The Rest Is History - 483. The Mysterious Case of the Ape Man

Episode Date: August 11, 2024

In Sussex, in 1912, men quarrying in a gravel pit near Piltdown village turned up a human skull. According to Charles Dawson, a lawyer and amateur archeologist with a remarkable track record for finding ancient treasures, it belonged to a palaeolithic man, possibly millions of years old, and was therefore the earliest trace of mankind ever found in England. Greater still, Piltdown man as he came to be known, seemed to be the ‘missing link’ between apes and men. The discovery inflamed and delighted British society, confirming and buttressing dearly held beliefs about the evolution of modern Europeans, and radically transforming understandings of the origins of humanity. In the wake of the find and the widespread corroboration of its authenticity by some of the best academics of the age, further digs were conducted in the area, which unearthed even more wondrous discoveries - a jawbone, primitive tools, and strangest of all, a cricket bat; perhaps the first hint that all was not as it seemed…was the greatest discovery of all time nothing more than an audacious and extraordinarily skilful hoax? And if so, who was the culprit in this grand mystery?  Join Tom and Dominic, as they describe the most mystifying archaeological discovery in English history, and one of the most unscrupulous tricks of all time, revealing as they do the truth behind the history of mankind. _______ *The Rest Is History LIVE in the U.S.A.* If you live in the States, we've got some great news: Tom and Dominic will be performing throughout America in November, with shows in San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Boston and New York.  *The Rest Is History LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall* Tom and Dominic, accompanied by a live orchestra, take a deep dive into the lives and times of two of history’s greatest composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Tickets on sale now at TheRestIsHistory.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. The earliest man? Remarkable discovery in Sussex. A skull millions of years old. One of the most important prehistoric finds of our time has been made in Sussex. In spite of the extreme secrecy of the authorities who are in possession of the relic, the news is leaking out and is causing great excitement among scientists, although there are very few even among geologists and anthropologists who have any first-hand information. The facts are that a few weeks ago, men quarrying in a deep gravel pit turned up a human skull. It was in fragments, but there was enough of it for the experts to

form a conclusive judgment. It turns out to be the skull of a Paleolithic man and is by far the earliest trace of mankind that has yet been found in England. It was found in association with the bones of one of the most ancient types of elephant. The stratum in which it lay was the beach of a very old riverbed. There is no doubt at all of its authenticity. The skull resembles the Neanderthal specimen, but belongs to a much lower and more primitive type of mankind even than that. The experts have been able to come to a definite judgment as to the kind of brain once housed in these amazing bones. It was certainly a very different brain to that possessed by any living race. The experts will not venture an opinion as

to the date of the Sussex Man, but most probably he lived millions of years ago. So that was a newspaper that is never wrong, the Manchester Guardian, on the 21st of November, 1912. Tom, we are a couple of years before the outbreak of the First World War. The scene, memorably painted in poems and novels and film retrospectives, the endless summer before the deluge. And we're in East Sussex, you know, bucolic pastoral part of England, near the village of Piltdown. And as the Manchester Guardian is telling its liberal-minded readers,

somebody has turned up an extraordinary find, this skull of a prehistoric man. Yeah. So actually, the summer of 1912 was notoriously dreadful. The entire cricket season was pretty much rained off, which is why I know about it. Oh, what a tragedy. But there is kind of light and the gloom, and there is the huge excitement of this incredible

paleontological discovery. A prehistoric skull, but there's also a jawbone, there are teeth, there are primitive tools. And very excitingly, the skull seems to be kind of humanoid, resembling that of a modern human with a brain size, perhaps two thirds that of a modern human is the estimate. But the jawbone is more like that of a chimpanzee. So Piltdown Man, as this creature comes to be called, seems to be a missing link, kind of halfway between modern humans and apes or whatever. No wonder the Guardian was so excited. Yeah, very, very exciting. And in fact, it's so exciting that there's a painter called John Cook,

who in 1915 does this kind of very dramatic portrayal of all the various figures involved in the discovery, the scientists and so on. And they're in a room, crouched over a table, gazing at the various fragments of the bones. And on the back behind them, there is a picture of the greatest of all English biologists and scientists, Charles Darwin. And so this is reflection of the way in which, by now in 1915, of course, the Great War has broken out, but it remains a source of enormous national pride because it seems to back up Darwin's theories. And Darwin, of course, is English. But also this skull in the Guardian is very keen on this, pointing it out. It's much older than the skull

of Neanderthal man, which is German. So hooray for England. We've got an older skull than the Germans have got. And what's even better, so Piltdown Man is described as the first Englishman, but it suggests that humans themselves may have evolved in England, not anywhere else. So in other words, Tom, humanity didn't just reach its final and most perfected form in England. It also originated in England. Yeah. And in fact, there's a connection there because presumably if the first advanced humans emerge in England, that explains why people in England are so much more advanced than everywhere else. I think we should end the episode right there.

