[Intro] [History] [How?] [Exposure] [Who?] [Myths] [People] [References] [Web Sites]

This is the home page for Piltdown man, a paleontological "man who never was". In April of 1996 there was an extended discussion in the talk.origins news group about the Piltdown man hoax. During the discussion I checked the web and discovered that Piltdown man did not have a home page. I resolved to eliminate this deficiency in the scholarly resources of the world wide web; here, for your delectation, is Piltdown man's home page. Corrections and suggestions for improvement are welcome.

This page has been laid out so that it can be read sequentially or so that you can skip around in it using links. It is broken up into sections and subsections. Each section is headed by a list of links to the other sections. Each subsection has links back to the list of sub sections. There are brief biographies and a bibliography with internal links to them through out the text. This page is a self contained, text only, document. However there are links to supporting documents and pictures.

Supporting web pages

• Gerrell Drawhorn's paper accusing Arthur Smith Woodward

Photographs and maps

• Photo of the Piltdown men contemplating Eoanthropus dawsonii (135K)
• Reconstruction of the Piltdown man skull (168K)
• Ordinance Survey Map of the Piltdown region (114K)
• Woodward's reconstruction of the skull (62K)
• Skull bones (some pieces assembled) (57K)
• Outside and inside views of the Jawbone (71K)
• Rutot's reconstruction of Piltdown Man (93K)

Acknowledgements

I am far from being the best qualified person to put together a substantive page on Piltdown man -- they are many others who have a better knowledge of the subject and who command more scholarly resources. However people have been very kind, indeed enthusiastic, in helping to fill in the gaps. Even though I am the original author of the page and its editor-in-chief this page is, in a real sense, a collaborative effort.

Special thanks are due to Robert Parson (rparson@spot.Colorado.EDU) and Jim Foley (Jim.Foley@symbios.com) who have made many invaluable suggestions and corrections. I also wish to thank Wesley Elsberry (welsberr@orca.tamu.edu) who found Betrayers of the Truth, David Bagnall (david@pican.pi.csiro.au) who pointed out the Matthews articles in the New Scientist, and Robert B. Anderson (andersons@InfoHouse.com) who has written articles on the hoax.

Special thanks are also due to Tom Turrittin (george@uunet.ca) who has created a comprehensive bibliography of references since 1953 to Piltdown man. He has made it available as a pair of web pages and has graciously agreed to let me maintain a mirrored copy at this site. The web sites has links both to the mirrored copy and to the original copy. Finally, I wish to thank Gerrell Drawhorn (piltdown@saclink.csus.edu) who has provided a copy of his 1994 paper for inclusion at this site.

Introduction

Piltdown man is one of the most famous frauds in the history of science. In 1912 Charles Dawson discovered the first of two skulls found in the Piltdown quarry in Sussex, England, skulls of an apparently primitive hominid, an ancestor of man. Piltdown man, or Eoanthropus dawsoni to use his scientific name, was a sensation. He was the expected "missing link" a mixture of human and ape with the noble brow of Homo sapiens and a primitive jaw. Best of all, he was British!

As the years went by and new finds of ancient hominids were made, Piltdown man became an anomaly that didn't fit in, a creature without a place in the human family tree. Finally, in 1953, the truth came out. Piltdown man was a hoax, the most ancient of people who never were. This is his story.

My principal source for the original version of this page is Ronald Millar's The Piltdown Men. This book is an account of the entire Piltdown affair from beginning to end, including not merely the circumstances but the general background of the paleontology and evolutionary theory with respect to human ancestry during the period 1850-1950. A number of important books have also been written on the hoax, e.g. works by Spencer, Weiner, Blinderman, and Walsh, and have been valuable resources.

The Story Of The Hoax

In following the history of the hoax it is useful to have a time line showing the principal events. The time line runs as follows:

1856 -- Neanderthal man discovered
1856 -- Dryopithecus discovered
1859 -- Origin of Species published
1863 -- Moulin Quignon forgeries exposed
1869 -- Cro Magnon man discovered
1871 -- The Descent of Man published
1890 -- Java Man discovered
1898 -- Galley hill "man" discovered [modern, misinterpreted]
1903 -- First molar of Peking man found
1907 -- Heidelberg man discovered
1908 -- Dawson (1908-1911) discovers first Piltdown fragments
1909 -- Dawson and Teilhard de Chardin meet
1912 -- February: Dawson contacts Woodward about first skull fragments
1912 -- June: Dawson, Woodward, and Teilhard form digging team
1912 -- June: Team finds elephant molar, skull fragment
1912 -- June: Right parietal skull bones and the jaw bone discovered
1912 -- Summer: Barlow, Pycraft, G.E. Smith, and Lankester join team.
1912 -- November: News breaks in the popular press
1912 -- December: Official presentation of Piltdown man
1913 -- August: the canine tooth is found by Teilhard
1914 -- Tool made from fossil elephant thigh bone found
1914 -- Talgai (Australia) man found, considered confirming of Piltdown
1915 -- Piltdown II found by Dawson (according to Woodward)
1916 -- Dawson dies.
1917 -- Woodward announces discovery of Piltdown II.
1921 -- Osborn and Gregory "converted" by Piltdown II.
1921 -- Rhodesian man discovered
1923 -- Teilhard arrives in China.
1924 -- Dart makes first Australopithecus discovery.
1925 -- Edmonds reports Piltdown geology error. Report ignored.
1929 -- First skull of Peking man found.
1934 -- Ramapithecus discovered
1935 -- Many (38 individuals) Peking man fossils have been found.
1935 -- Swanscombe man [genuine] discovered.
1937 -- Marston attacks Piltdown age estimate, cites Edmonds.
1941 -- Peking man fossils lost in military action.
1943 -- Fluorine content test is first proposed.
1948 -- Woodward publishes The Earliest Englishman
1949 -- Fluorine content test establishes Piltdown man as relatively recent.
1951 -- Edmonds report no geological source for Piltdown animal fossils.
1953 -- Weiner, Le Gros Clark, and Oakley expose the hoax.

In 1856 the first Neanderthal fossil discovery was made and the hunt was on to find fossil remains of human ancestors. In the next half century finds were made in continental Europe and in Asia but not in Britain. Finally, in 1912, the sun rose on British paleontology -- fossil remains of an ancient pleistocene hominid were found in the Piltdown quarries in Sussex. In the period 1912 to 1915 the Piltdown quarries yielded two skulls, a canine tooth, and a mandible of Eoanthropus, a tool carved from an elephant tusk, and fossil teeth from a number of pleistocene animals.

There is a certain vagueness about some of the critical events. Dawson contacted Woodward about the first two skull fragments which were supposedly found by workman "some years prior". Exactly when is unknown. Similarly, the discovery of Piltdown II is shrouded in mystery. Supposedly Dawson and an anonymous friend make the discovery 1915; however the friend and the location of the find are unknown.

The reaction to the finds was mixed. On the whole the British paleontologists were enthusiastic; the French and American paleontologists tended to be skeptical, some objected quite vociferously. The objectors held that the jawbone and the skull were obviously from two different animals and that their discovery together was simply an accident of placement. In the period 1912-1917 there was a great deal of skepticism. The report in 1917 of the discovery of Piltdown II converted many of the skeptics; one accident of placement was plausible -- two were not.

It should be remembered that, at the time of Piltdown finds, there were very few early hominid fossils; Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens were clearly fairly late. It was expected that there was a "missing link" between ape and man. It was an open question as to what that missing link would look like. Piltdown man had the expected mix of features, which lent it plausibility as a human precursor.

This plausibility did not hold up. During the next two decades there were a number of finds of ancient hominids and near hominids, e.g. Dart's discovery of Australopithecus, the Peking man discoveries, and other Homo erectus and australopithecine finds. Piltdown man did not fit in with the new discoveries. None the less, Sir Arthur Keith (a major defender of Piltdown man) wrote in 1931:

It is therefore possible that Piltdown man does represent the early pleistocene ancestor of the modern type of man, He may well be the ancestor we have been in search of during all these past years. I am therefore inclined to make the Piltdown type spring from the main ancestral stem of modern humanity...

In the period 1930-1950 Piltdown man was increasingly marginalized and by 1950 was, by and large, simply ignored. It was carried in the books as a fossil hominid. From time to time it was puzzled over and then dismissed again. The American Museum of Natural History quietly classified it as a mixture of ape and man fossils. Over the years it had become an anomaly; some prominent authors did not even bother to list it. In Bones of Contention Roger Lewin quotes Sherwood Washburn as saying

"I remember writing a paper on human evolution in 1944, and I simply left Piltdown out. You could make sense of human evolution if you didn't try to put Piltdown into it."

