A complete 47-million-year-old fossil claimed to be the “missing link” between early primates and man. (Atlantic Productions)
On a December day in 2006, Dr. Jorn Hurum, associate professor of paleontology at the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo, walked into a fossil fair in Hamburg, Germany. The fair was among the largest events of its type held annually in Europe. Thousands of people from around Western Europe attended the fair in search of commercially available fossils and to see the many interesting paleontological specimens on display. It was not Hurum’s first visit to the fair, and he was not expecting to find anything out of the ordinary, but that is exactly what happened. Stopping by the table of dealer Thomas Perner, Perner told Hurum he had something “unbelievable” to show him, but needed to do so in private. The two met later that afternoon at a bar inside the exhibit hall. Perner showed Hurum a high-resolution color photograph of a fossil skeleton that literally shocked Hurum. He had never seen anything quite like it. If authentic, Hurum realized that the intact skeleton was that of an early primate, the special group or order that humans belonged to. But this fossil came from a special pit that dated the fossil creature as having died 47 million years ago. Hurum was dazzled by what he saw. The fossil represented what could well prove to be the most significant link in human evolution discovered to date. Hurum told Perner, “It’s like finding the lost ark.”1
Perner told Hurum the fossil was owned by a private collector who had decided it was time to sell the extraordinary specimen. Was Hurum interested? Yes, he was. The price? One million dollars. Hurum didn’t flinch at this seemingly large sum of money for a fossil. If the specimen was authentic, and collected prior to 1995 (when the pit where it was discovered was designated a protected UNESCO World Heritage Site), Hurum would raise the money from the Oslo Natural History Museum, where he worked. The rare Darwinius masillae fossil passed both tests, and the deal was consummated. Named “Ida” by Hurum, after his young daughter, Hurum believes Ida “will be the one pictured in the text books for the next one hundred years.”2
A complete 47-million-year-old fossil claimed to be the “missing link” between early primates and man. (Atlantic Productions)
Ida’s significance comes from the fact that she (Ida is a female) is clearly a primate, and the most complete primate of that early period ever discovered.3 The size of a modern house cat, not only does Ida possess a complete skeleton, but the fossil also includes a soft body (tissue) outline of the animal along with the contents of its digestive tract.4 It was truly a unique specimen. In Ida’s stomach were the remains of her last meal, an early prehistoric fruit. Shortly after ingesting the fruit, Ida is believed to have been overcome by a poisonous gas coming from the lake where she was drinking. Overcome, she fell into the lake and settled on the bottom, where she slowly fossilized.
The discovery of Ida and her introduction to the general public through the media is the latest in a long chain of discoveries in the general field of human evolution spanning over 150 years. That man should be interested in man and how the human species came to be is self-evident. Each new discovery is heralded as a breakthrough in advancing our knowledge of our own evolution. Man’s quest for the “missing link” that bridged the gap between early primates and humans has spurred archeological exploration for over a century.5
As important as Ida is to the science of paleontology and human evolution, several other specimens have gathered similar attention at the time of their discovery, but none were heralded as being so important as the few fragments of bone discovered beginning in 1908 by Charles Dawson in an ancient gravel pit near the Sussex village of Piltdown in southern England. Like Ida’s discovery a century later, Charles Dawson’s find was received throughout the academic world as the most important find in the history of paleontology to that date. Here was the true “missing link” so many had been looking for that finally bridged the gap between humans and their ape relatives.6 Dawson’s man was part ape, part human.
At the time of Dawson’s revelation to the archeological community few specimens had been discovered, resulting in an incomplete view of early man. His find consisted of several fragments of a cranium with human characteristics along with a fragment of a jawbone that bore strong characteristics of an ape, but with human-like teeth. This unique combination of a human skull with an ape-like jaw bearing human-like teeth fit many of the early scientists’ ideas of what a “missing link” should look like. A missing link that had yet to be discovered. Dawson’s find dazzled the world.
That man evolved over millions of years from earlier, more primitive specimens was still a young theory searching for evidence. To the world in general Dawson’s discovery was the link that bridged the gap between ape and man, having characteristics from both. The discovery was clear proof of Charles Darwin’s theory propounded in his revolutionary book On the Origin of Species, published fifty years earlier. Newspapers heralded the discovery with headlines like the one that appeared in the Manchester Guardian, “The Earliest Man. A Skull Six Million Years Old.”7
One of the interesting aspects of Ida’s discovery is that it was made by an amateur paleontologist and fossil collector. Charles Dawson, it turns out, was also an amateur paleontologist and collector. But unlike the discoverer of Ida, professional paleontologists recognized Dawson as an expert whose discoveries, knowledge, and scientific publications ranked him along with the better academicians in the field.
Dawson acquired an interest in antiquities at an early age, collecting fossils and educating himself such that by the end of his teens he had acquired both a substantial collection of artifacts and an unusual degree of knowledge. Born in 1864 into a prosperous family, he led an accomplished life, as did his two younger brothers, Hugh and Arthur. Hugh became vicar of Clandown in Somerset, near the town of Bath, while Arthur served in the Royal Navy before becoming the managing director of a major shipbuilding and arms manufacturing company. Arthur was knighted in 1909, around the time of the alleged Piltdown discovery.
Charles followed a different path than his two brothers, never attending a university but acquiring an education in archeology on his own. At the age of twenty he donated his impressive collection to the British Museum of Natural History, for which he acquired the title of “Honorary Collector.” A year later he was elected a fellow of the prestigious Geological Society, and ten years after that he achieved his greatest honor when elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. He could now proudly list his name in publications as “Charles Dawson, FGS, FSA,” a considerable achievement in a nation filled with university-educated scientists.