So, unfortunately, there is a slight shadow over this story. Oh, no. Because, of course, the discovery of Piltdown Man is announced, as we've said, in 1912. And regular listeners to our podcast will remember that another great event happens in 1912, the sinking of titanic and it has to be said that i think that there are kind of certain parallels between the two stories so in both cases you have enormous patriotic excitement but perhaps a quality of excitement that suggests a certain nervousness about foreign competition as much as anything it was the germans

isn't it well and americans too as we'll see right so the titanic of course goes on to hit the iceberg and not to give away too big a spoiler but piltdown man will ultimately turn out not entirely to be what its discoverers think it is it's facing an iceberg of its own tom it is the of scientific scepticism in due course will send it down to the icy depths. Right. So teasing out that kind of comparison with the Titanic, before we come to the story of how Piltdown Man came to be found, who found it and all of that, maybe it would be good just to look at what reason in 1912 British scientists have to be lacking in self-confidence. Lacking in self-confidence. Oh, that's sad. Well, because as with the Titanic, Britannia rules the waves.

But by 1912, there's a certain nervousness about whether Britain is being overtaken by the Americans and by the Germans. So similarly, as with industrialization and as with sea power, so to an extent with natural history, Britain had established a massive early lead that is now starting to kind of slightly shrink. So Britain's lead in natural history is established in all kinds of ways at the beginning of the 19th century. So most excitingly for me, Britain is the first country to excavate and identify dinosaurs. dinosaurs is actually found in Sussex in the 1820s by a doctor from Lewes called Gideon Mantell, who excavates and identifies a dinosaur that comes to be called Iguanodon. Britain is also the first country to build a national museum devoted to natural history, which opens in 1881.

And when it opens, it's called the British Museum Brackets Natural History. It's now today known as the Natural History Museum, but it's this massive cathedral. Basically every British child probably will have visited it. And it's constructed to convey a sense of grandeur and awe and splendour that reflects well on Britain. And now, of course, campaigners are calling for the artefacts to be given back to the animals, aren't they, Tom?

Are they, Dominic? Are they? You can take the boy out of the Daily Mail. And, of course, Britain, as every visitor to the Natural History Museum sees, because there's a huge statue of him in pole position, has Charles Darwin, who we've mentioned is the greatest biologist of his age, origin of species, theory of evolution by natural selection and so on. And perhaps his most controversial book is a book called The Descent of Man, which comes out in 1871, which advances the theory that Darwin had been too nervous to introduce in The Origin of Species that humans, just like every other animal, are a product of evolution. And so this opens up all kinds of tantalizing and sensitive questions, among which is the

question of, is there a single human race, or are there multiple races? Darwin himself thinks that all humans belong to the same race, has the same origin point, but it kind of encourages Darwin's peers to view human history as a kind of struggle. Yeah, of course, competition. So this will go on to have very, very dark implications with the Nazis and so on. Yeah. But these ideas are kind of percolating around long before the Nazis. So famously, it's not Darwin who comes up with the phrase survival of the fittest, but Herbert Spencer. And he writes, this survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called natural selection or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.

And so this, of course, is very, very flattering to the British, who at the time count themselves the top nation. They've produced the top scientist. It's all great. But of course, there is also a warning, which is what happens if they start falling behind in the struggle for life? Will they be history? So this is all kind of part of the intellectual background. And certainly there are alarming signs in the field of natural history that Britain's lead is starting to slip. So to look, for example, at dinosaurs. Unfortunately for Britain, much more spectacular finds are being uncovered in the continent, for instance. So in 1878, the Iguanodon, which Mantel had found in Sussex,

an incredible find is made in Belgium, in the town of Bernissar, where dozens of Iguanodons, 29 I think in total, are found down a mine shaft. And in America, the finds are even larger. And the most famous of these, which again, anyone who's been to the Natural History Museum will remember, is this huge cast of a Diplodocus, which has been excavated by Andrew Carnegie. I'm just going to say it's a diplodocus. All right. Okay. Whatever. It's been dug up in America. Andrew Carnegie, this Scott-turned-American monopolist, the richest man in the world, he makes a cast of it and gives it back to the Natural History Museum. So it's kind of like the Titanic, Dominic. It's a kind of Anglo-American fusion. It's an attempt to build a sense of Atlantic identity that nevertheless makes the British feel slightly

like they're being put in the shade by American advances. And then, of course, you have human fossils. And this is very much a live area, not least because of Darwin's book about it. But the idea that humans have evolved, you need fossil evidence for it. And this has begun to appear over the course of the second half of the 19th century. So in 1856, a skull has been found in the Neander Valley, the Neanderthal. So that's where the name of Neanderthal man comes from, and that's German. 1868, a prehistoric Homo sapien has been found at Cro-Magnon in France. Is that a place? It is.

