Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [365]
Von Koenigswald, like Weiner and Oakley, blamed Dawson: “It is certainly not nice to accuse a dead man who cannot defend himself; but everything quite clearly points to his responsibility for the forgery. Indeed, it has now turned out that neither the fossils nor the tools belong to this locality at all, and that the whole find was carefully planted” (Wendt 1972, p. 154). But as we have seen, the evidence is not so clear cut in this regard. Indeed, it is difficult to see how anyone could say that anything “quite clearly points” to anything in regard to the Piltdown controversy.
For example, if Dawson were involved in chemical forgery, why did he immediately send the five pieces of skull originally found at Piltdown to a public chemist for analysis? Furthermore, Dawson openly admitted he had treated the fragments with potassium dichromate to harden them, and it was well known that he was performing some experiments on staining techniques in his offices (Bowden 1977, p. 26). If Dawson had really been involved in some deliberate fraudulent staining and planting of the original skull pieces and all the other fossils found at Piltdown, it seems he would have been more careful.
Furthermore, it would appear that the Piltdown forgery (even excluding the skull) demanded extensive technical knowledge and capability—beyond that seemingly possessed by Dawson, an amateur anthropologist. Gavin De Beer, a director of the British Museum of Natural History, wrote in a foreword to a report by Weiner, Le Gros Clark, and Oakley: “We are now in a position to give an account of the full extent of the Piltdown hoax. The mandible has been shown by . . . anatomical and X-ray evidence to be almost certainly that of an immature orang-utan; that it is entirely Recent has been confirmed by a number of microchemical tests, as well as by the electron-microscope demonstration of organic (collagen) fibers; the black coating on the canine tooth, originally assumed to be an iron encrustation, is a paint (probably Vandyke brown); the so-called turbinal bone is shown by its texture not to be a turbinal bone at all, but thin fragments of probably non-human limb-bone; all the associated flint implements have been artificially iron-stained; the bone implement was shaped by a steel knife; the whole of the associated fauna must have been ‘planted,’ and it is concluded from radioactivity tests and fluorine analysis that some of the specimens are of foreign origin” ( Weiner et al. 1955, p. 228). It appears that a professional scientist, who had access to rare fossils and knew how to select them and modify them to give the impression of a genuine faunal assemblage of the proper age, had to be involved in the Piltdown episode.
Some have tried to make a case against Teilhard de Chardin, who had studied at a Jesuit college near Piltdown and who had become acquainted with Dawson as early as 1909. A Stegodon tooth found at Piltdown was believed by Weiner and his associates to have come from a North African site that might have been visited by Teilhard de Chardin in the period from 1906 to 1908, during which time he was a lecturer at Cairo University (Millar 1972, p. 232).
Woodward is another suspect. Over the course of several decades, he tightly controlled access to the original Piltdown fossils, which were stored under his care in the British Museum. This could be interpreted as an attempt to prevent evidence of forgery from being noticed by other scientists. It is interesting, for example, that Woodward originally reported the following facts about the Piltdown site: “Portions of the bed are rather finely stratified, and the materials are usually cemented together by iron oxide, so that a pick is often needed to dislodge portions—more especially at one particular horizon near the base. It is in this last mentioned stratum that all the fossil bones and teeth discovered in situ by us have occurred” (Dawson and Woodward