Dawson’s archeological pursuits remained an avocation throughout his life. His professional career was in the field of law, where he worked as a solicitor, eventually heading the firm of Dawson, Hart and Company, located in the village of Uckfield in Sussex, England.8 Successful as a solicitor, Dawson devoted more and more time to his antiquarian interests, making several prominent friends in the field, including Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, head of geology at the British Museum of Natural History located in London. The two men became fast friends, sharing their knowledge and love of geology and paleontology with each other.
Charles Dawson wearing a ceremonial costume. (Miles Russell, Piltdown Man)
Arthur Smith Woodward was a man of great accomplishment, highly respected, whose career prior to the Piltdown story was exemplary. Woodward’s rise to prominence is a story akin to that of Horatio Alger. Born into modest means, he showed an early intense interest in archeology and collecting, much like his later friend Charles Dawson. Lacking a university degree, he accepted a low-level position with the Natural History Museum in London, and through self-education and hard work he rose to become head of its prestigious geology department. His achievements were many and his awards numerous. By the age of thirty-nine Woodward was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. During his years at the Natural History Museum he became close friends with Dawson. The two men, through their shared enthusiasm for archeology, corresponded regularly, sharing ideas. The stage was now set for what would become the greatest hoax in the fields of paleontology and anthropology.
Building where Charles Dawson had his law offices in the town of Uckfield. The firm still exists today as Dawson and Hart. (Photograph by the author)
On February 15, 1912, Dawson wrote a letter to Woodward. In the letter, Dawson revealed for the first time his find of fragments from a human skull in the ancient gravel pit on the estate known as Barkham Manor, not far from the village of Piltdown in Sussex. Dawson wrote: “I have come across a very old Pleistocene9 (?) bed overlying the Hastings bed between Uckfield and Crowborough, which I think is going to be interesting. It has a lot of iron-stained flints in it, so I suppose it is the oldest known flint gravel in the Weald [forest]. I [found a] portion of a human skull which will rival H. heidelbergensis in solidity.”10
Despite Dawson’s astonishing revelation, the two men did not get together for another three months, although Dawson did send Woodward skull fragments and other mammalian animal fragments that supported his estimated age of the skull fragments as early Pleistocene. The discovery was made public in December 1912, ten months after Dawson informed Woodward, and as long as four years after Dawson claimed to have found the remarkable bones. Woodward enthusiastically accepted Dawson’s finds. His reputation throughout the scientific community helped give Dawson’s discovery considerable credibility.
Arthur Smith Woodward (left) and Charles Dawson (center) pose for the camera in the summer of 1912. (Miles Russell, Piltdown Man)
The leading authorities of the period were thrilled. They had found exactly what they were looking for—a kind of hybrid creature, part human, part ape—and best of all, it was found in England. The cranium was human-like, while the jaw was ape-like, except for the two molars firmly imbedded in the jaw, which were definitely humanoid, not ape-like. The only problem with this creature was that it proved to be the opposite of what was eventually shown to be the case in man’s evolution—human-like jaw and teeth with a smaller, underdeveloped cranium (brain). But that was to come later in the century. The pattern of man’s emergence from his primate past showed his teeth evolving in advance of his brain capacity. This pattern, however, was not widely known at the time of Piltdown’s discovery.
To better appreciate the significance of Piltdown Man, a little background is necessary. At the time of Dawson’s discovery there were not many examples of hominid or human fossils, and basically none in England—or in all of the British Isles for that matter. The scientific community throughout Britain was feeling somewhat left out. Why was early man absent from British history? After all, Great Britain was certainly one of the greatest nations in every category, or every category except one, early man.
One of the characteristics that make an animal a “hominid” is the ability to walk upright on two legs. This is a somewhat simplistic statement, but necessary for our understanding of a complicated subject. The evolution of modern man took a major step forward (no pun intended) when his ancestor stood on two feet and left the habitat of the trees to walk onto the great savannah of Africa. Walking erect gave this ancestor a major adaptive advantage over his own ancestors and the other animals that roamed his habitat. Upright man could see farther across the savannah than most creatures on all fours. Walking upright is believed to have happened between 4 and 5 million years ago.
In 2005, scientists discovered the remains of a hominid in Ethiopia that walked around on two legs, fitting their prediction quite nicely. The fossil remains were dated to around 4 million years ago and were found not far from where the fossil remains of Lucy, a 3-million-year-old girl belonging to the genus Australopithecus, were discovered. The genus Australopithecus was a major breakthrough in the study of man’s evolution. It was in this diminutive ancestor of modern man that paleontologists believe walking upright on two feet first occurred. As Darwin audaciously declared in his Descent of Man, published in 1871, “Man alone has become a biped.”11
The earliest prehistoric ancestor of modern man (Homo sapiens) that is considered in the same group as modern-day man is named Homo habilis. Habilis emerged roughly 2 million years ago. This particular species is named habilis because it was accompanied by several stone tools and is believed to be the first or earliest of our ancestors to use tools. This feature, together with a brain shaped much like the later human brain, marks a significant point in human evolution. But we are still over a million years away from modern man.
