DiscoverScroll article

The Piltdown Man was a paleoanthropological fraud in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human.

Although doubts about Piltdown Man's authenticity began to be expressed almost immediately after its announcement in 1912, it was still broadly accepted for many years, and the hoax was only definitively exposed in 1953. In 1912, Dawson claimed that he had discovered the "missing link" between early apes and humans. If the Piltdown Man was found to be legitimate, it would have been a crucial transitional form between the two species. In February 1912, Dawson contacted Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum, stating he had found a section of a human-like skull in Pleistocene gravel beds near Piltdown, East Sussex. The find of the Piltdown Man, and the claims that Dawson was making were taken seriously due to Dawson's reputation in the archaeology community and for other local archaeological "discoveries". These "discoveries" were later found to also be false. That summer, Dawson and Woodward purportedly discovered more bones and artifacts at the site, which they connected to the same individual. These finds included a jawbone, more skull fragments, a set of teeth, and primitive tools. The fragments of the cranium that Dawson had originally found had human like features, whereas the lower jawbone that they found had resembled a jawbone of an ape. Fossil evidence at the time was not very complete, and while evolutionary theory was being increasingly accepted, it was still lacking a full coherent fossil record to support human evolution.

From the British Museum's reconstruction of the skull, Woodward proposed that Piltdown Man represented an evolutionary missing link between apes and humans, 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.

In 1915, Dawson claimed to have found three fragments of a second skull (Piltdown II) at a new site about two miles (3.2 km) away from the original finds.

On 23 July 1938, at Barkham Manor, Piltdown, Sir Arthur Keith unveiled a memorial to mark the site where Piltdown Man was discovered by Charles Dawson.

Discoveries that happened after Piltdown Man, such as Australopithecus in South Africa and Homo erectus, contradicted many aspects of the Piltdown Man. In November 1953, Time magazine published evidence, gathered variously by Oakley, Le Gros Clark, and Weiner, proving that Piltdown Man was a forgery and demonstrating that the fossil was a composite of three distinct species. The debunking of the Piltdown Man prompted investigation of the other bones and artifacts that Dawson had claimed to have found. The Piltdown Man hoax succeeded so well because, at the time of its discovery, the scientific establishment believed that the large modern brain preceded the modern omnivorous diet, and the forgery would have provided exactly that evidence.

The Piltdown man delayed the correct understanding of human evolution for many years. However, over time the Piltdown Man lost its validity, as other discoveries such as the Taung Child and Peking Man were made.

The Piltdown Man fraud significantly affected early research on human evolution. Discoveries of Australopithecine fossils such as the Taung child found by Raymond Dart during the 1920s in South Africa were ignored because of the support for Piltdown Man as "the missing link," and the reconstruction of human evolution was confused for decades. Creationists often cite the hoax (along with Nebraska Man) as evidence of an alleged dishonesty of paleontologists who study human evolution, although scientists themselves had exposed the Piltdown hoax (and the Nebraska Man incident was not a deliberate fraud).

From Piltdown Man to Point Omega: the evolutionary theory of Teilhard de Chardin. Russell, Miles (2003), Piltdown Man: The Secret Life of Charles Dawson & the World's Greatest Archaeological Hoax, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Tempus Publishing, ISBN 978-0-7524-2572-6.

Quick Facts

• The find of the Piltdown Man, and the claims that Dawson was making were taken seriously due to Dawson's reputation in the archaeology community and for other local archaeological "discoveries".
• In February 1912, Dawson contacted Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum, stating he had found a section of a human-like skull in Pleistocene gravel beds near Piltdown, East Sussex.
• If the Piltdown Man was found to be legitimate, it would have been a crucial transitional form between the two species.
• Discoveries that happened after Piltdown Man, such as Australopithecus in South Africa and Homo erectus, contradicted many aspects of the Piltdown Man.
• On 23 July 1938, at Barkham Manor, Piltdown, Sir Arthur Keith unveiled a memorial to mark the site where Piltdown Man was discovered by Charles Dawson.

Source material: Wikipedia - "Piltdown Man". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.