Finally, in 1953, the roof fell in. Piltdown man was not an ancestor; it was not a case of erroneous interpretation; it was a case of outright deliberate fraud.

Forging Fossils

From the chronology and the later reconstruction of events it is fairly clear that there never were any significant fossils at the Piltdown quarry. It was salted from time to time with fossils to be found. Once the hoax was exposed, Sir Kenneth Oakley went on to apply more advanced tests to find where the bones had come from and how old they were. His main findings were:

Piltdown I skull: Medieval, human, ~620 years old.
Piltdown II skull: Same source as Piltdown I skull.
Piltdown I jawbone: Orangutan jaw, ~500 years old, probably from Sarawak.
Elephant molar: Genuine fossil, probably from Tunisia.
Hippopotamus tooth: Genuine fossil, probably from Malta or Sicily.
Canine tooth: Pleistocene chimpanzee fossil.

Originally it had been believed that one skull had been used; later, more precise dating established in 1989 that two different skulls had been used, one for each of the two skull "finds". The skulls were unusually thick; a condition that is quite rare in the general population but is common among the Ona indian tribe in Patagonia. The jawbone was not definitely established as being that of an orangutan until 1982. Drawhorn's paper summarizes all that is currently known about the provenance of the bones that were used.

Not only were the bones gathered from a variety of sources, they were given a thorough going treatment to make them appear to be genuinely ancient. A solution containing iron was used to stain the bones; fossil bones deposited in gravel pick up iron and manganese. [It is unclear whether the solution also contained manganese: Millar mentions that manganese was present; Hall, who did the tests for manganese, says that it was not.] Before staining the bones (except for the jawbone) were treated with Chromic acid to convert the bone apatite (mineral component) to gypsum to facilitate the intake of the iron and manganese (?) solution used to stain the bones. The skull may have also been boiled in an iron sulphate solution. The canine tooth was painted after staining, probably with Van Dyke brown. The jaw bone molars were filed to fit. The connection where the jawbone would meet the rest of the skull was carefully broken so that there would be no evidence of lack of fit. The canine tooth was filed to show wear (and was patched with chewing gum). It was filled with sand as it might have been if it had been in the Ouse river bed.

How the hoax was exposed

With few exceptions nobody suggested that the finds were a hoax until the very end. The beginning of the end came when a new dating technique, the fluorine absorption test, became available. The Piltdown fossils were dated with this test in 1949; the tests established that the fossils were relatively modern. Even so, they were still accepted as genuine. For example, in Nature, 1950, p 165, New Evidence on the Antiquity of Piltdown Man Oakley wrote:

The results of the fluorine test have considerably increased the probability that the [Piltdown] mandible and cranium represent the same creature. The relatively late date indicated by the summary of evidence suggests moreover that Piltdown man, far from being an early primitive type, may have been a late specialized hominid which evolved in comparative isolation. In this case the peculiarities of the mandible and the excessive thickness of the cranium might well be interpreted as secondary or gerontic developments.

In 1925 Edmonds had pointed out that Dawson was in error in his geological dating of the Piltdown gravels: they were younger than Dawson had assumed. In 1951 he published an article pointing out that there was no plausible source for the Piltdown animal fossils. Millar (p203) writes:

The older group of Piltdown animals, he said, were alleged to have been washed from a Pliocene land deposit in the Weald. Edmonds thought there must be some misunderstanding. There was no Pliocene land deposit in the entire Weald which could have produced them. the only local Pliocene beds were marine in origin and lay above the five-hundred foot contour line.

In July 1953 an international congress of paleontologists, under the auspices of the Wenner-Gren Foundation, was held in London. The world's fossil men were put up, admired and set down again. But, according to Dr. J.S. Weiner, Piltdown man got barely a mention. He did not fit in. He was a piece of the jig-saw puzzle; the right colour but the wrong shape. It was at the congress that the possibility of fraud dawned on Weiner. Once the possibility had raised it was easy to establish that the finds were a fraud. Millar writes:

The original Piltdown teeth were produced and examined by the three scientists. The evidence of fake could seen immediately. The first and second molars were worn to the same degree; the inner margins of the lower teeth were more worn than the outer -- the 'wear' was the wrong way round; the edges of the teeth were sharp and unbevelled; the exposed areas of dentine were free of shallow cavities and flush with the surrounding enamel; the biting surface of the two molars did not form a uniform surface, the planes were out of alignment. That the teeth might have been misplaced after the death of Piltdown man was considered but an X-ray showed the lower contact surfaces of the roots were correctly positioned. This X-ray also revealed that contrary to the 1916 radiograph the roots were unnaturally similar in length and disposition.

