Scientists discover the culprit behind the Piltdown Man hoax

A more than 100-year-old mystery appears to be resolved, as scientists believe they have proof of who created the now-infamous forgery known as the Piltdown Man, as reported by the BBC.

In 1912, a scientist and amateur collector known as Charles Dawson uncovered a human-like skull with an ape-like jaw containing two remaining teeth near the village of Piltdown in England. Here was an ancient human ancestor that had never been seen before, and naturally, the discovery sent scientific community into a frenzy.

Three years later, in 1915, Dawson found a matching tooth and skull fragments nearly two miles away (three km), at a site he dubbed Piltdown II.

It took until 1953 to show that the bones were in fact a clever hoax. But who was the culprit?

No one ever confessed to the forgery, but plenty of names were suggested. Dawson himself was a suspect, as was a French priest who excavated an isolated canine at Piltdown I in 1913. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ended up being a suspect, along with a great number of other people.

And now, new tests on the Piltdown specimens have revealed not only how they were made, but who likely made them.

Cross-Examining Both Piltdown Sites

According to the research published in Royal Society Open Science by a variety of specialists including historians, dental experts, and paleobiologists, the bones from the two Piltdown sites come from two or three humans and one orangutan. In all cases, a red-brown stain was spread on the bones to give them an aged appearance, with dental putty used to fix the bones in place. Local Piltdown gravel was then packed into the bones’ crevices.

With this, the Piltdown I and II sites have been definitively linked together—meaning the most likely culprit is the only man uniquely tied to both: Charles Dawson.

“What we’ve been able to demonstrate is a signature, a fingerprint throughout all of these specimens, even including the second molar from the second Piltdown site,” Dr. Isabelle De Groote, first author of the study, told BBC.

“Dawson is the only one who ever said there was a Piltdown II site; he’s the only one who was ever associated with it and we can clearly link that molar to the original specimens.”

In fact, the clever forgeries add even more credence to the notion that Dawson was the culprit.

“It was very carefully done,” said De Groote. “That’s another thing that exonerates some others – for example, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was one of the suspects.

“Obviously he could write a good story, but he probably would never have had the skill or the scientific knowledge to prepare a forgery like this one.”

Dawson also had the scientific background necessary to pass off the hoax; he knew scientists expected the earliest human ancestor to have a big brain paired with an ape-like jaw, and he apparently tailored his forgeries to match this expectation.

“When a jaw and the skull bones were announced, there was a big discussion at the Geological Society about what the canine in such an animal would look like. And, ta-da – six or seven months later, a canine shows up and it looks exactly like what they had predicted,” said De Groote, who added that she has a newfound awareness of the importance of taking all evidence into consideration and being aware of one’s own preconceptions.

“If something fits a hypothesis maybe too well, question it again,” she said.

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Image credit: Karolyn Shindler

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