Piltdown Man

Piltdown Man (Eoanthropus dawsoni) was once thought to be a "missing link" between man and ape. The first Piltdown fragments were discovered in 1912. Thereafter, over 500 scientific essays were written on the Piltdown Man in a 40-year period. The discovery was proven to be a deliberate hoax in 1953.

The fossil remains

The Piltdown remains were purposefully scattered around a quarry in Piltdown, England, so that they could be "discovered" later as evidence for evolution and the development of man from ape.

All of the fossil remains were stained with an iron sulfate solution.

Skulls

The Piltdown fragments included two human skulls, both around 620 years old, according to Sir Kenneth Oakley. They had been treated with acid.

They may have belonged to Ona Indians from Patagonia, as the skulls were unusually thick. Thick skulls are a common trait among Ona Indians.

Other bones

The Piltdown fragments also consisted of:

• An orangutan jaw, around 500 years old, perhaps from Sarawak
• An elephant molar, thought to be from Tunisia, which was filed down
• A hippopotamus tooth, thought to have come from Malta or Sicily
• A canine tooth from a Pleistocene chimpanzee, painted brown and patched with bubble gum

The portion of the orangutan jaw that connected the jaw to its skull was carefully broken so as not to show evidence that this jaw did not belong to a human skull.

The perpetrators

The Piltdown Man hoax is thought to have been perpetrated by Charles Dawson, an archaeologist, geologist and fossil collector for the British Museum. However, no one is quite certain who was involved. There are a number of other suspects, including Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of the British Museum's Natural History department, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a paleontologist and Jesuit theologian.

Piltdown Man Media

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  Group portrait of the Piltdown skull being examined. Back row (from left): F. O. Barlow, G. Elliot Smith, Charles Dawson, Arthur Smith Woodward. Front row: A. S. Underwood, Arthur Keith, W. P. Pycraft, and Ray Lankester. The portrait on the wall is of Charles Darwin. Painting by John Cooke, 1915.

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  Three views of the reconstruction of the "Piltdown Man" by James H. McGregor*original text: Three views of the Piltdown skull as reconstructed by J. H. McGregor, 1915. This restoration includes the nasal bones and canine tooth, which were not known at the time of Smith Woodward's reconstruction of 1913. One-quarter life size. Copyright, 1915. 1918, by Charles Scribners Sons.

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  Piltdown Man skull reconstruction

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  The Piltdown Man memorial stone.

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  Dawson's "Toad in the Hole". Booth Museum of Natural History, Brighton

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  A replica of the Piltdown Man skull.

References

• The Times, November 21, 1953; November 23, 1953
• The hoax exposed: The Piltdown Forgery by Joseph Weiner 1954
• The case against Smith: The Piltdown Man by Ronald Millar 1972
• The Dawson evidence: Unraveling Piltdown by John Evangelist Walsh 1996