Events Reconsidered

It is unfortunately not possible to follow in any detail every stage of Smith Woodward’s activities at Piltdown. No diaries or note-books exist of the work done, there is nowhere a complete record of the various finds as they were made. Woodward kept copies of very few of his own letters and we have only the letters written to him and now preserved at the British Museum. When the American palaeontologist Osborn came over in 1920, Woodward dictated some notes which help to allocate the various discoveries. Apart from these notes and the one-sided record of the correspondence, there are only the reports in the scientific literature and popular lectures on Piltdown as primary sources. Woodward does not appear in general to have been a secretive man, but over the Piltdown material he went to some lengths to keep the whole affair as quiet as possible until near the time of the public meeting in December 1912. He did not consult any of his colleagues in the Museum about the finds or about the interpretation he was to place on them. Mr. Hinton says that to his colleagues at South Kensington Woodward’s diagnosis of E. dawsoni came as a surprise mingled with some dismay, for there was much scepticism of the new form amongst his museum colleagues, including Oldfield Thomas and Hinton himself. They would have advised caution, he says. Keith knew nothing of the events in Sussex until rumours reached him in November. He wrote asking for a view of the exciting material, but on his visit on 2 December to the Museum he was received rather coldly and allowed a short twenty minutes. But, judging from Dawson’s letters in 1912, it seems fair to say that Woodward was merely seeking to avoid a premature disclosure, for he had decided early on that Piltdown would indeed prove a sensational event. Woodward did not want any of Dawson’s ‘lay’ friends to come along on his first visit to the gravel when he had yet to make up his mind about the real importance of Dawson’s find and of the necessity for systematic excavation.

The Full Extent

Almost any single one of the techniques employed in the investigations suffices to reveal the elaborateness of the deception which was perpetrated at Piltdown. The anatomical examination, the tests for fluorine and nitrogen bear particularly good witness to this; even the radio-activity results taken alone, led the physicists to remark on the ‘great range of activity shown by specimens from this one little site’; ‘it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the different bones in the Piltdown assemblage have had very different geological and chemical histories’. We have merely to take account of the stained condition of the whole assemblage, to realize the thoroughness of the fraud. From the Vandyke brown colour of the unnaturally abraded canine we infer with certainty that it was deliberately ‘planted’. The superficiality of the iron impregnation, combined with the chromium, tells as much as regards the orang jaw. And it is this iron-staining which finally shows that the rest, human and animal, was without doubt, all ‘planted’. The iron-staining has two peculiar features. It seems probable that ferric ammonium sulphate (iron alum) was the salt employed. This salt is slightly acid. The peculiarity of this salt (and, indeed, of any acid sulphate) is that in bone which contains little organic matter such as the cranium of Piltdown I, or Piltdown II, the beaver bones and hippo teeth, it brings about a detectable change in the crystal structure of the bone. In the apatite in which the calcium of the bone is held, the phosphate is replaced by sulphate to form gypsum. This change is quite unnatural, for neither gypsum nor sufficient sulphate occur in the gravels at Piltdown to bring it about. So the iron-sulphate-staining is an integral part of the forger’s necessary technique. He also used chromium compounds to aid the iron-staining probably because he thought it would assist the production of iron oxide. Chromium compounds are oxidizing. The basic strategy underlying the Piltdown series of forgeries now seems reasonably clear. Two main elements in the plan taken together explain nearly all the features of the affair quite satisfactorily.