Cro-Magnon is a place. Who knew? Yeah. Well, I've learned something. I'm absolutely thrilled with it. And then in 1886, some Neanderthal skulls are found in Belgium. So Germany, France, Belgium. Who would have imagined that they would be full of Neanderthals, Tom?

But Dominic, nothing in Britain. That does not surprise me. So Britain lacks a prehistoric man. Yeah, no Neanderthals in Britain. And this is a massive, massive sore point for British scientists. And there's a kind of an additional complication, an additional reason why British scientists are getting a bit antsy, is that in 1891, there'd been a very, very controversial find made outside Europe in Java, so in Indonesiaonesia by a dutch expedition and they'd found the remains of what the discovery is called java man which seems to be a kind of human ape missing link and java man is bipedal so it seems to walk on you know two feet but it has a very

small skull and european scientists are very skeptical about this. And they insist it's not human at all, that it's just an ape. Because their assumption is that big brains come first and then walking on two feet. And the reason that they argue this is chiefly because it then enables them to argue, based on the fossil evidence of the Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnons, that humans originated in Europe. Because at this point, there is no evidence at all that humans have originated in Africa, even though actually Darwin thinks that they did because that's where all the apes are found. And this, again, is important for European kind of self-esteem because it enables them to explain why Europeans are the most advanced of races as they see it.

Because they were born first and they're further along. That's basically the claim, is it? That's basically the claim. I'm slightly baffled about the bipedalism and why that matters. Because the Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnons are bipedal and they have relatively large heads. So Java man, if it's bipedal and has a small head, that suggests that humans would have originated outside Europe. And that can't be true. Well, they don't want to believe that because they want to believe that humans emerged in Europe. Right. Because it then enables them to argue that Europeans are the most superior race. So they're saying, okay, sure, there's a fellow walking around on two feet, but he's got a tiny brain, so he doesn't count. It's a monkey. It's an ape. Okay. It's nothing to do with humans. Right. That's their argument. And it's an argument

that is clearly driven basically by racism and by a sense of European superiority. And that in turn explains why British scientists are desperate to find human fossil remains in Britain and particularly human fossil remains that have big skulls because both national and racial pride is essentially riding on it. The bigger the head, the better. The bigger the head, the more British, the better it is. I've got a massive head, Tom, if that's any inspiration to you. Well, there you go. I have to have like a baseball cap or something in a special size

because my head is so big. Massive brain. And you're bipedal. Well, sometimes. Brilliant. Anyway, yeah. So basically, this is the kind of the context for the sensational discovery announced in The Guardian.

Right. And it's why The Guardian is so keen on emphasising that the skull is big. So The Guardian doesn't say who has found it. It just says there has been a find near Piltdown in Sussex. Yes. But I think I'm right in saying that a month later, the two blokes who have found it pitch up at the Geological Society in London and say, here we are, and this is the amazing finding.

And who are they? Well, so as you say, two people kind of jointly make this presentation on the 18th of December 1912. And the first person there is the guy who had made the initial find. He discovered a fragment of skull at Piltdown. And this is a guy called Charles Dawson. And he is actually not a scientist at all, but a country solicitor. And he has his practice in Uckfield, not far from Lewis. And to this day, I gather Dawson Hart and company solicitors can still be found.

So that's very exciting. Okay. Well, let's hope that this story inspires confidence in them, Tom. Yes, let's hope. So Charles Dawson, basically, he has the look of a boiled egg with a moustache. Like Hercule Poirot. Very like Hercule Poirot. In appearance, he's kind of very jovial.

