weidenreich also concluded that both the jaw and skull
were from different animals, with the addition of filed down teeth to look human.
But the detractors wouldnt be the ones to blow open the discovery, that would be down
to the passage of time, causing Eoanthropus dawsoni to become an ever increasingly difficult
to explain anomaly against the increasing weight of evidence to the contrary.
You see the piltdown man was very different to the ever increasing amount of evidence
discovered post ww1 with ape men having much smaller brain cavities, than Eoanthropus dawsoni.
However, to british scientists investing in Eoanthropus dawsoni the newer continental
discoveries were the outliers, Britain must have had the correct missing link right?
Right?
Well wrong.
As more evidence that contradicted the piltdown man became available and open to scientific
scrutiny Eoanthropus dawsoni was increasingly looking suspicious.
Piltdown man A Fraud
Well not exactly everything in our story was actually true, there were many holes in the
Dawson story, with the line of custody of the skull prior to 1912 being ropey at best.
A hoax had formed in that gravel pit in piltdown someone had tried to pull the wool over the
eyes of the natural history museum, in doing so leading british palaeontology down a dodgy
path.
The best part of 40 years after the discovery the piltdown man would be conclusively found
to be a fraud.
In the early 1950s the fragments were extensively reexamined with greater scientific scrutiny,
Microscopic examination found file-marks on the teeth which could have only been caused
by a deliberate act to mislead.
It was also found that the bones had been stained using an iron solution and chromic
acid.
Even that cricket bat was fishy, I know this is where the bullshit alarm probably started
to alarm for you as well as me, but it was discovered under a microscope that it had
been carved using a modern knife.
The final nail in the coffin of the piltdown man was in 1949 when Kenneth Oakley used Fluorine
absorption dating which showed the fragments to be no more than 500 years old.
The results exposing the fraud were published in Time magazine in 1953.
Although fake, the question loomed as to who was behind the fraud, was it just one person
or many, well that question remains largely unanswered but we will have a run over the
suspects.
Our list included the obvious and even some celebrities:
I’ll start by saying it is highly likely that Dawson was behind the hoax, as well many
of his other discoveries that earned him his fellowships were also scams.
A multituberculate mammal, Plagiaulax dawsoni, in which dawson apparently "found" in 1891,
to have similarly filed teeth to that of the piltdown man.
Another discovery, the Bulverhythe Hammer was found to be shaped with an iron knife
in the same way as the Piltdown elephant bone had been.
So clearly Dawson was at the heart of the fraud, later DNA testing also found that teeth
from both the Piltdown site as well as the mystery site in sheffield park were from the
same animal, meaning whoever had one must have had the other.
His story of workmen finding the skull fragments in 1908, was also a recycled explanation of
Dawson coming into possession of artefacts.
So the piltdown man as a culmination of a career of frauds, why we will never know but
where there any accomplices.
Possibly, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin had previously travelled to regions of africa where the orangutan
jaw could have been sourced from, and in 1970 a suitcases owned by staff member of the Natural
History Museum Martin Alister Campbell Hinton was found with stained bones similar to dawson's
piltdown man.
It's very likely Dawson was the key member of the hoax but whether he had accomplices
or not we will never know , as is the same story for dawsons motives.
My personal theory is the amateur wanted to be
seen as the expert, at any cost.
There is a monument to the piltdown man, erected in 1938 by Arthur Keith, which is down this
road, behind this gate, it's on private land so this is as far as I could get.
Now the hoax has gone down as one of Britain's greatest, I mean it did alter nearly a whole
country's line of scientific investigation.
I highlighted British sensibilities of the time, of that a big brained early human would
of course come from england and play cricket.
Ok so i'm going to rate this as a number 3 oh balls people will remember this.
And a 9 on my legacy scale.
All videos on the channel are creative commons Attribution-ShareAlike.
Plainly difficult videos are produced by me John, in a wet and windy suburban Southeast
corner of London, uk.
Help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing!
Check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odd and sods, as well as hints on future
videos!
I've got patreon and youtube membership as well so if you fancy check them out!
All that's left to say is thank you for watching!
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2010270500/1913-02-14/ed-1/seq-2/?loclr=blogflt