Piltdown Man

What happened

1. 1911Dawson says he found a larger skull piece in the pit's spoil heaps; a workman had handed him the first piece years before.
2. 1912Dawson and Woodward sift the pit; Dawson reports finding the right half of a jaw in undisturbed gravel.
3. 1912Announced to the Geological Society on 18 December. Waterston and Lankester doubt that jaw and skull belong together.
4. 1913Teilhard de Chardin finds a canine on 30 August, 18 days after Keith ridiculed Woodward's reconstruction; it matches the model canine Woodward had inserted.
5. 1915Dawson tells Woodward by postcard of 'Piltdown II' finds at a second site. Miller names the jaw a fossil chimpanzee, Pan vetus.
6. 1916Dawson dies. Woodward's dig at the pit that year finds nothing.
7. 1925Dart announces the small-brained Taung child; Piltdown's big-brain, ape-jaw pattern weighs against its acceptance.
8. 1950Oakley and Hoskins report fluorine tests: neither skull nor jaw is Lower Pleistocene.
9. 1953Weiner, Oakley and Le Gros Clark show the jaw and canine are a modern ape's, filed and stained to look fossil.
10. 1955Full report: the skull was stained too, and the fauna, flints and bone tool were planted; none of the finds came from Piltdown.
11. 1959Radiocarbon dates the skull to about 620 and the jaw to about 500 radiocarbon years.
12. 2016DNA and CT work find one orangutan and one working method across all pieces; the authors name Dawson the likely sole forger.

Objections 1 of 8 proved wrong

• ✓
  The skull is human, but the jaw resembles a chimpanzee's in all its details, so the two are unlikely to come from one individual.

  Natural, not human · David Waterston; also Ray Lankester, later Miller and Boule · 1912

  Held up — The jaw was a modern orangutan's, stained and planted with human skull pieces (1953, 1955). The chimpanzee identification itself was wrong.
• ✓
  The bones could be older or younger than the flints and fossils beside them, so their age cannot be read from the gravel.

  Layers or association · Ray Lankester · 1912

  Held up — The animal fossils had been gathered elsewhere, some abroad, and planted with the bones and artificially stained flints (1955).
• ✓
  The gravel is not Early Pleistocene; it formed long after the first cold period, so the remains are younger than claimed.

  Dating or samples · Clement Reid · 1912

  Held up — Fluorine tests (1949-50) showed neither skull nor jaw was Lower Pleistocene; radiocarbon later put both at only centuries old.
• ✕
  The canine is a chimpanzee's upper canine, not the lower canine Dawson and Woodward described.

  Natural, not human · Gerrit S. Miller (after W. K. Gregory) · 1915

  Proved wrong — One 2016 morphometric study (not replicated) places it among lower canines, as Woodward said; it is a subadult orangutan's.
• ✓
  The canine looks immature, yet its crown is worn down heavily, which is contradictory.

  Natural, not human · W. C. Lyne · 1916

  Held up — The wear had been made by filing (1953). Lyne's explanation, a milk tooth, was wrong, and his point was disregarded at the time.
• ✓
  The carved bone 'implement' from the pit does not show convincing ancient workmanship.

  Fraud or provenance · Reginald Smith; later Henri Breuil (1938) · 1915

  Held up — The 1955 study found it had been shaped with a steel knife.
• ✓
  The Piltdown II molar probably came from the first site, and some mistake was made about its origin.

  Fraud or provenance · Aleš Hrdlička · 1922

  Held up — Woodward denied it, but the 1953 study judged the molar almost certainly from the Piltdown I jaw, and 2016 work ties it to the same orangutan.
• ✓
  From about 1925, new fossils from Java, China and Africa showed no mix of human braincase and ape jaw, so Piltdown fit nothing else.

  Contradicts the accepted model · Franz Weidenreich and others · 1947

  Held up — Piltdown proved to be a forgery; removing it made the fossil record far more consistent (1953).