There's a faint twinkle in his eye, it is often said. Love it. The scientists who work with him on Piltdown Man all think he's kind of very jovial there's a faint twinkle in his eye it is often said love it the scientists who work with him on piltdown man all think he's great so one of them describes him as a delightful colleague another says of him he's always cheerful hopeful and overflowing with enthusiasm and his wife they have a very happy marriage she says of him that he's the best and kindest man who ever lived so if the listeners want to kind of aid memoir he's very like me are you a boiled egg with a moustache i I don't have a moustache, no. So as well as looking like a boiled egg with a moustache, he's also distinguished for his insatiable curiosity about every aspect of the natural history and history and archaeology of

Sussex, which is a country very rich in all three of those things. So he is a leading light of, Dominic, the country's oldest county archaeological society, which is the Sussex Archaeological Society. It's still going strong, a tremendous organisation. And like Gideon Mantel, the discoverer of the Iguanodon, he lives in Lewes, and specifically in a very grand house at the foot of Lewes Castle called Castle Lodge. So he's very much at the heart of sussex's history and over the course of his career he has made a succession of absolutely amazing discoveries so he's found fossils like mandel had done and specifically he had discovered the tooth of a previously unknown species of mammal from the cretaceous period which is the

last of the three periods of the age of the dinosaurs. He's discovered lots of antiquities and all of these have kind of shed intriguing and unexpected light on obscure periods of history. So he's found a Roman statuette that is made of cast iron rather than wrought iron, which is what you would expect because it is assumed that cast iron techniques had only developed in England in the 14th century. So to discover that the Romans had been on top of it is, you know, it's an amazing find. Yeah.

Brilliant to have overturned conventional wisdom of academics, isn't it? Absolutely. And Dawson has also found a brick from Pevensey, which is stamped with what seems to be the very last datable Roman inscription ever found in Britain. So that again is amazing. He's found a stone axe. He's found the remains of an ancient boat. So all incredible, lots more along those lines. And he's also very keen on natural wonders of which the most

extraordinary is a toad that has been mummified inside stone. So extraordinary, amazing wonder. Wow. How can that even happen? I'm curious about that, but we'll put it on one side, I suppose. The rest is toads. It's just a kind of slew of amazing things that he's discovered that has won him lots of honours. So he's been elected to the Society of Antiquaries in London, like me. Right. You're kind of very similar, kind of forensic attention to detail and authenticity, right? We will see.

And in Sussex, he's hailed by the local press as the wizard of Sussex for his almost supernatural ability to pluck these incredible finds as if from nowhere. So amazing. And his renown is such that basically, I don't know when he has time to do his soliciting. I mean, he doesn't seem to be very keen on the law at all because he's hanging out with all kinds of luminaries. So one of these, perhaps the most distinguished of these luminaries, is a man called Arthur Smith Woodward. And he is the keeper of geology at the Natural History Museum. And he, Dominic, is a world expert on fossil fish. God, he sounds such an interesting man, Tom.

Well, he is because he's not just an expert on fossil fish. He is also sufficiently brilliant that he is the guy who Dawson gives the Cretaceous mammal tooth to, which he'd found back in 1891. And Woodward had been very excited about it and realised that it was a hitherto unknown species. And so since then, they've become great friends. Dawson is always getting in touch with Woodward to tell him about his latest finds. And what's impressive about this friendship is that Woodward is not a very clubbable man. He's very tall. He's gaunt. He's fussy. He's acerbic. Tom, this is unbelievable. This is the podcast. That's what it is. He has a thin goat-like beard. It's uncanny. Which I absolutely don't. And actually, Dominic, he's not like me. He's like Professor Summerlee in The Lost World

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which I'm sure lots of people have read. But if you haven't, it was published in 1912, so the same year that Piltdown Man was found. And it describes an expedition of two scientists, one of whom is Professor Summerlee, a journalist and a big game hunter, to go and discover a lost world in South America on a plateau. What an amazing coincidence that The Lost World was published, presumably just months before this discovery. Yes, it is a coincidence, not least because as well as dinosaurs, The Lost World features ape men who were cast as missing links. And what is even more of a coincidence is that the author,

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who of course is also the author of Sherlock Holmes, lives some eight miles from Piltdown. So Conan Doyle's a great walker. That's very much within walkable distance for him. And Conan Doyle has met both Dawson and Woodward because Conan Doyle, I mean, he's interested in everything basically, very interested in palatology. He'd found some dinosaur footprints and he'd got Dawson over to have a look at them. And they've become sufficiently good friends that in November 1911, Conan Doyle invites Dawson and his wife for lunch. So they go over and almost certainly at this lunch, they discuss missing links. Conan Doyle seems to have told Dawson about his plans for the lost world. And after the discovery is made, after the finding of Piltdown Man, Dawson writes to Woodward, huge excitement, Conan Doyle has written and seems excited about the skull. He has kindly

offered to drive me in his motor anywhere. So Conan Doyle is also part of the Piltdown Man set. Yeah, the Piltdown set. Very good. So how had Dawson actually come to find the skull itself? So at this meeting on the 18th of December 1912 at the Geological Society, he gives his first account of what had happened. And he reports that workmen had been working in a gravel pit in Piltdown. And because they knew of his reputation as someone interested in such things, they had given him a small piece of bone that the workmen had found in the pit. And at this meeting, Dawson is very vague as to when exactly this had happened. So, I mean, it could have been any time, you know, from kind of 1899 onwards.

