Addendum to Thackeray (2023): On the Piltdown Case: Closer to closure?

Francis Thackeray, Honorary Research Associate, ESI

In the October issue of PalNews (Thackeray, 2023) I presented a scenario to try to reach closure on the “Piltdown Case”, involving a hoax (intended as a joke) whereby fragments of a human skull (stained brown) were buried together with a broken jaw of an orangutan (also stained brown) at Piltdown in England in 1912, constituting “Eoanthropus dawsoni (Woodward, 1912)”. Here I present an Addendum regarding the joke that went seriously wrong after it had been accepted by palaeontologists as a genuine “ape-man” with a large brain but an ape-like jaw.

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“Piltdown Man” was not recognised as a hoax until 1953 such that the validity of the Taung Child, Australopithecus africanus (Dart, 1925), was in question for several decades. Contrasting with Eoanthropus, the australopithecine had a small brain combined with human-like dentition (eg. no diastema).

Thackeray (2019, 2023) identified a trio of suspects in the context of Piltdown 1 (Edgar
Willett, Teilhard de Chardin and Martin Hinton) in 1912 and 1913, with the motive being to
hoist Charles Dawson (a serial fraudster) on his own petard. But it is necessary to respond to
the following statement by Chris Stringer (pers. comm.) who serves as the Devil’s Advocate:

"Unless you can explain away how Dawson had a piece of the Piltdown jaw from which to
extract and ‘find’ Piltdown 2, I don’t see how he can be exonerated"

Here I expand on my scenario:

1. After the hype surrounding Piltdown 1, Willett (who by 1913 was a member of an “Inner Circle”) confided to Dawson (as a friend) that he was a target of a joke.
2. Sometime after the publicity of Piltdown 1, Willett showed the remaining ("unused") orangutan mandible to Dawson, and gave part of it to him. In terms of this scenario, a collection of faunal remains that had been found by Dawson’s widow in their house after his death (pers. comm., Chris Dean and Chris Stringer) would have been supplemented by part of the Piltdown orangutan jaw. The latter might have represented an individual different from any of the Pongo specimens from Borneo brought to England by Alfred Everett in 1875 and formally curated in museum collections.
3. Dawson was bitter about being the subject of a joke, but retained a friendship with Willett as a member of the “Inner Circle”.
4. Dawson subsequently perpetuated the joke by planting an orangutan molar with human cranial fragments at a second site (Piltdown 2).
5. By creating Piltdown 2, Dawson was either acting alone, or conspiring in cahoots with Willett.
6. While Piltdown 1 may have been perpetrated by a trio of jokers, Piltdown 2 brought in Dawson (hence a quartet of conspirators).
7. Neither Teilhard de Chardin (back in France after 1913), nor Hinton (in London), were involved with Piltdown 2.
8. In an obituary to Willett, it was said that he had a “very quiet, retiring not to say shy disposition, and consequently never had a very large circle of acquaintances”. Dawson may have been one of his few friends in Sussex. The two of them are known to have frequented the same clubs (pers. comm., Chris Dean).
9. Woodward (1917) reported that a friend of Dawson had found a rhinoceros molar at Piltdown 2. It has previously been thought that the “friend” was Edwin Ray Lankester (pers. comm., Chris Dean). Here I propose instead that he was Edgar Willett.
10. I suggest that the rhino molar of Piltdown 2, as well as other faunal material (even the "cricket bat"; elephant bone) from Piltdown 1, were obtained by Edgar Willett from museum collections belonging to his father, the antiquarian Henry Willett in Brighton.

In my opinion this Addendum, together with evidence presented by Thackeray (2019, 2023), dra ws us closer to closure of the Piltdown Case.

Acknowledgements:
I thank the Trustees of the Natural History Museum for access to the Piltdown Archives. Further, I wish to express my deep gratitude to Chris Stringer and Chris Dean for stimulating discussions and correspondence.

References:
Thackeray, J.F. 2019. Teilhard de Chardin, human evolution and “Piltdown Man”. Evolutionary Anthropology 28: 126-132.  https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21773.

Thackeray (2023). Three suspects behind the Piltdown Man fossil hoax. PalNews 23(2): 55-57. (Also uploaded as a PalBlog).

Woodward, A.S. 1917. Fourth note on the Piltdown gravel with evidence of a second skull of
Eoanthropus dawsoni. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 73: 1-10.