Piltdown Man - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Piltdown Man was a hoax in which bone fragments were presented as the fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

ised remains of a previously unknown early human

Human evolution

Human evolution refers to the evolutionary history of the genus Homo, including the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species and as a unique category of hominids and mammals...

. These fragments consisted of parts of a skull

Human skull

The human skull is a bony structure, skeleton, that is in the human head and which supports the structures of the face and forms a cavity for the brain.In humans, the adult skull is normally made up of 22 bones...

and jawbone, said to have been collected in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, East Sussex

East Sussex

East Sussex is a county in South East England. It is bordered by the counties of Kent, Surrey and West Sussex, and to the south by the English Channel.-History:...

, England. The Latin name

Binomial nomenclature

Binomial nomenclature is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, although they can be based on words from other languages...

Eoanthropus dawsoni ("Dawson's dawn-man", after the collector Charles Dawson

Charles Dawson

Charles Dawson was an amateur British archaeologist who is credited and blamed with discoveries that turned out to be imaginative frauds, including that of the Piltdown Man , which he presented in 1912...

) was given to the specimen. The significance of the specimen remained the subject of controversy until it was exposed in 1953 as a forgery

Forgery

Forgery is the process of making, adapting, or imitating objects, statistics, or documents with the intent to deceive. Copies, studio replicas, and reproductions are not considered forgeries, though they may later become forgeries through knowing and willful misrepresentations. Forging money or...

, consisting of the lower jawbone of an orangutan

Orangutan

Orangutans are the only exclusively Asian genus of extant great ape. The largest living arboreal animals, they have proportionally longer arms than the other, more terrestrial, great apes. They are among the most intelligent primates and use a variety of sophisticated tools, also making sleeping...

that had been deliberately combined with the skull of a fully developed modern human.

The Piltdown hoax is perhaps the most famous paleontological hoax ever. It has been prominent for two reasons: the attention paid to the issue of human evolution

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

, and the length of time (more than 40 years) that elapsed from its discovery to its full exposure as a forgery.

Find

At a meeting of the Geological Society of London

Geological Society of London

The Geological Society of London is a learned society based in the United Kingdom with the aim of "investigating the mineral structure of the Earth"...

held on December 18, 1912, Charles Dawson claimed to have been given a fragment of the skull four years earlier by a workman at the Piltdown gravel pit. 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

Arthur Smith Woodward

Sir Arthur Smith Woodward was an English palaeontologist.-Biography:Woodward was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, England and was educated there and at Owens College, Manchester. He joined the staff of the Department of Geology at the Natural History Museum in 1882. He became assistant Keeper of...

, keeper of the geological department at the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

. 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

Occiput

The occiput is the anatomical term for the posterior portion of the head, in insects the posterior part of those head capsule.-Clinical significance:Trauma to the occiput can cause a basilar skull fracture....

(the part of the skull that sits on the spinal column

Vertebral column

In human anatomy, the vertebral column is a column usually consisting of 24 articulating vertebrae, and 9 fused vertebrae in the sacrum and the coccyx. It is situated in the dorsal aspect of the torso, separated by intervertebral discs...

) and for brain size

Brain size

Brain size is one aspect of animal anatomy and evolution. Both overall brain size and the size of substructures have been analysed, and the question of links between size and functioning - particularly intelligence - has often proved controversial...

, 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

Molar (tooth)

Molars are the rearmost and most complicated kind of tooth in most mammals. In many mammals they grind food; hence the Latin name mola, "millstone"....

teeth the jaw bone found would be indistinguishable from that of a modern, young chimpanzee

Chimpanzee

Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...

. From the British Museum's reconstruction of the skull, Woodward proposed that Piltdown man represented an evolutionary missing link

Missing Link

Missing link is a nonscientific term for any transitional fossil, especially one connected with human evolution; see Transitional fossil - Missing links and List of transitonal fossils - Human evolution.Missing Link may refer to:...

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 began with the brain.

Almost from the outset, Woodward's reconstruction of the Piltdown fragments was strongly challenged. At the Royal College of Surgeons

Royal College of Surgeons of England

The Royal College of Surgeons of England is an independent professional body and registered charity committed to promoting and advancing the highest standards of surgical care for patients, regulating surgery, including dentistry, in England and Wales...

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. This reconstruction, by Prof. Arthur Keith

Arthur Keith

Sir Arthur Keith was a Scottish anatomist and anthropologist, who became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and Hunterian Professor and conservator of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London...

(later Sir), was called Homo piltdownensis in reflection of its more human appearance.

