Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [364]
What about the altered animal fossils allegedly planted at Piltdown? Those could have been introduced without arousing suspicion, because after the skull’s discovery the investigators would often be searching through the gravel, which was already broken up.
Robert Essex, a scientist personally acquainted with Dawson in the years
1912 to 1915, provided interesting testimony about the Piltdown jaw, or jaws, as it turns out. Essex wrote in 1955: “Another jaw not mentioned by Dr. Weiner came from Piltdown much more human than the ape’s jaw, and therefore much more likely to belong to the Piltdown skull parts which are admittedly human. I saw and handled that jaw and know in whose bag it came to Dawson’s office. The jaw was also seen by Mr. H. H. Wakefield, then an articled clerk of Dawson’s, and he has given written evidence of seeing it. Dawson never saw it, and the owner himself probably never knew until 1953 that anybody but himself had seen it” (Bowden 1977, p. 37).
Essex then gave more details. At the time, he had been science master at a local grammar school, located near Dawson’s office. Essex stated: “One day when I was passing I was beckoned in by one of the clerks whom I knew well. He had called me in to show me a fossil half-jaw much more human than an ape’s and with three molars firmly fixed in it. When I asked where this object came from, the answer was ‘Piltdown.’ According to the clerk, it had been brought down by one of the ‘diggers’ who, when he called and asked for Mr. Dawson, was carrying a bag such as might be used for carrying tools. When he was told that Mr. Dawson was busy in court he said he would leave the bag and come back. When he had gone, the clerk opened the bag and saw this jaw. Seeing me passing he had called me in. I told him he had better put it back and that Mr. Dawson would be cross if he knew. I found afterwards that when the ‘digger’ returned, Mr. Dawson was still busy in court, so he picked up his bag and left” (Bowden 1977, p. 37). Essex later saw photographs of the Piltdown jaw. Noting the jaw was not the same one he had seen in Dawson’s office, he communicated this information to the British Museum.
These reports are significant for the following reason. It is unlikely that a forger would have planted a human jaw at Piltdown, along with everything else. So the story about the discovery of a human jaw tends to confirm the view that the human skull found at Piltdown was native to the gravels. Even if we grant that every other bone connected with Piltdown is a forgery, if the skull was found in situ, we are confronted with what could be one more case of Homo sapiens sapiens remains from the late Middle Pleistocene or early Late Pleistocene.
8.10 The Identity of The Forger
Most recent writing, totally accepting that all the Piltdown fossils and implements were fraudulent, has focused on identifying the culprit. Weiner and Oakley insinuated that Dawson, the amateur paleontologist, was to blame. Woodward, the professional scientist, was absolved.
But Dawson’s honor was defended by, of all people, Alvan Marston. At a meeting of the Geological Society of London, held on November 25, 1953, Weiner and Oakley made a slide presentation detailing the evidence that led them to conclude the Piltdown jaw had been forged from a modern orangutan jaw. Marston, who strongly objected to any suggestion that Dawson was guilty of forgery, showed his own slides proving that the jaw, though that of an ape, was a genuine fossil with no sign of deliberate staining or filing. Marston apparently believed that although Dawson may have been mistaken about the age of the jaw, and in connecting it with the human cranium found with it, he was not a forger. Marston accused the British Museum of making Dawson a scapegoat. Dawson could not fight back, but he, Marston, could. Marston shouted, “Let them try and tackle me!” A British author