The Jaw Displaced

On the basis of our preliminary arguments and our anatomical re-examination of the fragments, Mr. W. N. Edwards, the Keeper of Geology of the Natural History Museum, felt justified in allowing the specimens of mandible, cranium, and teeth to be drilled for much larger samples than could ever have been sanctioned hitherto. These larger samples and the use of improved chemical methods guaranteed a high degree of analytical reliability. The drilling itself gave us an encouraging start. As the drilling proceeded, Dr. Oakley and his assistant perceived a distinct smell of ‘burning horn’ when the jaw was sampled, but they noticed nothing of the sort with any of the cranial borings. This subjective indication of some distinct difference between the constitution of jaw and cranium soon gained objective confirmation. The drilled sample from the jaw proved to be utterly unlike those from the cranium. In keeping with the belief in its fossil or semi-fossilized character, the latter produced a fine particulate granular powder, whereas the jaw yielded little shavings of bone, just as did a fresh bone sampled as a control. Here was the beginning of the series of findings which progressively widened the gulf between jaw and cranium. Very soon Dr. Oakley obtained clear chemical evidence to justify fully the strong suspicion of the modernity of the jaw and of the totally distinct origin of the cranium. An improved technique for estimating small quantities of fluorine produced this decisive result. The cranial fragments of site I were found to contain fluorine in a concentration of 0.1 per cent., a value somewhat similar to that of specimens of known Late Ice Age. The jaw and the three teeth on the contrary gave much lower figures, at levels below 0.03 per cent., values well within the range of known modern and fresh specimens. Indeed, these values are on the borderline of the sensitivity of the method. The fluorine test gave its verdict twice over. For the two cranial fragments from the second Piltdown site contained a fluorine concentration of 0.1 per cent, and the isolated molar which went with these fragments contained less than 0.01 per cent.

‘The Eye Wink’

In 1941 Mr. F. W. Thomas, on the staff of the News Chronicle and the Star, was advised to evacuate from Seaford and went to live in Lewes where he and his wife stayed with Mr. A. P. Pollard, Assistant Surveyor of the Sussex County Council. One day as they were touring round Chailey they found themselves near the famous Piltdown site. They had some discussion of the gravels and the circumstances of the finds. When his visitor remarked on the great evolutionary importance of the Piltdown man he was extremely surprised at his guide’s reply, which was that there was really nothing in the great discovery, and that he was entirely sceptical of it all. Mr. Pollard did not add anything more at that time. From Mr. Salzman (now President of the Sussex Archaeological Society) I learnt in August 1953 that Mr. Pollard was well acquainted with the gravels and gravel workings in the Lewes region, and that he might be able to help me with my inquiries on the history of Piltdown. When I explained I was interested in the discovery, Mr. Pollard immediately asked me whether I had any reason to distrust the discovery, and on my admitting as much, he said, ‘I am not surprised. I believe it to be a fraud. At least, that is what my old friend Harry Morris used to say.’ What Mr. Pollard had to tell me he had learnt from Harry Morris, a bank clerk and keen amateur archaeologist, whose acquaintance he had first made on taking up his post at Lewes in 1928. Morris and he became close friends, and he was Morris’s executor and saw to the donations of the latter’s collection of eoliths and other flints to the two Lewes museums. Morris in 1912 or 1913, right at the beginning, had come to the conclusion that the flints at Piltdown were not genuine. When he first saw the flints, he at once rejected them because ‘Harry Morris knew every flint bed and gravel bed in the district’.

Flint and Fauna

The manifestly fraudulent elements in the man-ape combination called Eoanthropus dawsoni are the filed down molars and canine, the Vandyke brown staining of the latter and the iron-coloration of the jaw. Taken with the massive evidence of the complete incompatibility of jaw and cranium, those fabrications assure us of the enormity of the larger deception, the foisting of a spurious fossil human ancestor on to the world of palaeontology. The plot achieved its great success because it provided in the spurious fossil a self-consistent array of evidence and this fitted well with the presumed antiquity of the gravels of the Sussex Ouse; for that antiquity there was supporting testimony in the presence of palaeolithic tools and remains of animals of the earliest phase of the Ice Age. But now with the centre-piece proved spurious, what of its appurtenances? Since the jaw is no fossil, but a recent intrusion and a deliberate one, can we help but suspect these other objects in the gravel, impressive and persuasive as the fossil animals and implements appear on first sight? The club-like bone implement discovered in 1914 ranks next to the skull as the most remarkable of the discoveries at Piltdown. Implements of bone are well-known to have been used in the late Ice Age, for example, by men of the cave-art period. Not only is the Piltdown specimen entirely unique in its shape, but as a primitive tool, which Dawson and Woodward were confident it was, it would rank as by far the earliest ever used; in the words of the discoverers, ‘their opinion was that the working and cutting of the bone were done when it was in a comparatively fresh state’. Moreover, Woodward had identified the bone as one which in all likelihood had been obtained from the femur of a very early species of elephant. Judging from the other elephant and mastodon remains, such an animal would certainly have been in existence in the times of Piltdown man.

