Piltdown Recollected

Skull fragments and a jawbone found at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century were for long believed to be the oldest human remains in Europe. They were found by Charles Dawson, FSA, FGS, an Uckfield solicitor, also an active antiquary, and endorsed by his friend Arthur Smith-Woodward, a palaeontologist and Keeper of Geology at the British Museum (Natural History) from 1901 to 1924. Indeed, the association of humanoid cranial fragments with the jawbone, which had simian characteristics, convinced them, and others, that the long predicted ‘missing link’ between apes and man had been discovered. Half a century ago, in 1953, the pieces were shown to be the elements of an elaborate hoax. The thick cranial fragments, human but medieval, had been stained to match the patchy ocherous Piltdown gravel, a modest, recent deposit. The jaw was that of an orangutang which had been broken, the teeth flattened by filing and all finally painted. Digging into the gravels produced faunal remains, a substantial bone implement resembling a cricket bat besides flint artefacts, also painted. Further and similar human remains were subsequently, and allegedly, found at Sheffield Park and Barcombe Mills, but their contexts and sites were never revealed.

The first decade of the twentieth century was the zenith of the ‘Ightham Circle’ the enthusiasts who surrounded Benjamin Harrison. Because of the eoliths they maintained that Pliocene man had existed and that eventually his remains would be found. For them Piltdown was a vision of a humanoid living upon the high chalk of Kent and Sussex, at the beginning, or even before, the Palaeolithic period. From 1911 onwards, Charles Dawson instigated a correspondence with Benjamin Harrison of Ightham regarding the geological position of Piltdown, while sending him samples of flint and gravel. During May 1913, while motoring in Kent, Charles Dawson called upon Harrison with a small Piltdown flint implement. Harrison already had doubts regarding the Piltdown ‘tools’, illustrated in the Geological Society's journal, and thought most of them meaningless. Dawson's small flint was considered as natural and the best group of eoliths were shown to him.

Harrison's concerns may have been written down and might still exist among his notes and papers, which were, in the 1950s, housed in Maidstone Museum.

F. K. Zeuner considered the Ouse gravels as much later than had been previously claimed and wondered whether or not the anomalies of Piltdown would ever be solved. A present footnote however, records the application of fluorine assay to the Calley Hill skeleton which emerged as recent. The advent of the Swanscombe skull indirectly to the displacement of Piltdown. It was after a palaeontological congress during July 1953, that J.S.Weiner realised that the organic content of the Piltdown mandible had never been examined and showed that the filing down of the teeth of a chimpanzee, breaking, and appropriate staining, portrayed it almost exactly. It was also realised by Kenneth Oakley, when he drilled the Piltdown jaw for a dentine sample, that it was, below a thin surface staining, pure white and unaltered. Thereafter it was ascertained that simian teeth had been flattened by filing to resemble human wear. The cranial fragments had also been stained to match the gravel, and later, radiocarbon dating showed that they were medieval. The faunal remains, which included a pachyderm piece from Tunisia, had also been stained, as had the flint implements. The cricket bat-like bone ‘implement’ had been shaped with a steel knife. At apposite junctures all these things were planted in the gravel for Charles Dawson, Arthur Smith-Woodward and Teilhard de Chardin, then a seminarist, to find. The skill of the hoax should not be underestimated, and its details could have been conceived by only a few active at that time.

Kenneth Oakley was quite well known to the present writer, via the Prehistoric Society, as he always attended papers and conferences. He never spoke of Piltdown, but more than once, the anomalies of Aylesford and the remains of a human cranium from Wagon’s Pit, were discussed, as was the generality of idiots. It has been claimed that at a dinner party he named C. P. Chatwin and Martin Hinton, assistants at the BM (Nat Hist) during the first decade of the twentieth century, as befooling Arthur Smith-Woodward because of his dictatorial regime. Matters went too far and they could not retreat. This is surprising as it is unlikely that Kenneth Oakley would have made such a revelation to an informal gathering. More recently (John Stringer of the BM (Nat Hist) considers that everything points to Charles Dawson as the author of the forgeries, because of his continued involvement which extended to other discoveries in the locality. Notwithstanding the question must be asked as to whether or not Dawson’s antiquarianism was capable of concocting this ingenious fraud, which was so closely attuned to the notions of the earliest prehistory then current? Indeed, is it not impossible that Dawson and Smith-Woodward may have been carefully selected dupes, and the sophisticated masterpiece of scientific deception, which stood for four decades, the adroit handiwork of persons unknown, perhaps even for arcane political reasons? At that time, as Europe drifted into near-mortal conflict, the earliest European was the Mauer jaw from near Heidelberg. What better than remains of even greater antiquity from Sussex, the earliest Englishman.

Paul Ashbee

Piltdown, further reading:

• Weiner 1955. 71 2
• Harrison 1928
• Harrison 1927, 303
• Zeuner 1950, 300
• Jessup 1930, 28
• Oakley 1964, SV
• Weiner, Oakley & Le Gros Clark 1953, 141
• Walsh 1996, 79
• Sunday Times Magazine 26 Oct 03
• British Archaeology 74, Jan 04
• Woodward 1948