All of the earliest fossil antecedents of modern man were found within Africa, suggesting that early man was restricted to that continent. Throughout the 4 million or so years that hominids were evolving, they slowly spread from Africa into the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. The discovery of fossils from regions outside of Africa is generally dated to around 1 million years and less. Java Man and Peking Man (members of Homo erectus), discovered in Asia, date to sometime between 700,000 years and 300,000 years ago, while Heidelberg Man (Homo heidelbergensis), a European discovery, dates to a period between 600,000 and 100,000 years ago. The well-known Neanderthal Man (Homo neanderthalensis) emerges on the scene 250,000 to 30,000 years ago, living throughout Europe. It is toward the end of the Neanderthals’ reign that modern man (Homo sapiens) appeared. The discoveries of these early species of Homo occurred during the nineteenth century. Neanderthal skulls were first discovered in Belgium in 1829 and in Gibraltar in 1848, both before the more famous discovery in the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1856, three years before Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species was published.
While Asia and Europe produced several specimens of early man, Britain found itself without a single representation. British paleontologists were derisively referred to by European paleontologists as “pebble hunters,” a term that obviously did not sit well with Britain’s scientific community. Enter Charles Dawson and Piltdown Man. Dawson’s discovery vindicated British paleontology. It clearly demonstrated that the earliest ancestor to bridge the gap between man and ape was an “Englishman.” Based on the fragment, the skull was large (estimated to be 1,100–1,400 cubic centimeters) and human, while the jawbone was “apish” in structure. The teeth, however, were clearly human. It was exactly what the early experts were looking for, a transition from ape-like to human dating from well before the current specimens known to paleontologists, 500,000 to 1.2 million years ago. And most important, it was found in England, right in the heart of the British Empire, where any thinking human being knew early man must have evolved. Dawson’s find put England right at the top of the evolutionary tree of early man. The new species of human was given the name Eoanthropus dawsoni, meaning “Dawson’s man of the dawn,” or “Dawn Man” for short.12
Dawson officially announced his discovery at a special meeting of the Geological Society in London on Wednesday, December 18, 1912, to a crowded room of society members and press. Dawson was followed at the podium by Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, whose enthusiasm for Dawson’s discovery was essential for Piltdown Man’s credibility. By the end of the meeting, Woodward had dismissed the earlier specimens of Heidelberg Man and Neanderthal as dead ends in man’s evolution, mere failures. But not Dawson’s man. He was a link, not a dead end. Modern man descended from Piltdown Man, who would now take his rightful place as the true missing link.13 And best of all, he was English.
Although Piltdown Man became widely accepted as a part of the evolutionary tree of humans, not all scholars were convinced of his authenticity. In 1915, at the height of Piltdown Man’s celebrity, Gerrit S. Miller, a curator of mammals at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., published his analysis of Woodward’s reconstructed skull of Piltdown. Miller concluded that the skull and jaw could not have come from the same animal. While the skull was human, Miller astonishingly concluded that the jawbone came from a fossil ape. Forty years before the discovery was ruled a fraud Miller hit the nail squarely on the head. Unfortunately, he was rudely dismissed as having a “lack of perspective” and accused of setting out to “confirm a preconceived theory, a course of action which has unfortunately warped his judgment and sense of proportion.”14 Interestingly, this same sort of attack was leveled at Walter McCrone when he concluded the Shroud of Turin was a fake.
An artist’s rendition of Piltdown Man. (Illustrated London News, December 28, 1912)
The business card of the Piltdown Man Family Tavern in Uckfield, England, bearing an artist’s depiction of Piltdown Man using a tool. (Author’s collection)
Dawson bolstered his claims by discovering fragments from a second Piltdown Man. Where this second fragment came from is still not known, but it did not come from the gravel pit at Barkham Manor, home of the first Piltdown Man. In a letter to Woodward dated July 3, 1913, Dawson wrote that he picked up “the frontal part of a human skull this evening on a ploughed field covered with flint gravel. It’s a new place, a long way from Piltdown, and the gravel lies 50 feet below the level of Piltdown.”15 The new find was named “Barcombe Mills Man.” Could one Piltdown Man be a mistake? Perhaps. But certainly not two. To make matters even more secure, Dawson found yet another fragment from a third location. This fragment was from the left side of the frontal bone, containing a portion of the eye orbit and root of the nose. This third specimen was named “Sheffield Park Man.” Three specimens, all from different locales, sealed the claim. There could be no doubt Piltdown was real.
A reconstruction of Piltdown Man’s skull by Arthur Smith Woodward. (Miles Russell, Piltdown Man)
Between 1915 and 1950, Piltdown Man remained a viable specimen of early man. His place as the missing link representing an intermediary transition from ape-like ancestors to early man was shaken somewhat over the years, and Piltdown Man slipped from his original place as the once heralded “missing link.” He still remained, however, as one of the examples of early man. It was now a question of where to place the awkward, unconventional creature in the overall tree of early man, but most agreed that he belonged somewhere. The important thing to remember is that the significant features that made Piltdown so important initially, a human cranium and an ape-like jaw with human-like teeth, were the opposite of every other discovery since Piltdown Man. In later finds, it was always the jawbone and teeth that were human while the cranium was primitive and tended toward being ape-like.
A reconstruction of the head and face of Sahelanthropus tchadensis, a 7-million-year-old hominid that contains features of both ape and later human hominids, making it the oldest known link between the apes and man. Piltdown Man was believed to fill this role when discovered. (Carl Zimmer, Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins)
A brief question of ownership arose when George Maryon-Wilson, the owner of Barkham Manor, and therefore owner of the gravel pit located on his estate, learned of the fossil finds through the national press reports. Maryon-Wilson wrote to the British Museum staking his claim and admonishing them “to kindly take care that they are not removed by Mr. Dawson or any other person, without my permission.”16 The question of ownership was soon resolved amicably when Maryon-Wilson authorized Woodward to offer the fossils to the museum. As such, they fell under the tight control of Woodward, who carefully guarded over them, making sure they were viewed only with his permission and under his watchful eye, thus limiting any further examination.
