The Discovery of Human Evolution’s “Missing Link” in England
In 1912, an amateur English archaeologist named Charles Dawson announced the discovery of human-like fossils in Piltdown, East Sussex. In a Pleistocene gravel bed, Dawson had found fossilized fragments of a cranium, jawbone, and other bones. Britain’s premier paleontologist pronounced the fossils evidence of a hitherto unknown proto-human species. They were also deemed the “missing link” between ape and man, evidence of the then-still controversial theory that man descended from apes. The pronouncements were accepted uncritically by many prominent British scientists. Further excavations in the vicinity were made in 1913 and 1914, in which stone tools were discovered.
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. The excitement mounted with each new find. At the time of the Piltdown discovery, there was a growing, and as it ultimately turned out, correct, scientific belief that human evolution from ape to man had occurred in Africa. It was there that fossils of homo erectus, an early hominid, had been discovered. As seen below, that was problematic for many of the era’s British scientists.
