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truepennyFinished reading the two books about Piltdown Man that I got a couple of weeks ago (The Piltdown Men by Ronald Millar and Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery by Frank Spencer). Definitely recommend the latter over the former. The Piltdown Men rambles and wobbles and actually works better as an overview of Victorian and Edwardian paleontology than it does as a discussion of Piltdown. Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery does an excellent job of demonstrating both why the forgery succeeded for as long as it did and how much damage it did to the progress of paleontology in Britian and America. It ends very abruptly and unsatisfyingly in what felt to me like the middle of a examination of who might be the guilty party or parties and what their motives might have been, but up until that point it was thorough and readable.
What's interesting to me, having read these books, is the continuing lack of a really plausible solution to the mystery. Spencer does a better job than Millar, partly because he approaches from the question of opportunity rather than motive, partly because he's writing 18 years later (The Piltdown Men was published in 1972, Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery in 1990) and has had a chance to observe more theories propounded and shot down. Spencer examines the cases against all the suspects: Charles Dawson, Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, Sir Grafton Elliot Smith (Millar's choice), William Abbott, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, William Butterfield, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (yes, really), Martin Hinton, William Sollas, and Samuel Woodhead. He proves both that none of these men had the necessary qualifications--those with access did not have the scientific knowledge, those with knowledge did not have access--and moreover that the generally accepted motive for the hoax, spite against Dawson and Woodward, will not hold water. Woodward and Dawson were both dead before the hoax was discovered, and both of them benefitted enormously from the prestige associated with Piltdown.
Spencer's argument, following the research of an Australian historian named Ian Langham, is that Piltdown was a collaboration between Dawson and Sir Arthur Keith. He convinced me on practical grounds that Dawson must have been a perpetrator rather than a victim, and he offers enough evidence, circumstantial and circumlocutory though it is, to make it believable that Keith and Dawson might have conspired together. Where he falls down is interestingly that same question of motive. Personal gain is Spencer's rallying cry, and he points out convincingly that these two men, of all the possible suspects, are the two who had the most to gain by a successful hoax and (having provided carefully for themselves in the matter of alibis) the least to lose in the event of its discovery. I'm even willing to believe that Dawson might have dreamed up this hoax solely for the purpose of winning scientific acclaim. But it honestly seems a very flimsy motive for Keith, and the book ends (abruptly, as I said) before Spencer gets around to addressing the question of why a respected and respectable scientist would connive at such an ugly, damaging, and ultimately embarrassing hoax. I'm not saying those reasons aren't there, just that Spencer stops short of providing them.
Ultimately, then, we have a carefully orchestrated hoax, engineered with an almost preternatural understanding of the preconceptions and desires of Edwardian paleontologists (Spencer does an excellent job of showing how bits of Piltdown kept turning up at the most opportune moments to keep the skull from being debunked or forgotten). But we have no firm proof as to the identity of any of the hoaxers (although, especially considering the way Piltdown dried up after his death in 1916, I buy the idea that Dawson was a prime mover) and no real answers about why they did what they did.
Like the oracle at Delphi, the bones have spoken.
What's interesting to me, having read these books, is the continuing lack of a really plausible solution to the mystery. Spencer does a better job than Millar, partly because he approaches from the question of opportunity rather than motive, partly because he's writing 18 years later (The Piltdown Men was published in 1972, Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery in 1990) and has had a chance to observe more theories propounded and shot down. Spencer examines the cases against all the suspects: Charles Dawson, Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, Sir Grafton Elliot Smith (Millar's choice), William Abbott, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, William Butterfield, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (yes, really), Martin Hinton, William Sollas, and Samuel Woodhead. He proves both that none of these men had the necessary qualifications--those with access did not have the scientific knowledge, those with knowledge did not have access--and moreover that the generally accepted motive for the hoax, spite against Dawson and Woodward, will not hold water. Woodward and Dawson were both dead before the hoax was discovered, and both of them benefitted enormously from the prestige associated with Piltdown.
Spencer's argument, following the research of an Australian historian named Ian Langham, is that Piltdown was a collaboration between Dawson and Sir Arthur Keith. He convinced me on practical grounds that Dawson must have been a perpetrator rather than a victim, and he offers enough evidence, circumstantial and circumlocutory though it is, to make it believable that Keith and Dawson might have conspired together. Where he falls down is interestingly that same question of motive. Personal gain is Spencer's rallying cry, and he points out convincingly that these two men, of all the possible suspects, are the two who had the most to gain by a successful hoax and (having provided carefully for themselves in the matter of alibis) the least to lose in the event of its discovery. I'm even willing to believe that Dawson might have dreamed up this hoax solely for the purpose of winning scientific acclaim. But it honestly seems a very flimsy motive for Keith, and the book ends (abruptly, as I said) before Spencer gets around to addressing the question of why a respected and respectable scientist would connive at such an ugly, damaging, and ultimately embarrassing hoax. I'm not saying those reasons aren't there, just that Spencer stops short of providing them.
Ultimately, then, we have a carefully orchestrated hoax, engineered with an almost preternatural understanding of the preconceptions and desires of Edwardian paleontologists (Spencer does an excellent job of showing how bits of Piltdown kept turning up at the most opportune moments to keep the skull from being debunked or forgotten). But we have no firm proof as to the identity of any of the hoaxers (although, especially considering the way Piltdown dried up after his death in 1916, I buy the idea that Dawson was a prime mover) and no real answers about why they did what they did.
Like the oracle at Delphi, the bones have spoken.
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