The molar surface were examined under a microscope. They were scarred by criss-cross scratches suggesting the use of an abrasive. 'The evidences of artificial abrasion immediately sprang to the eye' wrote Le Gros Clark. 'Indeed so obvious did they [the scratches] seem it may well be asked -- how was it that they had escaped notice before?' He answered his question with a beautiful simplicity. 'They had never been looked for...nobody previously had examined the Piltdown jaw with the idea of a possible forgery in mind, a deliberate fabrication.'

Why then was the fraud so successful? Briefly, (a) the team finding the specimans (Dawson, Woodward, Teilhard) had excellent credentials, (b) incompetence on the part of the British Paleontological community, (c) the relatively primitive analytical tools available circa 1920, (d) skill of the forgery, (e) it matched what was expected from theory, and (f) as Millar remarks, the hoax led a charmed life.

Credentials

As a matter of practice, a fraud or hoax is much more likely to succeed if it appears to be validated by an authority. In general, one does not expect a professional in a field to concoct a hoax. Experience teaches that this expectation is not always met.

Incompetence

Although the team had excellent credentials none was truly competent in dealing with hominid fossils; their expertise lay elsewhere. The British museum people, Woodward and Pycraft, made numerous errors of reconstruction and interpretation. The only expert in the expanded team, Grafton Eliot Smith, was strangely silent about some of the errors.

Primitive analytical tools

It is hard for us today to fully grasp how primitive the analytical tools available to the paleontologists of that time were. Chemical tests and dating techniques taken for granted today were not available. The analysis of the details of tooth wear was less worked out. The simple knowledge of geology was much less detailed. The importance of careful establishment of the provenance of fossils was not appreciated. In short, the paleontologists of 1915 were an easier lot to fool.

Skill of the forgery

At the time there were virtually no hominid fossils finds except for some of the early Neanderthal finds. The reconstruction of human evolution was very much an open question. The Piltdown specimens fit one of the leading speculations. The forger knew what anatomical and paleontological tests the specimens would be given.

Meeting Theoretical Expectations

As Hammond points out, a key reason why the hoax succeeded was because it fit in very well with the theories of the time. Boule had recently (erroneously) discredited Neanderthal man as being close to the main hominid line (1908-1912). Elliot Smith felt that the large brain case would have developed first. Sollas did not, but did strongly support mosaic evolution, i.e., features appearing in patches rather in a smooth transition. It was his opinion that human dentition developed before the human jaw. Woodward and others believed that eoliths (supposed very early stone tools) indicated the presence of an early, intelligent hominid in England. Piltdown man, with his large braincase, his simian jaw, and his near human dentition fit the theoretical picture.

Charmed Life

The hoax had a charmed life. Features that might have exposed the hoax didn't get caught because of small errors in procedure. For example, the hoax would have been exposed immediately had a test of the jaw for organic matter been made. Tests were made on the cranial fragments, but these were sufficiently well mineralized to pass.

The X-rays taken were of poor quality, even for the time. The dentist Lyne pointed out the incongruity between the heavy wear on the canine and its large pulp cavity, a sign of youth. This was interpreted as secondary dentine formation, an explanation that "worked" because of the poor quality of the X-rays.

The erroneous wear pattern on the molars, which was obvious when Weiner looked at the casts, was never noticed. Nor were they carefully examined under a microscope -- the abrasion marks would have been seen.

Who perpetrated the hoax?

Who did it? Who perpetrated the hoax? When the hoax was exposed nobody knew who the perpetrator was. No one confessed to the deed. For forty odd years people have speculated about the identity of the culprit; over time an impressive list of suspects has accumulated. The case against each suspect has been circumstantial, a constellation of suspicious behaviour, of possible motives, and of opportunity. In this section we present summaries of the arguments against the principal candidates.

A comprehensive listing of the accusations, when they were made, who made them, and who the accused were can be found in Tom Turrittin's Piltdown man overview; it includes details not given here including the particulars of 30 separate books or papers making accusations.