An Impasse

Dawson had received widespread recognition, but died too soon to be given any special award from a scientific body. Twenty years later his achievement was commemorated by the erection of a memorial stone at the site of the gravel pit at Barkham Manor. Sir Arthur Smith Woodward had taken the initiative in this and borne most, if not all, of the expense. The unveiling was done, at his request, by his old friend Sir Arthur Keith at the well-attended ceremony on 22 July 1938. Keith gave a brief but eloquent oration. He dwelt on the wonderful achievement of the keen-sighted amateur Dawson, an achievement which he likened in the history of discovery to that of the French lock-keeper, Boucher de Perthes—the first man, three-quarters of a century ago, to recognize clearly the human workmanship of the Ice Age flint hand-axes of the Somme. The discovery at Piltdown ranked worthily, too, with that of Neanderthal man discovered in 1857, the first known of all fossil men. These discoveries had encountered tremendous opposition before acceptance was won. The claims of Perthes had brought incredulity and set the scientific world a momentous problem, and only after years of stormy argument were these claims conceded; the discovery of Neanderthal man likewise brought disagreement and controversy. But this fossil form was accepted in the end. As Keith said, then came Dawson’s discovery, and this brought the greatest problem of all. But Keith did not go on to claim that all was now well with ‘the earliest known representative of man in Western Europe’, of which he had just finished a laborious re-study. A puzzle it had always been and a puzzle it was still. Keith could not hide his underlying doubt, and ten years later he expressed it again in the Foreword which he wrote at Lady Smith Woodward’s request to Woodward’s own book, The Earliest Englishman, published posthumously in 1948. He declared: ‘The Piltdown enigma is still far from a final solution.’ Why should Keith still express such doubt and bewilderment? But it was no longer surprising.

The Sussex Wizard

It is common knowledge that Dawson did not command high esteem in the archaeological circle of Lewes. Some local archaeologists, on the basis of their personal feelings about Dawson as well as on their long-held, rather low opinion of his archaeological reliability, came to invest the Piltdown discovery with extreme scepticism from the start; objective evidence to back this up, such as St. Barbe, Morris, or Marriott might have offered, there seems to have been none. It is perhaps as well to indicate how Dawson came to acquire his reputation for ‘unreliability’, since it has a bearing both on the standard of his archaeological work and on the quality of his scientific writing on the Piltdown material, activities which we saw provided grounds for genuine surprise in their vagueness and inaccuracy. The local reasons for Dawson’s unpopularity should be assessed as objectively as possible, for it should not be forgotten how solid a reputation Dawson had made with his Wealden collections at the British Museum and how good his standing was with such men as Keith and Woodward. The deliberate avoidance of the great Piltdown discovery in official local circles is quite undeniable. On my first visit of inquiry in August 1953, I had fully expected to see much made of Piltdown in the local museums. The Borough Museum contained nothing but a small picture of an imaginary Eoanthropus presented by Dr. S. Spokes and some Piltdown eoliths presented by Harry Morris. The Barbican Museum, the home of the Sussex Archaeological Society, hard by the Castle keep, is in the street where once lived the famous Dr. Mantell; and in the same street is Dawson’s home, Castle Lodge. Here, too, there were no specimens of Charles Dawson’s on view, but more flints of Harry Morris, including eoliths from Piltdown. A cast of the well-known reconstruction of Piltdown man was displayed along with three enlarged models of teeth—one the molar from Piltdown II and, for comparison, chimpanzee and human molars. The cast and models (and also the picture in the Borough Museum) had all been presented by Dr. S. Spokes in 1928—fifteen years after the world-famous discovery.