As early as 1913, David Waterston of King's College London

King's College London

King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...

published in Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...

his conclusion that the sample consisted of an ape mandible and human skull. Likewise, French paleontologist Marcellin Boule

Marcellin Boule

Marcellin Boule was a French palaeontologist.He studied and published the first analysis of a complete Homo neanderthalensis. The fossil discovered in La Chapelle-aux-Saints was an old man, and Boule characterized it as brutish, bent kneed and not a fully erect biped...

concluded the same thing in 1915. A third opinion from American zoologist Gerrit Smith Miller

Gerrit Smith Miller

Gerrit Smith Miller, Jr. was an American zoologist.He was born in Peterboro, New York in 1869. He graduated from Harvard University in 1894 and worked under Clinton Hart Merriam at the United States Department of Agriculture...

concluded Piltdown's jaw came from a fossil ape. In 1923, Franz Weidenreich

Franz Weidenreich

-External references:*...

examined the remains and correctly reported that they consisted of a modern human cranium and an orangutan jaw with filed-down teeth. Weidenreich, being an anatomist, had easily exposed the hoax for what it was. However, it took thirty years for the scientific community to concede that Weidenreich was correct.

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.

Memorial to the discovery

On July 23, 1938, at Barkham Manor, Piltdown, Sir Arthur Keith

Arthur Keith

unveiled a memorial to mark the site where Piltdown Man was discovered by Charles Dawson. Sir Arthur finished his speech saying:
The inscription on the memorial stone reads:
The nearby pub

Public house

A public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...

was renamed The Piltdown Man in honour of it. It is still in business under that name.

Scientific investigation

From the outset, there were scientists who expressed skepticism about the Piltdown find. G.S. Miller

Gerrit Smith Miller

, for example, observed in 1915 that "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." In the decades prior to its exposure as a forgery in 1953, scientists increasingly regarded Piltdown as an enigmatic aberration inconsistent with the path of hominid evolution as demonstrated by fossils found elsewhere. Skeptical scientists only increased in number as more fossils were found.

In November 1953, Time published evidence gathered variously by Kenneth Page Oakley, Sir Wilfrid Edward Le Gros Clark

Wilfrid Le Gros Clark

Sir Wilfrid Edward Le Gros Clark was a British anatomist surgeon, primatologist and palaeoanthropologist, today best remembered for his contribution to the study of human evolution....

and Joseph Weiner proving that the Piltdown Man was a forgery and demonstrating that the fossil was a composite of three distinct species. It consisted of a human skull of medieval age, the 500-year-old lower jaw of a Sarawak

Sarawak

Sarawak is one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo. Known as Bumi Kenyalang , Sarawak is situated on the north-west of the island. It is the largest state in Malaysia followed by Sabah, the second largest state located to the North- East.The administrative capital is Kuching, which...

orangutan

Orangutan

and chimpanzee

Chimpanzee

Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...

fossil teeth. The appearance of age had been created by staining the bones with an iron solution and chromic acid

Chromic acid

The term chromic acid is usually used for a mixture made by adding concentrated sulfuric acid to a dichromate, which may contain a variety of compounds, including solid chromium trioxide. This kind of chromic acid may be used as a cleaning mixture for glass. Chromic acid may also refer to the...

. Microscopic examination revealed file-marks on the teeth, and it was deduced from this that someone had modified the teeth to give them a shape more suited to a human diet.

The Piltdown man hoax had succeeded so well because, at the time of its discovery, the scientific establishment had believed that the large modern brain had preceded the modern omnivorous diet, and the forgery had provided exactly that evidence. It has also been thought that nationalism

Nationalism

Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

and cultural prejudice also played a role in the less-than-critical acceptance of the fossil as genuine by some British scientists. It satisfied European expectations that the earliest humans would be found in Eurasia

Eurasia

Eurasia is a continent or supercontinent comprising the traditional continents of Europe and Asia ; covering about 52,990,000 km2 or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres...

, and the British, it has been claimed, also wanted a first Briton to set against fossil hominids found elsewhere in Europe, including France and Germany.

Identity of the forger

The identity of the Piltdown forger remains unknown, but suspects have included Dawson, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ was a French philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of both Piltdown Man and Peking Man. Teilhard conceived the idea of the Omega Point and developed Vladimir Vernadsky's concept of Noosphere...

, Arthur Keith

Arthur Keith

, Martin A. C. Hinton, Horace de Vere Cole

Horace de Vere Cole

William Horace de Vere Cole was a British eccentric prankster and poet...

and Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...

.

Teilhard had travelled to regions of Africa where one of the anomalous finds originated, and was residing in the Wealden

Wealden

For the stone, see Wealden GroupWealden is a local government district in East Sussex, England: its name comes from the Weald, the area of high land which occupies the centre of its area.-History:...

area from the date of the earliest finds. Hinton left a trunk in storage at the Natural History Museum

Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England . Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road...