When the hoax was first exposed Dawson, Teilhard, and Woodward were the obvious suspects; they had made the major finds. In 1953 Weiner fingered Dawson as the culprit. Stephen Jay Gould argued that Teilhard and Dawson were the culprits. Woodward generally escaped suspicion; however Drawhorn made a strong case against him in 1994. Grafton Elliot Smith and Sir Arthur Keith were prominent scientists that played key roles in the discovery. Millar argued that Smith was the culprit; Spencer argued that it was a conspiracy between Dawson and Keith. Other candidates that have been mentioned over the years include Arthur Conan Doyle, the geologist W. J. Sollas, and the paleontologist Martin Hinton. This is by no means the end of the list; other people accused include Hargreaves, Abbot, Barlow, and Butterfield.

This fraud is quite unique. Most scientific frauds and hoaxes fall into a few categories. There are student japes, students conconcting evidence to fit a superior's theories. There are confirming evidence frauds, in which a researcher fabricates findings that they believe should be true. There are outright frauds for money, fossils that are fabricated for gullible collectors. There are rare cases of fabrication for reputation, done in the knowledge that the results will not be checked. And, upon occasion, there are frauds concocted simply as an expression of a perverse sense of humor.

The Piltdown hoax does not seem to fit any of these categories well. This was not an ordinary hoax; it was a systematic campaign over the years to establish the existence of Piltdown man. The early skull fragments were created in advance and salted with the foreknowledge that more extensive finds would be planted later. The hoaxer had to have good reason to believe that the salted fossils would be found.

One of the critical factors in any theory is to account for the fact that the perpetrator had to be confident that the salted fossils would be found. That suggests that either Dawson, Teilhard, or Woodward was involved since they alone made the initial finds. At first sight it would seem that Dawson must have been guilty since he made the initial find of the first two skull fragments. However he didn't! They were made by anonymous workmen. The "find" could have been arranged for a handful of coins. As Vere pointed out, the labourer Hargreaves, employed to do most of the digging, was also present at the site.

Another critical factor to be accounted for is access to the specimens that were used in the hoax. Likewise the question of skill and knowledge required for the hoax must be taken into account.

Below are summaries of the cases to be made against the various possible perpetrators. At the moment this section is very much under construction!

The candidates for perpetrator

Was Abbot the forger?

Lewis Abbot, owner of a Hastings jewelry shop, friend of Dawson, and widely respected for his knowledge of the geology of southern England. He was considered as a possibility by Weiner. Blinderman make a major accusation against Abbot, based on an assessment of personality, requisite knowledge, and probable access to the needed bones. The case, however, lacked any definite substance. Abbot has also been mentioned as a possible co-conspirator in a number of accusations.

Was Barlow the forger?

Barlow was accused of being a co-conspirator with Dawson by Caroline Grigson, the curator of the Ontodontological Museum. The accusation has not been taken seriously.

Was Butterfield the forger?

Butterfield, the curator at the Hastings museum, was accused by van Esbroeck of being the forger with Hargreaves planting the forged fossils. The proposed motive is revenge over Dawson's appropriation of some dinosaur fossils. There is no substantive evidence for this charge.

Was Dawson the sole forger?

Dawson is the obvious suspect. He made the initial find of the two skull fragments and the Piltdown II find. In both of these critical discoveries there is no confirmation by another party. He was the one who made the Piltdown quarry a special object of search. Indeed he is such an obvious suspect (Weiner seems to have taken it for granted that Dawson was the forger) that the question is -- why consider any one besides Dawson? Millar (p 226-7) argues against Dawson as the culprit as follows:

One of my main objections to the assumption that Dawson is inevitably the culprit is that as the discoverer he was wide open to suspicion. He is too obvious a culprit... If the bogus fossil excaped detection by his friends at the museum he surely could not have expected that it would withstand scientific enquiry forever. I find it impossible to believe that Dawson would pit his meagre knowledge of anatomy (if it is accepted that he had any at all) against that of any skilled human anatomist... The threat of exposure would be perpetual.

As it was Piltdown man had a charmed life. Because of the poor quality of the original X-ray photographs the bogus jaw remained undetected at the outset. Le Gros Clark has emphasized that the forger's crude workmanship on the teeth was there for all to see if only someone had looked for it.