For the next forty years Piltdown Man held a special place on the tree of man’s evolution. Revered by many of Britain’s leading scientists, Dawson’s “Earliest Englishman” was never seriously examined by forensic experts until 1949, five years after Woodward’s death, when the science of chemistry caught up with anatomy.
Realizing the controversy associated with Piltdown Man, the British Museum agreed to allow certain tests on the various fragments recovered from the gravel pit, tests that were not available at the time of Piltdown’s discovery. The earliest of these tests was one that measured the fluorine content of a specimen. Fluorine is a chemical element often found in low or trace amounts in groundwater. Bone will absorb fluorine and bind it chemically into its lattice-like matrix. The longer a bone is exposed to fluorine in the soil, the more fluorine will be bound by the bone, and this occurs whether the bone is living or dead. All parts of a skeleton in a grave, for example, should contain relatively similar amounts of fluorine when tested. Because the amount of fluorine in groundwater will vary from site to site, it is not possible to tell the age or date of a bone sample by its fluorine content. But, and this is important, all of the parts or fragments of bone from the same site should contain the same amount of fluorine. If bone specimens were added to a site at a later date than other bone fragments, they will differ in their fluorine content. Remember, the gravel pit contained fragments of animals that were removed along with the fragments from Piltdown Man’s cranium and jaw.
In 1949, English anthropologist and paleontologist Kenneth Oakley developed a sensitive test for fluorine. He was granted permission by the British Museum to test the various animal and human fragments Dawson removed from the Barkham Manor gravel pit. When the fragments were tested, the animal fragments from the Lower Pleistocene period (1 to 2 million years old) and later Pleistocene period (800,000 to 100,000 years old) showed high fluorine content, as expected, while the Piltdown fragments (skull and jawbone) showed very low fluorine content. Oakley concluded, “None of the bones and teeth attributed to Eoanthropus [Piltdown Man] belong to the Lower Pleistocene group” as claimed by Eoanthropus’s supporters.17 In other words, Piltdown Man did not originally belong in the Barkham Manor gravel pit; he was added at a later date, a much later date.
Sir Arthur Smith Woodward standing alongside the memorial stone marking the gravel pit on Barkham Manor where Charles Dawson allegedly discovered the first relics of Piltdown Man. (Miles Russell, Piltdown Man)
While Oakley’s results are consistent with Piltdown Man being something less than originally claimed, not everyone was convinced. One positive result Piltdown’s proponents drew from Oakley’s study was that the skull fragments and jawbone (and teeth) had the same low fluorine content, thus supporting the claim they belonged together, which only means they probably were of the same age and came from the same source. The controversy concerning the incompatibility of the human skull and apelike jawbone continued to stir debate. Further evidence was necessary before Piltdown Man could be classified as a fraud.
In 1953, Joseph Weiner, a physical anthropology professor at Oxford University, undertook a study of the incompatibility between the ape-like jaw and humanoid teeth and skull. Even more puzzling to Weiner was the observation that the ape-like jaw had flat, worn-down molars never seen in any specimen to date. Either the teeth were added to the jawbone or the teeth were altered from their original ape-like structure to make them look human. Weiner set about to retest the fluorine content of the fragments and examine the teeth microscopically. The results were conclusive. The teeth had been altered. They were carefully filed down by a mechanical device, removing dentine and leaving fine file marks that were visible under microscopic examination. Weiner also conducted a second chemical test measuring the nitrogen content in the fragments. Nitrogen is a common element found in all amino acids, the chemical building blocks of proteins. Over long periods of time, the nitrogen is slowly and uniformly lost from the proteins. The results showed that the fragments from all of the specimens were modern. Weiner declared Piltdown a modern hoax.
In 1953, Weiner, along with Kenneth Oakley and Wilfred Le Gros Clark (a British surgeon and leading authority in human evolution), published the results of their study in the Bulletin of the British Museum.18 In their conclusion they wrote: “From the evidence which we have obtained, it is now clear that the distinguished paleontologists and archeologists who took part in the excavation at Piltdown were the victims of a most elaborate and carefully prepared hoax.” They went on to state: “The faking of the mandible and canine is so extraordinarily skillful, and the perpetuation of the hoax appears to have been so entirely unscrupulous and inexplicable, as to find no parallel in the history of paleontology discovery” (emphasis added).19
The mandible of an orangutan (above) altered to simulate the mandible of Piltdown Man (below). (Miles Russell, Piltdown Man)
“Victims?” Perhaps the authors were so naive as to believe none of the original players who discovered and promoted Piltdown Man had a role in creating him. Or were they simply covering themselves from possible libel lawsuits? In fairness, the three men were scientists and could only base their conclusions on the scientific data. Who created Piltdown and seeded his fragments in the gravel pit was beyond their research. In the end, Piltdown Man was shown to be entirely modern. The skull fragments were later dated to come from the medieval period, around 1400 A.D., while the jawbone came from an orangutan and was judged to be around five hundred years old. All of the fragments showed clear evidence of deliberate staining designed to give the appearance of antiquity to the bones.
The question that soon followed revelations that Eoanthropus dawsoni, commonly known as Piltdown Man, was a fake was who was responsible? Who had opportunity, and knowledge, and most importantly, motive? Was it a hoax gone awry? A prank that simply meant “gottcha” that quickly escalated and got out of hand? Or was it a deliberate and malicious hoax intended to further reputations, or perhaps to destroy reputations? All of these conjectures are possible and all have been considered. The men involved in the early evaluation and promotion of Piltdown Man had impeccable credentials and their reputations were above reproach. So who was responsible for the hoax?