Evidence at the time within ~5 years of the claim

• Unambiguous evidencePartly — Skull pieces were clearly human, but whether the ape-like jaw came from the same creature was doubted at the first meeting (Waterston, Lankester).
• Documented contextPartly — Most skull pieces came from a workman or spoil heaps. Dawson said he found the jaw in undisturbed gravel; Woodward dug up one skull piece nearby.
• Independent dating methodsNo — Age was inferred only from animal fossils and flints found in the same gravel; no other dating method was used.
• More than one labPartly — Only one chemical test was made, by a county analyst on a skull fragment. Anatomists at other institutions described the specimens or casts.
• Professional recoveryPartly — Dawson, a solicitor and amateur antiquarian, made most finds; Woodward, a museum palaeontologist, joined the digging from 1912.
• Peer-reviewed reportYes — Full description read to the Geological Society in December 1912 and printed with the discussion in its Quarterly Journal in 1913 (society norms of the time).
• Open to criticsPartly — Casts were widely studied, but the originals were generally locked away and shown only to a select few.
• Independent teamsNo — All finds came from Dawson's digs with Woodward or from Dawson alone (Piltdown II). Woodward's 1916 dig, the year Dawson died, found nothing.
• Outside stakeNo — Seen then as a respected amateur. Private 1909 letters (his big-find note to Woodward; his wife's plea to H. Gladstone for recognition) read as motive later; FRS nomination 1913. Hindsight: yes.

What settled it Forensic analysis, Independent redating, Morphology

What would change this record

This record would be wrong if the jaw proved to be an ancient hominin rather than a modern orangutan, the tooth wear and stains proved natural, and skull and jaw were shown to come from one Early Pleistocene individual.

Notes

• Status. Every Piltdown find was shown in 1953-55 to be forged or planted, and recent studies accept this. Debate remains over who was involved: Dawson alone (De Groote et al. 2016) or others too, perhaps Teilhard de Chardin (Thackeray 2016).
• Accepted view then. Known fossils (Java, Neanderthal) were low-browed, but British anatomists expected a large-brained, ape-jawed missing link, which Piltdown matched.
• Now understood. Modern forgery; human remains possibly medieval, jaw recent
• Dating basis. Relative only: inferred from Pliocene and early Pleistocene animal fossils and crude 'Chellean' flints in the same gravel. No numerical age was given.
• Correction. Starter brief says the 1953 exposure was '...using fluorine testing among other evidence.' More precisely: the 1949-50 test only showed non-Lower-Pleistocene age; 1953 added filing marks, staining and improved fluorine/nitrogen tests (S7).
• Correction. The 1953 paper exposed only the jaw and teeth and still allowed the skull might be Upper Pleistocene. The skull's staining and the planted fauna, flints and bone tool were shown in 1955 (S7, S8).
• Correction. Doubts began at once, not decades later: at the first meeting (18 Dec 1912) Waterston and Lankester doubted the jaw and skull belonged together, and Reid disputed the Early Pleistocene age (S3).
• Correction. Early critics called the jaw a chimpanzee's (Waterston; Miller's Pan vetus). It is a modern orangutan's, probably from Borneo (S8, S10). Miller was also wrong that the canine was an upper tooth.
• Correction. The human pieces are not one medieval skull: 2016 work found at least two, perhaps three, 'possibly medieval' people; new radiocarbon attempts failed, so older dates need caution (S10).
• Correction. De Groote et al. (2016) name Dawson as the likely single forger but say it is uncertain whether he acted alone; Thackeray (2016) argues Teilhard de Chardin knew (S10, S11).
• Resolution came in stages: Early Pleistocene age refuted 1950 (38 yr); jaw and canine shown modern 1953 (41 yr); full hoax (skull, fauna, flints, tool) 1955 (43 yr). Support was eroding by 1950 (S8). Why so slow: originals were locked away, critics mostly used casts (S10, S5); faking was skilful, with secondary dentine implying natural wear (S8); WWI and Dawson's 1916 death disrupted work (S10); the 1949 fluorine test could not separate recent from Upper Pleistocene bone. The find matched hopes for a big-brained ancestor and weighed against the 1925 Taung child (S12). Dawson is now known to have faked other specimens (S10). Methods count 3: anatomy, fauna, flints, all one source.

People and evidence

• Proponents. Charles Dawson, Arthur Smith Woodward, Grafton Elliot Smith, Arthur Keith
• Critics. David Waterston, Gerrit S. Miller, Marcellin Boule, Joseph S. Weiner, Kenneth P. Oakley, Wilfrid Le Gros Clark
• Evidence types. human remains, morphology, fauna, lithics, artifacts, stratigraphy, chemistry · 3 independent lines
• Record confidence. high — Core facts rest on primary reports read in full (1913, 1915, 1953, 1955, 2016). Feature coding is judgment; the radiocarbon ages are flagged as unreliable by later re-daters.