22. The Greatest Hoax in the History of Anthropology
1912 saw the start of one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated upon the world of science. It began when an amateur English archaeologist, Charles Dawson, announced the discovery of human-like fossils in Piltdown, East Sussex. Dawson had unearthed fossilized fragments of a cranium, jawbone, and other parts, in a Pleistocene layer. Britain’s premier paleontologist declared the fossils were evidence of an unknown proto-human species. They were judged the “missing link”, and evidence that supported Charles Darwin’s then-still-controversial theory that man had descended from apes.
More excavations made nearby in 1913 and 1914 turned up stone tools. Two miles away, teeth and additional skull fragments were unearthed. So were animal remains, and a mysterious carved bone that looked like a cricket bat. Excitement mounted with each new find, and the fossils were accepted uncritically by many prominent British scientists. At the time, there was a growing, and as it ultimately turned out, correct, scientific belief that human evolution from ape to man had occurred in Africa. As seen below, misplaced faith in the myth of the Piltdown Man took anthropology down the wrong path – and kept it from the right one – for decades.