Millar's argument sounds plausible but it doesn't stand up well. Dawson was a man of many interests, both antiquarian and paleontological, and had numerous knowledgeable friends and acquaintances. The requisite knowledge could readily have been acquired. The argument that he wouldn't have dared is suspect; there is considerable evidence that Dawson had been involved in a number of forgeries and plagarisms; some of which only came to light after Millar wrote. Walsh discusses a number of incidents:

• The Beauport Statuette
• The Blackmore flint weapon
• The Bexhill boat
• The Uckfield horseshoe
• The Hastings clockface
• The Dene Holes plagarism
• The Iron Industry in Old Sussex plagarism
• The Old Sussex Glass plagarism
• The Hastings Castle plagarism
• The Pevensey Brick

A critical point, which Walsh emphasizes, was the discovery of the jawbone by Dawson. Most of the other bones were found in spill, dug up gravel which was searched later after having been dug up. The jawbone, however, was found in situ by Dawson. He struck a blow into the hardpacked gravel and the jawbone popped out (this was reported by Woodward). It would have been very difficult to bury the jawbone in the hardpacked gravel convincingly; however no one except Dawson actually observed the purported undisturbed location of the jawbone before it was found.

In retrospect it is hard to see how Dawson could not have been involved. Walsh argues strongly that Dawson and Dawson alone was the culprit, that he had both the necessary knowledge and the requisite character, and that his participation was physically necessary. Indeed, one might ask why someone proposing to undertake such a fraud would risk having a co-conspirator. However it happens often enough that people of similar inclinations recognize each other.

Were Dawson and Keith conspirators?

The following is an excerpt taken from a summary published by Robert Parson in the talk.origins newsgroup.

In the late 1970's, Ian Langham, an Australian historian of science, began a comprehensive reevaluation of the events surrounding the forgery. Langham was initially attracted to Ronald Millar's hypothesis that the forger was Grafton Elliot Smith; however he later dropped this hypothesis and settled instead upon Sir Arthur Keith. Langham died suddenly in 1984, before revealing his conclusions, and Frank Spencer, of the Department of Anthropology at Queens College of the City University of New York, was appointed to complete Langham's research. Spencer published his and Langham's conclusions in Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery.

The centerpiece of the Langham-Spencer argument is an anonymous article that appeared in the British Medical Journal on 21 December 1912, three days after the formal announcement of the discovery of Piltdown Man at a Geological Society meeting. This article appears superficially to be a mere summary of the meeting, but in fact it contains information (relating to the exact location of the site and to the history of the discovery) that at that time was known only by the people actually involved in the digging. Arthur Smith Woodward found this puzzling and wondered who the author had been and how he had learned about these details, but never found out. 70 years later Ian Langham discovered that the author was Arthur Keith. Moreover, Keith's diary showed that he had written the article three days before the meeting actually took place. Keith was not a part of Woodward's inner circle at this time, and he had not been consulted by Woodward on the discovery; indeed, he had only been allowed to view the specimens two weeks before the official announcement, even though the existence of the find (though not the details) had been an open secret for many weeks beforehand.

This discovery (and similar, more ambiguous documents) suggested to Langham a connection between Dawson and Keith. Keith claimed to have met Dawson for the first time in January 1913, but Langham found evidence that they had met at least three times during 1911-1912. He also noticed that Keith had destroyed all of his correspondence with Dawson. Langham proposed that Dawson began to prepare the hoax sometime between 1905 and 1910. In mid-1911 Keith was brought into it, and during the period 1911-12 Keith prepared the various specimens, Dawson planted them, and Dawson's team subsequently dug them up.

The case against Keith is discussed in detail by Walsh. According to his analysis the circumstantial evidence all has a natural and innocent explanation.

Was Arthur Conan Doyle the perpetrator?

The argument for Doyle was made in an article in Science in 1983 by the anthropologist John Winslow. The Spring 1996 issue of Pacific Discovery has an excellent article by Robert Anderson on the Doyle theory. Doyle was a neighbour of Dawson, was an amateur bone hunter, and participated briefly in the digs. The principal arguments for Doyle as the culprit are circumstantial and literary; it has been argued that The Lost World describes the execution of the hoax in veiled terms. Anderson argues that the exact location of the planted fossils is spelled out in The Lost World as a puzzle. The essential weakness of the case against Doyle is that it would not have been possible for him to have planted the bones with any expectation that they would have been found. Walsh analyzes the case against Doyle in detail and finds it wanting.