Perhaps the best indication of the success of the perpetrator is seen in the number of suspects that have been proposed in the years since the hoax’s exposure. Upward of a dozen persons have been accused of initiating the fraud or conspiring in its creation. Among the suspects are men of great esteem and reputation, including the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes.
The unexpected early death of Dawson in 1916, only four years after he introduced his “Dawn Man” to the world, removed the principal witness who knew all of the facts associated with the discovery. Adding to this void is the unfortunate fact that all of Dawson’s private papers were accidentally destroyed in 1917 in a fire. Of course, Dawson and his colleagues who were involved early on were dead when the hoax became known. The intervening years between Dawson’s death and the exposure of the hoax were crucial years when controversy over the fossil find was still being debated in some scientific quarters. Having Dawson available to defend his discovery and answer questions and criticism during the intervening years would have probably brought the matter to an earlier conclusion. With the principals dead, speculation about the culprit or culprits flourished. It is interesting that Dawson’s reputation was such that he was not immediately recognized as the possible perpetrator, but rather the victim.
Who are the principal suspects and why are they suspected? Everyone who visited or had access to the gravel pit in the first twelve years of the twentieth century, including anyone closely associated with Charles Dawson, becomes a suspect. First and foremost is Arthur Smith Woodward, Dawson’s closest friend and companion, and an esteemed scientist who promoted Piltdown Man’s authenticity up until his own death in 1944. Next is a young Jesuit priest and ardent amateur geologist, Marie-Joseph Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a companion of both Dawson and Woodward who spent time digging with them in the gravel pit at Barkham Manor. These two men, along with Dawson, were closely associated with the physical aspects of the case, having opportunity, knowledge, respect, and perhaps motive.
The gravel pit at Barkham Manor, 1913. Charles Dawson holds a sieve while Arthur Woodward examines its contents. Digger Venus Hargreaves stands to one side holding a pick. (Miles Russell, Piltdown Man)
After Dawson, Woodward, and de Chardin, the list of bona fide suspects begins to weaken, ranging from interesting to ridiculous. Ridiculous in the sense that some of the names proposed are considered solely because they possessed a dislike for one or another of the principal players. The most interesting and most seriously considered among the “weak” list is Sir Arthur Keith, a conservator with the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. Further down the list are William Johnson Sollas, Oxford University professor of geology; William Ruskin Butterfield, museum curator at the Hastings Museum; Grafton Elliot Smith, professor of anatomy at the University of Manchester; John Hewitt, professor of chemistry at Queen Mary College, London University; Martin Hinton of the British Museum; Frank Barlow, a model maker at the Natural History Museum; Samuel Woodhead, public analyst for east Sussex; and the famous writer of mystery, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, adds a certain notoriety to the story. A surprising suspect to most people, Conan Doyle had motive, access, and the capability of pulling off the great hoax.
This is a large number of people, many with impressive credentials and plenty of character references. But that is what often makes hoaxes so intriguing. Not one of the suspects is readily identifiable by some flaw in their character. To the contrary, they all appear to be professional men whose conduct in matters other than Piltdown is above reproach.
The conclusion of modern-day authors who have investigated the numerous accusations made against Sollas, Butterfield, Smith, Hewitt, Hinton, Barlow, and Woodhead is that the accusations were baseless, more often reflecting personal animosities against them than substantive fact. There is no need in this review to go through each of their cases, dismissing them as unrealistic. Instead, let us look at those suspects for which there is some evidence to support their possible involvement.
Let’s begin with one of the least likely of those on the short list, Arthur Keith. Keith, initially on unfriendly terms with Woodward, eventually became one of Piltdown’s stronger advocates, although he always had some lingering doubts. Keith was probably the scientist Dawson should have contacted first, rather than Woodward. At the time of the discovery Keith was perhaps the leading scientist in the study of human fossils. He became president of the Royal Anthropological Institute, London. Dawson later explained to Keith that he felt bound to take the fragments to Woodward because they were such close friends. Keith said he understood. Following his death in 1944, Woodward’s wife asked Keith to write a foreword for Woodward’s book The Earliest Englishman, and Keith agreed. Even here, Keith hedged his wholehearted endorsement of Piltdown Man.
Keith became a target of one of the later Piltdown fraud-busters, Ian Langham, an Australian science historian who mentored Keith. Langham was in the process of gathering research for a book on the Piltdown hoax when his sudden death in 1984 interrupted his work. Frank Spencer, a Long Island University professor, took the project over at the request of Langham’s family. The resulting book was titled Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery.20 In the book, Spencer devoted the concluding chapter, titled “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt,” to Keith, accusing him of being Dawson’s collaborator. Spencer concluded that Langham was convinced that Keith and Dawson conspired together to create Piltdown Man from a modern human skull and the jawbone of a modern orangutan. (The fact that Piltdown was concocted from modern specimens had been demonstrated before Spencer’s book was published.)
