Little story of a lousy forgery – or: the Piltdown man

Kenneth Page Oakley (1911–1981), employee of the British Museum of Natural History (now the Natural History Museum), determines the fluorine content of the bones in order to be able to date them more precisely. Lo and behold, he comes to the conclusion that the bones cannot be more than 50,000 years old. This, of course, begs the question of how a relatively young skull bone fits a jawbone that looks more like that of an ape than that of a modern human.

Fired by these doubts, Piltdown’s supposed sensational discovery is soon revealed to be the fraud that it really is. Further research during the 1950s eventually reveals a much more likely age for the fossils: somewhere between 520 and 720 years. The wear and tear of the molars also turns out to be a ruse. They had been processed with a conventional metal file.

Who manipulated the skull?

The obvious question that arises: Who is responsible for this elaborate forgery? The short answer: it’s not safe. Because the long answer is about as long as the list of suspects.

Obviously, Dawson committed the act. He was the original discoverer of the supposed fossils. And as an amateur archaeologist, he must have had a keen interest in getting recognition from professional researchers. However, he had a certain reputation for fossil finds, the authenticity of which was not always beyond doubt. In his book on the Piltdown Man, archaeologist Miles Russel conclusively shows that among the suspects the most likely Dawson was the forger. But Woodward could also have been involved. Apparently he had only checked the bones cursory, even the crudely manipulated molars did not attract him – or he did not want to.

Over the years, various employees of the Natural Museum of History, other participants in the excavations such as Teilhard de Chardin and even the author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) were suspected. The latter because he lived not far from Piltdown, but also because scientists ridiculed him for his belief in ghosts. To fool you with such a fake would have been Conan Doyle’s ultimate act of revenge.

Although the forgery was ultimately exposed, it left traces in early human research. According to anthropologist Janet Monge of the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, the find crippled discipline for decades because it misled researchers. For some, however, it provided exactly the confirmation they were looking for: that man originated in Europe, not Africa. Therefore, the Piltdown skull ensured that interim discoveries in Africa did not get the attention they deserved for a long time. As a result, work on a unified theory about the development of modern man was blocked for years. It was only after the middle of the 20th century that the anthropologists’ guild agreed on where the real origin of anatomically modern humans was.