The Piltdown Man, 1913-19

The Piltdown Man, 1913

Dawson, Charles (1864-1916); Woodward, Arthur Smith (1864-1944). “On the Discovery of a Palaeolithic Human Skull and Mandible in a Flint-Bearing Gravel Overlying the Wealden (Hastings Beds) at Piltdown, Fletching (Sussex).” Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, 1913, 69:117-151.

Dawson and Woodward report. Image source: Dawson, Charles and Arthur Smith Woodward. “On the Discovery of a Palaeolithic Human Skull and Mandible … at Piltdown, Fletching (Sussex).” Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 69, 1913, p. 117.

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Charles Dawson was an amateur archaeologist who found several skull fragments, a piece of a jaw, and a canine tooth at a gravel pit in Piltdown, England, in 1912. He called in an expert, Arthur Smith Woodward, who confirmed that these were the remains of a prehistoric human, who was consequently named Eoanthropus dawsonii--Dawson’s “dawn man”. There was no immediate suspicion that Piltdown man might be a hoax.

The plate depicts one of the skull fragments at the top (three different views) and the jaw segment at the bottom (4 views).

Skull and jaw fragments of Eoanthropus dawsonii. Image source: Dawson, Charles and Arthur Smith Woodward. “On the Discovery of a Palaeolithic Human Skull and Mandible … at Piltdown, Fletching (Sussex).” Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 69, 1913, pl. 20.

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