The principal proponent of the Doyle theory,Richard Milner who is a historian of science from the American Museum of Natural History, still holds Doyle was responsible. In a debate staged by the Linnaean Society in March 1997 as part of National Science Week he argued the case for Arthur Conan Doyle and against the case for Hinton.

Sir Arthur was a zealous spiritualist, embittered by the exposure and prosecution of Henry Slade, one of his favourite psychics. It is suggested that Doyle sought to discredit the scientific establishment by faking evidence of something they wanted to believe in thereby showing scientists knew less than they thought they did.

Was Hargreaves involved?

Hargreaves, the laborer who did most of the digging at the Piltdown site, was accused by Vere. There is no direct evidence against him. However, unlike many others, he had real opportunity to plant the fossils. If Dawson and Woodward were not involved he almost must have been involved.

Was Martin Hinton the perpetrator?

The May 23, 1996 edition of Nature presents the new case and a smoking gun (?) against Martin A. C. Hinton, a curator of zoology at the museum at the time of the fraud. There are two finds of bones stained and carved in the manner of the Piltdown fossils, a canvas travelling trunk marked with Hinton's initials and glass tubes from Hinton's estate (Hinton died in 1961) which contained human teeth stained in various ways.

The trunk was found in the mid-1970s, when contractors were clearing loft space in the British Museum. The trunk contained hundreds of vials of rodent dissections (Hinton was a rodent specialist) and a collection of carved and stained pieces of fossil hippopotamus and elephant teeth, as well as assorted bones, that looked as if they belonged in the Piltdown collection.

The Nature article claimed that the teeth from the the estate, the contents of the trunk, and the Piltdown remains were stained with the same chemical recipe, a mixture of iron, managanese and chromium. The recipe appears to have been invented by Hinton and is based on a knowledge of post-depositional processes affecting fossils in gravel. Hinton had published a paper in 1899 showing that fossils in river gravels would be impregnated with oxides of iron and manganese, staining them a characteristic chocolate- brown colour.

The motive may have revenge in a quarrel about money or it may simply have been that Woodward was irritatingly stuffy. Hinton was fond of and was famed for his elaborate practical jokes. Hinton was a member of a circle of Sussex-based geologist colleagues and was an expert on the Weald geology. In 1954, shortly after the exposure Hinton wrote a revealing letter to Gavin de Beer director of the British Museum (Natural History):

The temptation to invent such a 'discovery' of an ape-like man associated with late Pliocene Mammals in a Wealden gravel might well have proved irresistable to some unbalanced member of old Ben Harrison's circe at Ightham. He and his friends (of whom I was one) were always talking of the possibility of finding a late Pliocene deposit in the weald.

Andrew Currant, a researcher at the museum and Brian Gardiner, professor of palaeontology at King's College, London, made the investigations into the Hinton evidence. Gardiner presented the case against Hinton in his presidential address to the Linnean Society in London on May 24, 1996.

The case against Hinton is not what it seems. The motive suggested by Gardiner (a quarrel about money) does not work because of timing; the incident in question happened in 1911; the first finds were in 1908. More importantly the chemical analyses do not match. The Hinton samples include Manganese; the Piltdown specimens do not. The Hinton samples do not contain gypsum (produced from the organic material); the Piltdown specimens do. [Drawhorn, correspondence]. Walsh notes that there were legitimate reasons for Hinton to have this material, including doing tests for Oakley. In any event it would have been physically impossible for Hinton to have been the sole hoaxer because he did not have the requisite access to the site in the 1912-1914 period.

Was it Hinton and others?

Although the physical evidence is ambiguous, Hinton's name pops up under a variety of odd circumstances and it seems likely that he knew more that he should have, either by virtue of being a co-conspirator or by virtue of special knowledge not publicly admitted.

In 1981 L. Harrison Matthews wrote a series of articles in the New Scientist on the Piltdown hoax. In these article he suggested that Hinton believed the finds to be a hoax and that Hinton and Teilhard manufactured and planted ridiculous forgeries to expose the hoax. In particular the Elephant bone tool was a crude cricket bat, appropriate for "the earliest Englishman". This theory was repeated in 1982 in Betrayers of the Truth by Broad and Wade, and in 1996 in The Common but Less Frequent Loon and Other Essays by Keith S. Thomson.

