Year: Day to Day Men: December 18
Locker Room Moment
On the 18th of December in 1912, amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson claimed he had discovered fossilized remains of a previously unknown early human, the missing link between apes and man. This human ancestor was named Eoanthropus dawsoni, but became known as Piltdown Man from the gravel pit in which the remains were found.
Although there were doubts about its authenticity from early 1912, the Piltdown Man remains were widely accepted for many years. In November of 1953, Time magazine published evidence gathered by anthropologist Kenneth Oakley, primatologist Sir Wilfrid Le Gros Clark, and biologist Joseph Weiner that proved the Piltdown Man was a forgery composed of three distinct species. This hoax was notable for the attention it generated on the subject of human evolution and the fact that it took forty-one years to its definitive exposure as a forgery.
In February of 1912, Dawson contacted the Keeper of Geology at London’s Natural History Museum, Arthur Smith Woodward, that he had found a section of a human-like skull in Pleistocene gravel beds near Piltdown, East Sussex. Later in the summer, Dawson and Woodward purportedly discovered a jawbone, skull fragments, a set of teeth, and primitive tools at the site. From the outset, the reconstruction of the skull was strongly challenged by researchers.
Waterston, Boule and Miller’s evidence proved the remains of the Piltdown Man was a forgery. The fossils consisted of a human skull of medieval age, a five-hundred year old lower jaw of an orangutan and fossil teeth from a chimpanzee. Someone had simulated age by staining the bones with an iron solution and chromic acid. A microscopic examination of the teeth showed file-marks that had modified the teeth to a shape more suited for human diet. The identity of the forger remains unknown; however the focus on Dawson is supported by evidence regarding other archaeological hoaxes he had perpetrated in the previous two decades.
Notes: The fossil was introduced as evidence by Clarence Darrow in defense of John T. Scopes during the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. Darrow died in 1938, fifteen years before the Piltdown Man was exposed as a fraud.