Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [358]
8.6 The Effect of New Discoveries On Piltdown Man
But as more hominid fossils were found, the Piltdown fossil, with its Homo sapiens type of cranium, introduced a great deal of uncertainty into the construction of the line of human evolution. At Choukoutien (now Zhoukoudian), near Peking (now Beijing), researchers initially uncovered a primitive-looking jaw resembling that of Piltdown man. But when the first Peking man skull was uncovered in 1929, it had the low forehead and pronounced brow ridge of Pithecanthropus erectus of Java, now classified with Peking man as Homo erectus (Millar 1972, p. 173). In the same decade, Raymond Dart uncovered the first Australopithecus specimens in Africa. Other Australopithecus finds followed, and like Java man and Peking man they also had low foreheads and prominent brow ridges. Most British anthropologists, however, decided that Australopithecus was an apelike creature that was not a human ancestor. That lessened the threat to Piltdown man, who was, nevertheless, beginning to seem out of place.
In spite of the new evidence, Sir Arthur Smith Woodward remained a champion of Piltdown man until his death. Von Koenigswald (1956, p. 182) wrote: “Sir Arthur Smith Woodward was so convinced of the significance of Piltdown man that he had a small house built at Haywards Heath, not far from the site of the find, so that he could always keep an eye on it. He was a man with a strong sense of fair play, and when he felt he had been passed over on the occasion of a promotion, he left his beloved British Museum, never to set foot in it again. From now on he dedicated his whole life to Piltdown man. When we visited him at Haywards Heath in 1937 he talked of nothing else. . . . In spite of the bad weather we had to go out in a taxi to the site of the discovery. Standing under a big umbrella, Sir Arthur showed us the spot at which he had unearthed the celebrated find.”
But after World War II, new finds by Robert Broom led the British to change their minds about Australopithecus. Sir Arthur Keith telegrammed Broom: “All my landmarks have gone, you have found what I never thought could be found: a man-like jaw associated with an ape-like skull—the exact reverse of the Piltdown evidence” (Goodman 1982, p. 94). So now what was to be done with Piltdown man, who was thought to be as old as the Australopithecus finds that had by then been made?
In addition to Australopithecus, some of the anomalous human fossils discussed previously in this book also appeared to contradict the evidence provided by Piltdown man. In his book Meeting Prehistoric Man, von Koenigswald (1956, pp. 179–180) addressed this problem stating: “Apart from Piltdown man there was a whole series of allegedly very ancient sapiens forms, none of which, however, possessed such a simian jaw. The Foxhall mandible, which already has a chin, is said to have come from deep in the Red Crag on the East Anglian coast. Then there is the complete skeleton from Galley Hill near Northfleet in Kent, the finds at Denise in southern France, and various others. In the past, there was no conclusive method of determining the age of skeletal remains. Since man is in the habit of burying his dead, human bones occur in strata of differing ages. In most cases, of course, it is not difficult to ascertain whether remains are those of a modern interment or not. But there are finds that remain doubtful, and these have misled certain anthropologists into ascribing a very great geological age to Homo sapiens as such. This is naturally very important for the interpretation