Sir Arthur Keith, 1912. Keith at the time of the Piltdown discovery was England’s leading anatomist and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He was considered a leading authority on the study of fossils. (Frank Spencer, Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery)
The smoking gun in Langham and Spencer’s study comes from a diary Keith kept that Langham discovered one afternoon while conducting research at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1979. Reading Keith’s diary entries from the time of the announced discovery of Piltdown in December 1912, Spencer found one entry dated December 22, 1912, that caught his attention. Simply put, Keith describes his week, mentioning that he wrote an article for the British Medical Journal on December 16, which appeared on December 21. Keith also mentions attending the meeting of the Geological Society on December 18, where Dawson and Woodward revealed their stunning find at the gravel pit near Barkham Manor. Spencer noted, however, that the article published on December 21 covering the meeting and giving many details concerning the gravel pit and bone fragments was written on December 16, according to the entry in Keith’s diary, two days before the meeting on December 18, when the details were revealed for the very first time. How, Spencer asked, could Keith know about such details two days before they were released? Without going into detail about what specific things Keith wrote in his article, Spencer concludes it was Keith who planted the bone and jaw fragments. He knew all along about the details of the fragments that Dawson presented in his lecture.
To further support his case against Keith, Spencer found another entry in the diary dated January 4, 1913, two weeks after the earlier entry, where Keith tells of his visit along with his wife to Uckfield (Piltdown) to see the site where the exciting discovery was made. The trip, according to Spencer’s reading of the entry, was unsuccessful—“Didn’t see the gravel bed anywhere.”21 Keith also notes in his diary that he had never been to the site before. So, as late as January 4, Keith had yet to visit the gravel pit. And yet he described the pit in detail in his article. How could Keith describe the gravel pit in detail in his December 16 article if he had never been to it?
Spencer was not finished in his investigation of Keith. Two weeks after Keith’s apparently aborted visit to Uckfield (Piltdown) to see the pit, he wrote another article that appeared in the journal Sphere on January 18 in which he again described the gravel pit in detail. Spencer notes that according to Keith’s diary he was busy at work during the entire period January 5 through 18. This means he must have visited the pit prior to January 4, the date of his aborted first trip to the pit area. Here is the smoking gun. Keith is obviously fabricating his knowledge and involvement with Piltdown. He knew about the details of the bone fragments before the December 18 meeting, as evidenced by his diary entry stating he wrote the article on December 16, and must have visited the gravel pit at some point prior to writing his second article of January 18. Spencer concludes this could only have taken place through collusion between Keith and Dawson. At this point in our story a “mysterious stranger” appears to help support Spencer’s claim against Keith.
Mabel Kenward, the daughter of the tenant that lived at Barkham Manor, was twenty-seven years old at the time of the Piltdown discovery. She told of an incident that seemed innocuous at the time but which was seized upon by Spencer as supporting his claim. One evening while observing the area around the gravel pit from Barkham Manor, Kenward “saw a tall man come up, not even up the drive, but across the fields—must have gotten over the hedges and ditches even to get there … and he walked to the pit and started scratching about … so I said excuse me are you an authorized searcher? … he didn’t say one word … off he went the same way across the fields … he was dressed in an ordinary grey suit but he had gum boots [Wellington boots] on and he was very tall … a man in his forties.” Keith fit Kenward’s description, in that he was tall and in his forties. According to Spencer, Langham believed this mysterious visitor was Arthur Keith, and so did he.22
Gate covering the entrance to Barkham Manor. The gravel pit where Dawson made his first discoveries is located at the end of the road shown here. (Photograph by the author)
Part of Barkham Manor. Woodward’s monument marking the site of the gravel pit can be seen in the far distance in the center of the photograph. (Photograph by the author)
There is more to Spencer’s argument accusing Keith of conspiring with Dawson, but it falls far short of the evidence discussed so far. What of Spencer’s conclusions based on Keith’s diary entries? John Evangelist Walsh, in his definitive study, Unraveling Piltdown, explains Keith’s visit to Uckfield. Keith and his wife did see the pit where the discovery was made during their January 4 visit. Walsh points out that a careful reading of the diary entry does not lead one to conclude that Keith never made it to the pit. The crucial entry reads, “boys told us where Sussex skull found: fir avenue leading to farm—white gate: on Delta plateau above the Ooze. Didn’t see the gravel bed anywhere.”23 Walsh points out, correctly in my opinion, that Keith used the precise term “gravel bed,” and not “gravel pit.” The bed is in the bottom of the pit. Remember, Keith was a world-class geologist and as such would have selected his terminology carefully. Walsh goes on to point out that the pit was completely filled with water, thus obscuring the gravel bed. In his January 18 article published in Sphere, Keith described the gravel pit as being “now full of water, owing to the heavy rains.”24
As to the all-important observation by Spencer that Keith wrote his December 16 article describing details of the Piltdown discovery two days before the information was publicly released at the meeting of the Geology Society on December 18, Walsh points out, again correctly, that the article was not published until December 21, five days after it was written, and three days after the meeting. Routinely, submitted drafts were held for correction or additional editing up to the day before a journal went to press. This would have allowed Keith to make additions as late as December 20. Walsh also points out that the editorial offices of the British Medical Journal were located less than two blocks from Keith’s office in the Royal College of Surgeons building. It is only reasonable that Keith edited his article after listening to Dawson’s presentation on December 18, before its publication on December 21.
Leaving aside arguments involving character and reputation, the evidence against Arthur Keith falls quite short of that needed to even suspect him of complicity with Dawson, or anyone else, in the hoax. Unfortunately, Keith was not around to explain his diary entries, leaving Spencer a free hand to interpret them the way he wanted them to read. It is another example of following the facts where you want them to take you rather than following them wherever they may lead.