Entanglement

To Professor Teilhard de Chardin the idea that either Dawson or Woodward was in any way wittingly implicated in this business is completely unthinkable. He holds both of these men in the greatest respect, and indeed is inclined to doubt whether a real hoax occurred at all. It seems to him not impossible that the pit at Barkham Manor was used as a rubbish dump where, over a course of years, all sorts of objects including bones from some discarded collection could have been deposited. The heavily iron-bearing water of the gravel would soon stain the bones dark brown (for Professor Teilhard says that fresh bone left in the water of the Weald does stain easily). To be sure, the queer accumulation must have come from some collector’s hoard! But this suggestion of a rubbish dump leaves, of course, too much unexplained and far too many coincidences. It would be an amazing accident that would bring together an, unusual cranium, the jaw, the remarkable canine, a bone implement of unique character, a number of flints of spurious workmanship (one of which is stained with chromate), and bones partly changed to gypsum and radio-active fossil teeth of a sort never found in England! That all this curious medley, this ‘accidental’ assemblage, should be uncovered in a particular sequence—as Sir Arthur Keith said to us, cas if to confute me personally!’—is straining our acceptance of coincidence too much. Miss Kenward, who lived at Barkham Manor for many years, is positive that the pit was not a general rubbish dump and that the gravel was being dug from an unbroken surface. Lady Smith Woodward, too, rules out the suggestion. There is nothing to commend this rubbish dump theory, for we have seen that hardly anything of the whole collection of material can with certainty be said to have come from gravel originally, although this does not rule out the possibility that at least the cranium, even stained as it is, may not have been genuinely found in the pit and that after treatment it was redeposited in the gravel pit.

Some others

Teilhard de Chardin was by no means the first helper in the search. Very probably the first person to hear of Dawson’s original fossil find, the piece handed to him by the labourer, was his friend of many years’ standing, Mr. Sam Woodhead, a schoolmaster at Uckfield, who combined his teaching duties with the post of Public Analyst. Woodhead had carried out the analysis of the natural gas reported by Dawson to the Geological Society in 1898. He shared the first excitement of the finds at Piltdown, and went back to Barkham Manor with Dawson a few days after the first find to look for more fragments, but, as Dawson has told us, their search was fruitless. Woodhead maintained his connection with the investigation, and it was he who carried out a chemical analysis of the skull at some time before 1912. He remained at Uckfield till 1916, the year of Dawson’s death. He was a man of considerable attainments, becoming a Doctor of Science and a Fellow of the Institute of Chemistry. He became Public Analyst for Brighton and Hove, and in 1916 went to live at Barcombe, the scene of Dawson’s third discovery of human remains. He was among those who attended Dawson’s funeral in Lewes in 1916. Woodhead often spoke of his early connections with the famous event to his wife and son and to others, such as Mr. Essex, another teacher, at Uckfield. Mr. A. J. Smith of Leamington remembers in a conversation in about 1925 that, in telling of the event, Woodhead chuckled over his ‘truancy’ from school that day when he helped Mr. Dawson in the pit, as he did on subsequent occasions. These visits in 1908 are well remembered by Mrs. Sam Woodhead. During the years from 1908 to 1911 Dawson showed one or more of the thick pieces of cranium to others among his friends and colleagues. Mr. Ernest Victor Clark4 was given the privilege of a private view of the fragments when he and his wife were dining with the Dawsons in Lewes, at some time in the autumn of 1911 or early in 1912.

The Principals and Their Part

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.