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p. 269; Woodward 1948, p. 10). These must have been stained by another method. In connection with some Piltdown beavers’ teeth, which also contained gypsum but no chromium, the British Museum report said: “These were presumably stained by another technique, which dispensed with the use of a dichromate solution as an oxidizer” (Weiner et al. 1955, p. 252). (3) The jaw, which contained chromium but no gypsum, must have been stained by a method that involved use of iron and chromium compounds, but which did not produce gypsum. It is hard to see why a forger would have used so many methods when one would have sufficed. We must also wonder why the forger carelessly stained the jaw to a far lesser extent than the skull, thus risking detection.

Additional evidence, in the form of eyewitness testimony, suggests that the skull was in fact originally from the Piltdown gravels. The eyewitness was Mabel Kenward, daughter of Robert Kenward, the owner of Barkham Manor. On February 23, 1955, the Telegraph published a letter from Miss Kenward that contained this statement: “One day when they were digging in the unmoved gravel, one of the workmen saw what he called a coconut. He broke it with his pick, kept one piece and threw the rest away” (Vere 1959, p. 4). Particularly significant was the testimony that the gravel was unmoved.

Francis Vere amplified this information in a book published the same year that Miss Kenward wrote her letter: “the first discovery of the skull was most graphically described to me by Miss Mabel Kenward herself. She remembers seeing from her window her father, Mr. Robert Kenward, standing by the pit looking at the workmen, while they were digging in the gravel. One of them said there was something just like a coconut in the pit, and her father said that they should take care how they got it out, but before he could stop them, a blow from the pick shattered the skull and pieces flew in all directions. He picked up as many pieces as he could find and came into the house, whereupon Miss Kenward exclaimed, ‘What on earth have you loaded up your pockets with all those old stones for?’ He laid them out on the table and looked at them, but later returned them to the workmen, telling them to give them to Mr. Dawson next time he came. She could not say, of course, whether all the pieces were given to Dawson by the workmen. Presumably, as recounted by Miss Kenward and Woodward, the workman kept one piece which he later handed to Dawson, and threw away the rest” (Bowden

1977, p. 12).

Even Weiner himself (1955, p. 193) wrote: “we cannot easily dismiss the story of the gravel diggers and their ‘coconut’ as pure invention, a plausible tale put about to furnish an acceptable history for the pieces. . . . Dawson told frequently of the labourers’ part (even if he did not clearly record the coconut episode) in the next few years and could hardly have had reason to fear anyone’s seeking confirmation of the men. Granting, then the probability that the workmen did find a portion of skull, it is still conceivable that what they found was not the semi-fossil Eoanthropus but some very recent and quite ordinary burial.” Weiner suggested that the culprit, whoever he may have been, could have then substituted treated skull pieces for the ones actually found. But if the workmen were dealing with “a very recent and quite ordinary burial” then where were the rest of the bones of the corpse? At least some harder bones, like the femurs, should have remained.

In the end, Weiner suggested that an entire fake skull was planted, and the workmen broke it. But Mabel Kenward testified that the surface where the workman started digging was unbroken. The spot was also on the manor grounds, quite near the house, it appears from the testimony, and the gravel was so compact and cemented that it took a pick to break into it. It would not have been easy, it seems, for some unknown person to enter onto private property in England and excavate a deep hole with a pick by the drive near a manor house, any time of day or night, without being questioned. In