The objective evidence for the deception at Piltdown was overwhelming. The frauds extended to every aspect of the discovery—geological, archaeological, anatomical, and chemical—so that proof could be adduced three or four times over. Moreover, every time a new line of investigation was applied, it confirmed, as we have seen, what all previous evidence had established. The two Piltdown ‘men’ were forgeries, the tools were falsifications, the animal remains had been planted. The skill of the deception should not be underestimated, and it is not at all difficult to understand why forty years should have elapsed before the exposure; for it needed all the new discoveries of palaeontology to arouse suspicion, and completely new chemical and X-ray techniques to prove the suspicion justified. Professor Le Gros Clark, Dr. Oakley, and I wrote in our report that ‘Those who took part in the excavation at Piltdown had been the victims of an elaborate and inexplicable deception’. Inexplicable, indeed, for the principals were known to us as men of acknowledged distinction and highly experienced in palaeontological investigation. Woodward, in 1912, was a man of established reputation. Dawson enjoyed a solid esteem. Teilhard de Chardin was, of course, only at the beginning of his palaeontological career. Knowing their place in the world of science, we felt sure that these investigators, whose integrity there was not the slightest reason to question, had been victims—like the scientific world at large—of the deception. Arthur Smith Woodward (who was of an age with Dawson) at the time of the discovery had been Keeper of the Department of Geology at the British Museum since 1901, the year of his election to the Royal Society, and had scores of papers of very great merit to his credit. His work on fossil reptiles and fishes was on a monumental scale, and he had also made discoveries in mammalian palaeontology. He was without doubt the leading authority in his own field. His position was abundantly recognized by many awards and by appointment to many high offices—for example, Secretary, and in the Piltdown years successively Vice-President and President, of the Geological Society.
John Sutton, 8 July 1919 - 6 September 1992