If the fraudulent construction of a new specimen of early man was not enough of an interesting story on its own, add to it the literary world’s greatest mystery writer, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle is as legitimate a suspect in the fabrication of Piltdown Man as many of the names on our lesser list. To Conan Doyle, nothing was as it seemed. He reveled in misleading his readers, thereby enhancing Holmes’s ability to solve crimes. His Sherlock Holmes was unparalleled in his uncanny analytical ability to examine the most innocuous bit of evidence and extract detailed information. A trained medical doctor himself, Conan Doyle’s Holmes was a scientist par excellence. Conan Doyle loved hoaxes and fabrications, but only of the most sophisticated type.
Conan Doyle lived eight miles from Barkham Manor and the famed gravel pit. Like Dawson, he had a keen interest in fossils and paleontology, using them in his writing, and he is known to have visited the site on at least three occasions in 1912 shortly after the announcement of the discovery.25 And interestingly, Conan Doyle and Dawson were friends. Both were members of the Sussex Archaeological Society, and Dawson and his wife were even houseguests of Conan Doyle around the time Dawson announced his discovery.26
Conan Doyle certainly had opportunity, but did he have motive? It seems he did. By the time of Dawson and Woodward’s announcement of the discovery of Piltdown Man in the gravel pit at Barkham Manor and Piltdown II at Sheffield Park, Conan Doyle had apparently lost interest in fossils and human evolution, and much of everything else, including Sherlock Holmes. For the last ten or twelve years before his death in 1930, Conan Doyle devoted most of his energy to spiritualism. During this period he lectured, wrote articles and books, and attended séances promoting the spirit world. The great scientist of mystery and cryptic evidence seemed to have lost all of his rigorous skepticism he imparted to Holmes in dealing with hoaxes and fraud.
As a promoter of the spirit world, Conan Doyle came under increasing ridicule by the scientific community. The master of evidence had become something of a joke who no longer had the ability to examine evidence when it came to spiritualism. One can easily imagine Conan Doyle setting out to teach the arrogant scientists who ridiculed him a lesson. With his knowledge of paleontology, and access to fossil material from his own collection, and his wounded pride, it was plausible to some that Conan Doyle planted the Piltdown specimens in the gravel pit one afternoon while playing a round of golf on the course nearby. Motive and opportunity. Conan Doyle had both, but that is a long way from committing fraud, even for a brilliant mind like his.
In addition to motive and opportunity, Conan Doyle would need access to fossil specimens—in particular, an early orangutan jaw and fossil hippopotamus teeth and other Pleistocene animal specimens that were found along with the cranium and jawbone fragments. It appears Conan Doyle did have such access. In his carefully researched treatise, Unraveling Piltdown, John Evangelist Walsh reviews the evidence for Conan Doyle’s access to everything needed to salt the gravel pit at Barkham Manor. Drawing from an article by John Winslow in Science 83, Walsh points out that the legitimate animal fossils found in the gravel pit, which gave credibility to the discovery and supported Dawson’s dating to the Pleistocene period, came from the Mediterranean area, particularly Malta and Tunisia.27 In 1907 Conan Doyle and his new (second) wife traveled extensively to these places. In 1909 they visited Tunisia and the western Mediterranean. Conan Doyle had access to fossils of the type recovered in the gravel pit as a result of his own serious collecting.
Of course, circumstantial evidence is a mixed bag when it comes to determining guilt or innocence. It can have no bearing on the subject, or it can have direct bearing. Conan Doyle had opportunity, motive, and the skill or ability to perpetrate the Piltdown hoax. None of the evidence proves that he was the hoaxer. It is only because of his fame as a master of mystery and a skillful interpreter of evidence that he appears as a suspect at all. Enticing as it is for us to think Conan Doyle was behind the hoax, he was not.
The best evidence in support of Conan Doyle’s innocence comes from the masterful studies of Miles Russell, an archeologist at Bournemouth University. Russell has eliminated all of the suspects on the short and long lists by showing beyond a reasonable doubt that the real culprit is Charles Dawson. Russell’s conclusions are not based on any of the finds at Barkham Manor (Piltdown I) or Sheffield Park (Piltdown II) or Barcombe Mills (Piltdown III). Rather, they are based on what amounts to the entire corpus of Dawson’s work as an archeologist over a period of several decades. This corpus includes a long list of spectacular finds—more than any one archeologist might reasonably expect in a lifetime.
Dawson’s recognition as one of the leading British archeologists of the time came from his numerous discoveries of important artifacts, ranging from fossil remains to iron statuettes to Roman tiles. At least thirty-eight of his several dozen dramatic finds are shown by Russell to be fake.
Among Dawson’s many discoveries is a small iron statuette purportedly recovered from an old Roman slagheap by workmen obtaining material for road repair.28 Dawson represented the artifact as having been made of cast iron. Ironworking during the Roman occupation of Britain was believed to be carried out by working the material by hand, yielding only wrought iron. To convert iron ore into the molten iron used in casting requires temperatures of 1,200 degrees and above, while it is believed the Roman smelting process did not achieve temperatures over 900 degrees, rendering the iron soft or “spongy,” allowing it to be shaped by hammering. Dawson’s claim would make his statuette the oldest cast-iron artifact in all of Europe. When his statuette was presented to the Royal Academy it was met by some of the experts with skepticism, while others concluded it was made from wrought iron, not cast as Dawson claimed. Dawson spent some effort in attempting to convince the scientific community as a whole that the statuette was cast and dated from the Roman occupation. According to Miles Russell, “if Dawson’s statuette had indeed been cast, then the whole world of iron making in Europe would be turned on its head.”29 Just as the study of man’s evolution would be turned on its head had Piltdown Man been genuine. Dawson, it seems, had a knack for turning the scientific world on its head with stunning discoveries, much the way Mark Hofmann continued to turn up astounding documents that changed Mormon Church history.