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. Phillip Tobias implicated Arthur Keith by detailing the history of the investigation of the hoax, dismissing other theories, and listing inconsistencies in Keith's statements and actions. Other investigations suggest the hoax involved accomplices rather than a single forger.

The focus on Charles Dawson as the main forger is supported by the accumulation of evidence regarding other archaeological hoaxes he perpetrated in the decade or two prior to the Piltdown discovery. Archaeologist Miles Russell of Bournemouth University

Bournemouth University

Bournemouth University is a university in and around the large south coast town of Bournemouth, UK...

analyzed Dawson's antiquarian collection and determined at least 38 were fakes. Among these were the teeth of a reptile/mammal hybrid, Plagiaulax dawsoni, "found" in 1891 (and whose teeth had been filed down in the same way that the teeth of Piltdown man would be some 20 years later), the so-called "shadow figures" on the walls of Hastings Castle

Hastings Castle

Hastings Castle is situated in the town of Hastings, East Sussex .Before or immediately after landing in England in 1066 William of Normandy ordered three fortifications to be built, Pevensey Castle in September 1066, Hastings and Dover, a few days after the battle. Hastings Castle was originally...

, a unique hafted stone axe, the Bexhill

Bexhill-on-Sea

Bexhill-on-Sea is a town and seaside resort in the county of East Sussex, in the south of England, within the District of Rother. It has a population of approximately 40,000...

boat (a hybrid sea faring vessel), the Pevensey

Pevensey

Pevensey is a village and civil parish in the Wealden district of East Sussex, England. The main village is located 5 miles north-east of Eastbourne, one mile inland from Pevensey Bay. The settlement of Pevensey Bay forms part of the parish.-Geography:The village of Pevensey is located on...

bricks (allegedly the latest datable "finds" from Roman Britain), the contents of the Lavant Caves

Lavant, West Sussex

Lavant is a civil parish in the Chichester district of West Sussex, England, just north of Chichester. It is made up of three villages, Mid Lavant and East Lavant together with the much smaller West Lavant, and takes its name from the River Lavant which flows from East Dean...

(a fraudulent "flint mine"), the Beauport Park

Beauport Park

Beauport Park is a house near Hastings, East Sussex, England. It is located at the western end of the ridge of hills sheltering Hastings from the north and east.-Early history:...

"Roman" statuette (a hybrid iron object), the Bulverhythe

Bulverhythe

West Marina Redirects here. For the former rail station see St Leonards West Marina or for the current station see West St Leonards Station.Bulverhythe, also known as West St Leonards, Bo Peep, Filsham, West Marina, or Harley Shute, is a suburb of Hastings, East Sussex, England with its Esplanade...

Hammer (shaped with an iron knife in the same way as Piltdown elephant bone implement would later be), a fraudulent "Chinese" bronze vase, the Brighton "Toad in the Hole" (a toad entombed

Entombed animal

Entombed animals are animals reportedly found alive after being encased in solid rock for an indeterminate amount of time. The accounts usually involve frogs or toads...

within a flint nodule), the English Channel sea serpent, the Uckfield

Uckfield

-Development:The local Tesco has proposed the redevelopment of the central town area as has the town council. The Hub has recently been completed, having been acquired for an unknown figure, presumed to be about half a million pounds...

Horseshoe (another hybrid iron object) and the Lewes

Lewes

Lewes is the county town of East Sussex, England and historically of all of Sussex. It is a civil parish and is the centre of the Lewes local government district. The settlement has a history as a bridging point and as a market town, and today as a communications hub and tourist-oriented town...

Prick Spur. Of his antiquarian publications, most demonstrate evidence of plagiarism or at least naive referencing. Russell wrote: "Piltdown was not a 'one-off' hoax, more the culmination of a life's work."

Dawson's work prior to Piltdown had also been suspect. On one occasion, a collection of flints he exchanged with another collector, Harry Morris, turned out to have been aged with chemicals, a point Morris noted down at the time and which was later unearthed. There were also numerous individuals in the Sussex area well-acquainted with Dawson who long held doubts about Piltdown and of Dawson's role in the matter, but given the sheer weight of scholarly affirmation regarding the find few if any were willing to publicly speak out for fear of being ridiculed for their trouble.

Piltdown Man 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

Taung Child

The Taung Child — or Taung Baby — is the fossilized skull of a young Australopithecus africanus individual. It was discovered in 1924 by quarrymen working for the Northern Lime Company in Taung, South Africa...

and Peking Man

Peking Man

Peking Man , Homo erectus pekinensis, is an example of Homo erectus. A group of fossil specimens was discovered in 1923-27 during excavations at Zhoukoudian near Beijing , China...