L. Harrison Matthews described informal dinner conversations in the period 1945-51 during which Hinton implied that "Piltdown was not a subject to be taken seriously" from which Matthews surmised that Hinton "knew more about the hoax and the museum's part in it than he ever admitted". Other evidence referred to by Matthews included Hinton's correspondence after the hoax was exposed and subsequent conversations in which Hinton obliquely included himself in a small list of suspects. Matthews was sufficiently confident about Hinton's involvement that he was the first to suggest the oft-repeated claim that the first finds were due to Dawson and that in response, Hinton manufactured and planted ridiculous forgeries to expose the hoax. This is a relatively honorable role for Hinton in comparison with sole hoaxer. It is clear that Matthews respected Hinton, with whom he shared many wide-ranging and interesting conversations during Hinton's retirement. It is likely that Matthews was unable to conceive of his friend being the initiator and solely responsible for the fraud.

Was Grafton Elliot Smith the perpetrator?

Millar argues that Smith was the culprit. Smith was an expert anatomist, and a paleontologist with ready access to a wide variety of fossils. He was suspiciously quiet when Woodward messed up the construction of the Piltdown I skull. He "failed to recognize" that the cranial bones of Piltdown II belonged to Piltdown I whereas Hrdlicka recognized that the Piltdown II molar came from Piltdown I after a brief examination. Millar notes:

I have examined all of Smith's writings on the subject with care and in not one instance does he fail to state carefully that his findings were based on the examination of a plaster cast of the skull.

It is quite unlikely that Smith had not examined the actual skull fragments. Smith was in Nubia during most of the discoveries; however he came to England at convenient points. Smith had the right kind of personality. When Millar discussed the possibility of Smith with Oakley, Oakley was not surprised. There is, however, no direct evidence against Smith. As with other "outsider" theories it was physically impossible for Smith to have been the sole hoaxer.

Was W. J. Sollas the perpetrator?

W. J. Sollas was a Professor of Geology at Oxford and a bitter enemy of Woodward. He was accused in 1978 by his successor in the Oxford chair, J. A. Douglas, in a posthumously released tape recording. The essential difficulty with this theory is to explain how Sollas (or another outsider) could have salted the Piltdown site and be sure the fake fossils would be found. One also wonders why, if Sollas were the perpetrator, he did not expose the hoax and thereby damaging Woodward's reputation. This could have been done behind the scenes easily enough by asking the right questions.

Was Teilhard de Chardin the perpetrator?

In an essay reprinted in The Panda's Thumb, Stephen Jay Gould argues the case for a conspiracy by Teilhard de Chardin and Dawson. The case is circumstantial. The suggested motive is a student jape (Teilhard was quite young at the time.) It was supposed that Teilhard did not have the opportunity; however Gould shows that this was not necessarily so. Much of Gould's case rests on ambiguous wording in Teilhard's correspondence. Certainly Teilhard is a plausible candidate for the mysterious friend who helped discover Piltdown II. Gould argues that they had intended to blow the gaffe shortly after the initial finds but that they were prevented from doing so by WW I. By 1918 things had gotten out of hand to the point where the hoax could no longer be owned up to.

I do not think that Gould's assessment of motive stands up well. It is plausible that Teilhard might have concocted a hoax; that is common for frisky students. However this fraud was planned and prepared years in advance and was executed over an extended period of time; the nature of the execution of the fraud goes well beyond the student jape.

The case against Teilhard is considered in detail by Walsh. He argues fairly convincingly that many of the circumstances stressed by Gould have natural and plausible explanations.

Teilhard was also accused of being involved by L. Harrison Matthews who claimed that Teilhard planted the fossil canine tooth in collaboration with Martin A.C. Hinton, with Teilhard subsequently "discovering" the tooth. The evidence for this collaboration is that Hinton told his friend Richard Savage that Hinton and Teilhard had visited the site together early in 1913. Matthews commented that Teilhard never mentioned this visit, and subsequent developments have damaged Hinton's credibility regarding these clues.

Was Woodward the perpetrator?

Woodward seems to have escaped serious consideration, primarily because he was very much a "straight arrow". However there is a strong case to be made against Woodward as a co-conspirator with Dawson. The provenance of many of bones used in the construction of the Piltdown specimens has been established; some were not at all readily available. Woodward, and apparently only Woodward, had professional access to all of them. The main focus of Drawhorn's paper is a consideration of this question of the origin of the specimens and who could have provided them.

Woodward had strong motives. He benefitted directly as co-discoverer of a monumental find. During the period in question

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