In order to determine whether the statuette was made of cast or wrought iron, a sample taken from the statuette was analyzed by W. C. Roberts-Austen, a professor of metallurgy at the Royal School of Mines and an assayer to the Royal Mint. By examining the crystalline structure of the metal, Roberts-Austen concluded the statuette was not cast, but had been wrought, thereby saving the history of iron making from major revision. Nonetheless, if the statuette was from the Romano-British period, it was still a major find. While the conclusion that the statuette was not made of cast iron answers one important question, it does not answer the question of fraud. Was the statuette fabricated, and if so, by whom?
There are several aspects of Dawson’s statuette that cast doubt on its authenticity. Dawson claimed it was found in 1877 and that he purchased it in 1883 from the workman who found it. For some unexplained reason Dawson withheld the discovery until 1893, when he showed it to A. W. Franks, head of Roman antiquities at the British Museum in London. Franks presented the statuette to the membership of the Society of Antiquaries that same year, where its authenticity came under question by several prominent members of the society. Dawson seems to have pulled back in his effort to have the statuette accepted as the oldest example of cast iron in European history. Between 1893 and 1903, Dawson had another analysis of the statuette made, this time by the analyst of the Royal Arsenal, who surprisingly declared the piece to be made of cast iron. Dawson was obviously elated.
The Beauport Park Statuette, photographed by Charles Dawson. (Miles Russell, Piltdown Man)
That same year, the Sussex Archaeological Society opened an exhibit in which the statuette was placed on display with the bold claim that it was made of cast iron. Dawson wrote an article describing the exhibit, using it as a vehicle to release details about the statuette that he had kept secret for the previous twenty years. The finder of the statuette was a man named William Merritt, a nineteen-year-old laborer digging in the Roman ironworking site for road building material. According to Dawson, Merritt also found two coins, one of Trajan (emperor from 98 to 117 A.D.) and one of Hadrian (emperor from 117 to 138 A.D.), conveniently confirming the dating of the statuette to the Romano-British occupation of Britain. When Dawson purchased the statuette from Merritt in 1883, Merritt claimed the coins were sold many years earlier (presumably in 1877) to another archeologist-collector, James Rock. The question arises, why didn’t Rock buy both items? Selling them together would have increased the value for the seller and enhanced the purchase of the buyer by having dated coins from the same strata of the slagheap. Secondly, why did Merritt, who discovered the piece in 1877, wait six years before selling the statuette to Dawson (in 1883), and why did Dawson wait ten more years before having it presented before the Society of Antiquaries in 1893? And why did Dawson not reveal Merritt as the discoverer of the statuette until 1903? One obvious explanation for the twenty-year delay is that the principal parties were now all dead, and no longer available to tell their stories, if indeed they had stories to tell. Twenty-six years after its alleged discovery in 1877, the history of the statuette was hazy, and only Dawson knew any of the details. The original slagheap was completely used up by 1890, leaving no trace for further examination.
Taken by itself, the Beauport Park Statuette is little more than a mistaken modern copy of an early Roman figurine. At its worst, it is a modern replica of a Roman bronze statuette known to be authentic. The evidence, however, falls short of proving beyond a reasonable doubt deliberate fraud on the part of its creator. (Merritt? Or Dawson?) Dawson clearly seemed determined to prove the statuette genuine, even manipulating subsequent analyses until he got the answer he wanted. This is not the behavior of an objective scientist, but rather that of an advocate.
When considered along with the totality of Dawson’s amazing finds, culminating with Piltdown Man in 1912, however, it adds to the indictment of Dawson as a fraud whose fabrications perverted science and seriously damaged the early study of man’s evolution. The story of the Beauport Park Statuette is only one in a long succession of archeological firsts by Charles Dawson, many of which are now considered bogus.
During the years covering the discovery of dozens of artifacts, Dawson acquired his reputation as an outstanding amateur archeologist, garnering several honors. But the one big honor eluded him, election as a fellow into the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known as the Royal Society. Had he not died within four years of his Piltdown discoveries he probably would have achieved his goal, and perhaps, as some have speculated, knighthood. On the other hand, had Dawson lived another twenty to thirty years he may well have been exposed as the creator of one of science’s greatest hoaxes. As it is, he probably escaped both knighthood and ignominy by his early death.
The sad impact of Piltdown Man on the study of man’s evolution has best been stated by Joseph S. Weiner in his dramatic exposé of the hoax, titled The Piltdown Forgery, published in 1955:
The end of Piltdown Man is the end of the most troubled chapter in human paleontology. From the first moment of the introduction of Eoanthropus dawsoni to the scientific world, the complexities and contradictions of the “enigma,” as [Sir Arthur] Keith continued to call him, took up quite unduly and unnecessarily the energies of students of Man’s evolution. This ill-begotten form of primitive man in the several hundred papers devoted to him received as nearly as much attention as all the legitimate specimens in the fossil record put together.
Russell, Miles. Piltdown Man: The Secret Life of Charles Dawson and the World’s Greatest Archaeological Hoax. Stroud, Gloucestershire, England: Tempus Publishing, 2003.
Spencer, Frank. Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery. London, England: Natural History Museum Publications, Oxford Univ. Press, 1990.
Tudge, Colin. The Link. New York: Little, Brown, 2009.
Walsh, John Evangelist. Unraveling Piltdown: The Science Fraud of the Century and Its Solution. New York: Random House, 1996.
Weiner, Joseph S. The Piltdown Forgery. 1955. Reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1980.
Zimmer, Carl. Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.