• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Oakley’s opinion that the Piltdown man fossils belonged to the last interglacial period is consistent with the view of R. G. West (1968, p. 343), an expert on the Pleistocene geology of England, who assigned the Piltdown gravels to the Late or Middle Pleistocene. Modern authorities place the last interglacial at 75,000 to 125,000 years ago, spanning the boundary of the Late Pleistocene and Middle Pleistocene. This is quite a bit more recent than the Early Pleistocene date originally ascribed to the Piltdown fossils, but it is still anomalously old for a skull of the fully human type in England. According to current theory, Homo sapiens sapiens arose in Africa about 100,000 years ago and only much later migrated to Europe, at around 30,000 years ago (Gowlett 1984, p. 118).

Oakley apparently still accepted that the skull and jaw belonged to the same creature. He suggested that “Piltdown man, far from being a primitive type, may have been a late specialized hominid which evolved in comparative isolation” (Goodman 1983, p. 100).

This did not entirely satisfy Marston, who was convinced the Piltdown jaw and skull were from completely different creatures. From his knowledge of medicine and dentistry, Marston concluded that the skull, with its closed sutures, was that of a mature human, while the jaw, with its incompletely developed molars, was from an immature ape (Goodman 1983, p. 101). He also felt that the dark staining of the bones, taken as a sign of great antiquity, was caused by Dawson soaking them in a solution of potassium dichromate to harden them.

8.8 Evidence of Forgery

Marston’s ongoing campaign about the Piltdown fossils eventually drew the attention of J. S. Weiner, an Oxford anthropologist. Weiner himself soon became convinced that something was wrong with the Piltdown fossils. He noticed on teeth abrasion marks that to him indicated artificial filing. As early as 1916, C. W. Lyne, a dentist, had noted that the Piltdown molars, which apparently belonged to a fairly young individual, should not be as worn down as they appeared (Goodman 1983, p. 102).

J. S. Weiner reported his suspicions to W. E. Le Gros Clark, head of the anthropology department at Oxford University, but Le Gros Clark was at first skeptical. On August 5, 1953, Weiner and Oakley met with Le Gros Clark at the British Museum, where Oakley removed the actual Piltdown specimens from a safe so they could examine the controversial relics. At this point, Weiner (1955, pp. 44–45) presented to Le Gros Clark a chimpanzee tooth he had taken from a museum collection and then filed and stained. The resemblance to the Piltdown molar was so striking that Le Gros Clark authorized a full investigation of all the Piltdown fossils (Weiner et al. 1953, pp. 141–142). One wonders if this step would have been taken if the Piltdown man fossils had fit more comfortably within the emerging hominid evolutionary progression.

In any case, a second fluorine content test, using new techniques, was applied to the Piltdown human fossils. Three pieces of the Piltdown skull now yielded a fluorine content of .1 percent. By this time, all the other fossil material from Piltdown was also suspect. Consequently, the Piltdown skull was compared with Late Pleistocene fossils from other sites in the same region, which showed a minimum fluorine content of .1 percent. But the Piltdown jaw and teeth yielded a much lower fluorine content of .01–.04 percent. A modern chimpanzee tooth had .06 percent fluorine. Because fluorine content increases with the passing of time, the results indicated a younger age for the jaw and teeth than the skull. The test results were reported in a paper authored by Weiner, Le Gros Clark, and Oakley, who stated: “the results leave no doubt that, whereas the Piltdown cranium may well be Upper Pleistocene as claimed in 1950 [by Oakley], the mandible, canine tooth and isolated molar are quite modern” (Weiner et al. 1953, p. 143). The conclusion that the jaw and cranial bones were of different ages