Timewatch

Britain's Greatest Hoax - Piltdown Man (2003x11)

: 21, 2003

Who was Piltdown Man? Early in the twentieth century the story of Piltdown Man came out at just the time when British scientists were in a desperate race to find the missing link in the theory of evolution. Since Charles Darwin had published his theory on the origin of species in 1859, the hunt had been on for clues to the ancient ancestor that linked apes to humans. Sensational finds of fossil ancestors, named Neanderthals, had already occurred in Germany and France. British Scientists, however, were desperate to prove that Britain had also played its part in the story of human evolution, and Piltdown Man was the answer to their prayers - because of him, Britain could claim to be the birthplace of mankind. On 18 December 1912 newspapers throughout the world ran some sensational headlines - mostly along the lines of: 'Missing Link Found - Darwin's Theory Proved'. That same day, at a meeting of the Geological Society in London, fragments of a fossil skull and jawbone were unveiled to the world. These fragments were quickly attributed to 'the earliest Englishman - Piltdown Man', although the find was officially named Eoanthropus dawsoni after its discoverer, Charles Dawson. Dawson was an amateur archaeologist, said to have stumbled across the skull in a gravel pit at Barkham Manor, Piltdown, in Sussex. Some forty years later a team of English scientists attempted to discover if Piltdown Man was genuine or a deliberate fraud. So what had really happened?