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.” Eventually, in the 1940s and 1950s, more advanced dating technologies, such as the fluorine absorption test

Fluorine absorption dating

fluorine dating is used to determine the amount of time an object has been undergroundFluorine absorption dating can be carried out based on the fact that groundwater contains fluoride ions. Items such as bone fragments that are in the soil will absorb fluoride from the groundwater over time...

, scientifically proved that this skull was actually a fraud.

Relative importance

The Piltdown man fraud had a significant impact on early research on human evolution. Notably, it led scientists down a blind alley in the belief that the human brain expanded in size before the jaw adapted to new types of food. Discoveries of Australopithecine

Australopithecine

The term australopithecine refers generally to any species in the related genera Australopithecus or Paranthropus. These species occurred in the Plio-Pleistocene era, and were bipedal and dentally similar to humans, but with a brain size not much larger than modern apes, lacking the...

fossils found in the 1920s in South Africa were ignored owing to Piltdown man, and the reconstruction of human evolution was thrown off track for decades. The examination and debate over Piltdown man led to a vast expenditure of time and effort on the fossil, with an estimated 250+ papers written on the topic.

The fossil was sufficiently influential for Clarence Darrow

Clarence Darrow

Clarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks and defending John T...

to introduce it as evidence in defense of Scopes during the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. Darrow died in 1938, more than ten years before Piltdown Man was exposed as a fraud.

The hoax is often cited (along with Nebraska Man

Nebraska Man

Nebraska Man was a name applied by the popular press to Hesperopithecus haroldcookii, a putative species of ape. Hesperopithecus meant "ape of the western world," and it was heralded as the first higher primate of North America...

) by creationists

Creationism

Creationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...

as an example of the dishonestly or credulity of biologists that study human evolution, despite the fact that evolutionary biologists had exposed the hoax themselves.

The notoriety of the hoax remains strong and in November 2003, the Natural History Museum in London held an exhibition to mark the fiftieth anniversary of its exposure.

Early twentieth century science

The Piltdown case is a strong example of how racial, nationalist, and gendered discourses shaped some science at this time, just as they shaped society more generally. Piltdown's semi-human features were made sense of by reference to non-White ethnicities who were at that time considered by many Europeans to be less evolved than themselves. The influence of nationalism was clear in the differing interpretations of the find: whilst the majority of British scientists accepted the discovery as "the Earliest Englishman", European and American scientists were considerably more sceptical, and several suggested at the time that the skull and jaw were from two different creatures and had been accidentally mixed up. Regarding gender, the find was discussed as a male, despite Woodward suggesting that the specimen discovered was a female. The only exception to this was in coverage by the Daily Mail newspaper, which referred to the discovery as a woman, but only to use it to mock the Suffragette

Suffragette

"Suffragette" is a term coined by the Daily Mail newspaper as a derogatory label for members of the late 19th and early 20th century movement for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, in particular members of the Women's Social and Political Union...

movement of the time, which the Mail was highly critical of.

Such discourses were not uncommon in the biological sciences, and persisted up until the middle of the century. The atrocities committed by Nazi scientists before and during World War II brought the dangers of scientific racism to the foreground, and along with changing attitudes in society more generally, had the effect of largely purging these practices from science.

Timeline

1908: Dawson claims discovery of 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
1923: Weidenreich
Franz Weidenreich
-External references:*...

reports Piltdown remains consist of a human cranium and an orangutan jaw.
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
Wilfrid Le Gros Clark
Sir Wilfrid Edward Le Gros Clark was a British anatomist surgeon, primatologist and palaeoanthropologist, today best remembered for his contribution to the study of human evolution....

, and Oakley
Kenneth Oakley
Kenneth Page Oakley was an English physical anthropologist, palaeontologist and geologist.Oakley, known for his work in the relative dating of fossils by fluorine content, was instrumental in the exposure in the 1950s of the Piltdown Man hoax.Oakley was born and died in Amersham,...

expose the hoax.

External links

"Piltdown Man: Case Closed" at Bournemouth University
"Charles Dawson Piltdown Faker" BBC News
Piltdown Man documentary Discovery Channel
Piltdown Man at the Natural History Museum, London
The Piltdown Plot at Clark University
Clark University
Clark University is a private research university and liberal arts college in Worcester, Massachusetts.Founded in 1887, it is the oldest educational institution founded as an all-graduate university. Clark now also educates undergraduates...
Archæological Forgeries
The Unmasking of Piltdown Man BBC
Fossil fools: Return to Piltdown BBC
The Boldest Hoax (about Piltdown Man case) PBS NOVA
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.
An annotated bibliography of the Piltdown Man forgery, 1953-2005 by Tom Turrittin.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Find

Memorial to the discovery

Scientific investigation

Identity of the forger

Piltdown Man and early humans

Relative importance

Early twentieth century science

Timeline

See also

Further reading

External links