UBC: The Piltdown Forgery
Sep. 20th, 2009 09:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyWeiner, J. S. The Piltdown Forgery. 1953. Introd. Chris Stringer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Of the three books I've read about Piltdown Man, this, the first written, is also the best. It was written by one of the three men who actually uncovered the hoax, and unlike Ronald Millar's The Piltdown Men and Frank Spencer's Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery, it focuses first and extensively on the mechanics of the Piltdown forgery, and only then proceeds to the detective's whodunnit. Thus, by the time Weiner gets to talking about means, motive, and opportunity for the various suspects, he's already built a fairly clear picture of the perpetrator, based on the actual evidence of what the forger did (and, just as important, when he did it). And thus he convinces me that Charles Dawson hoaxed Arthur Smith Woodward and the paleontological establishment. (Chris Stringer's afterword, with the benefit of another fifty years of hindsight, makes it clear that if Dawson was the Piltdown forger, his actions fit into a pattern evident in the rest of his career--which cannot be said about any of the other suspects.) Possibly Weiner's best point is that (although he doesn't put it quite like this) Dawson, aside from being the only person who could control what was found at the two Piltdown sites, is the only person who benefited from the forgery. For every other suspect, the motive is embarrassing Smith Woodward, or Dawson, or another scientist, or British paleontology in general--and in every one of those cases, you end up having to ask, where was their pay-off? Why did they wait forty years for three scientists to quite independently do the reveal for them? But Dawson died in 1916--after which, as Weiner also points out, no further Piltdown discoveries were made, despite the fact that Smith Woodward continued excavations for the rest of his life--and Dawson got acclaim and respect from the London establishment. Not only does Dawson as forger apply Occam's Razor to the Gordian Knot (if you'll pardon the free mixing of metaphors), but it is also the only scenario in which the forger got what he wanted through his own actions.
There isn't any proof of Dawson's guilt (which is another fascinating thing about Piltdown: all accusations are hypotheses, because we still don't know), but Weiner convinced me. At the very least, it's the most plausible theory, and the most richly and firmly supported, that I've encountered.
Of the three books I've read about Piltdown Man, this, the first written, is also the best. It was written by one of the three men who actually uncovered the hoax, and unlike Ronald Millar's The Piltdown Men and Frank Spencer's Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery, it focuses first and extensively on the mechanics of the Piltdown forgery, and only then proceeds to the detective's whodunnit. Thus, by the time Weiner gets to talking about means, motive, and opportunity for the various suspects, he's already built a fairly clear picture of the perpetrator, based on the actual evidence of what the forger did (and, just as important, when he did it). And thus he convinces me that Charles Dawson hoaxed Arthur Smith Woodward and the paleontological establishment. (Chris Stringer's afterword, with the benefit of another fifty years of hindsight, makes it clear that if Dawson was the Piltdown forger, his actions fit into a pattern evident in the rest of his career--which cannot be said about any of the other suspects.) Possibly Weiner's best point is that (although he doesn't put it quite like this) Dawson, aside from being the only person who could control what was found at the two Piltdown sites, is the only person who benefited from the forgery. For every other suspect, the motive is embarrassing Smith Woodward, or Dawson, or another scientist, or British paleontology in general--and in every one of those cases, you end up having to ask, where was their pay-off? Why did they wait forty years for three scientists to quite independently do the reveal for them? But Dawson died in 1916--after which, as Weiner also points out, no further Piltdown discoveries were made, despite the fact that Smith Woodward continued excavations for the rest of his life--and Dawson got acclaim and respect from the London establishment. Not only does Dawson as forger apply Occam's Razor to the Gordian Knot (if you'll pardon the free mixing of metaphors), but it is also the only scenario in which the forger got what he wanted through his own actions.
There isn't any proof of Dawson's guilt (which is another fascinating thing about Piltdown: all accusations are hypotheses, because we still don't know), but Weiner convinced me. At the very least, it's the most plausible theory, and the most richly and firmly supported, that I've encountered.
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Date: 2009-09-21 07:48 am (UTC)