Yeah. But the next morning it's reported that he had said that he had been given this in 1908. I've been hanging on to this bit of skull for four years. I suppose you might. That's right. Yeah. That's right. And the reason for this, he says, is that it was only a fragment and that the workmen had said that they had originally found a much larger skull, which they had then smashed because they thought that it was a coconut.

A coconut in Sussex? A fossil coconut in Sussex. Okay. to the quarry looking for the other fragments of this skull that has been smashed by the workmen. And over the course of the four years, if it is four years, he's gradually found them and he's pieced them together. And it makes a kind of an entire cranium of an unusual thickness, say much thicker than a normal skull would be. And by 1912, you know, he's ready basically to announce it to the world. And so he writes a letter to Woodward telling him about Conan Doyle and about the lost world and how it's coming out. And then he just, this kind of casual mention, he says, I found a portion of a human skull. And he compares it to a Neanderthal skull,

which of course to any British scientist is an absolute way of saying, I might've found a British Neanderthal skull. Yeah. It's so exciting. So exciting. We can put the Germans in the shade here. And Woodward is certainly intrigued by this, but he doesn't actually get down to Piltdown for quite a while. And this is partly because, as I said, the weather is so bad. And it's also because he's a busy man. He's in charge of an entire department in the Natural History Museum. He doesn't have the time. And it's clear that Dawson is getting a bit impatient about this. He wants to show off his discovery. So on the 24th of May, he goes to Woodward and he shows him all the fragments of the skull. And Woodward is pretty excited now. So on the 2nd of

June, he joins Dawson at Piltdown to start on the excavations. And it's brilliantly Edwardian that the first day they don't get much done because they're having a huge picnic. Yeah, very wind in the willows. Yes. Lattice pork pies and lemonade and all that kind of thing. Yeah. So they start their excavations and they don't find anything pies and lemonade and all that kind of thing yeah so they start their excavations and they don't find anything to begin with they're kind of sifting through both the quarry itself but all the piles of kind of refuse that the workmen have left

because presumably this is where other bits might be and they're working and working working and then on the 23rd of june so that's basically three weeks of working and they're not working all the time they're mainly working at the weekends dawson finds jaw, the jaw that looks like a chimpanzee jaw and it fits, it seems with the, with the skull. Yeah. And over the course of July, they find shaped flints. So these are the tools that presumably, you know, have been used by the Piltdown man and bones of various prehistoric animals that kind of enable them to date it as being much

further back in time than Neanderthal man. So clearly this man is much older than the German fossil man. So, you know, this is brilliant. And it is Woodward who's been working with Dawson throughout the summer, who joins Dawson at the meeting of the Geological Society. And this is crucial for the repute of what is being said, because Dawson had actually become president of the Geological Society in 1904. And it's his prestige, of course, that makes the news of the discovery echo around Britain, across the world. And brilliantly, from Dawson's point of view, it is Woodward who pays tribute to the role

that he's played in the discovery of this amazing find by giving Piltdown Man the official scientific name of Aeo Anthropos Dorsoni, so Dawson's Dawn Man. So, you know, he now has this incredible fossil named after him. So it's an amazing story about kind of amateur archaeologists and kind of antiquarian, you know, in the English countryside who's teamed up with a really well respected scientific mind. And together, they have revolutionized the way people think about life on Earth. They have. But also, they've shown that the tradition that Gideon Mantell had embodied, the doctor

who goes out and finds a dinosaur, that that tradition is still absolutely living and valid in the fields of Sussex 100 years on. And it's a reassurance to the British, you know, that they're still the cutting edge. They're still top nation. So greeted with huge enthusiasm. And so unsurprisingly, you know, excavations resume the following year, all the way through 1913, through the summer of 1914, even Dominicus, the storm clouds of war are gathering and various further finds are made. So nasal bones, which I gather are very important, and a canine, you know, a tooth, which again is apparently very significant for reasons I don't entirely understand. There are scientists in America particularly who argue that perhaps they're different species who've been jumbled up. But most people accept, particularly in Europe, that this proves that the big brain evolved before bipedalism.

Right. So even the Germans? Yeah, even the Germans. It's what they basically, they've all been kind of looking for. Yeah. Now, there are, of course, a couple of possible clouds on the horizon, possible indications that not everything is quite what it seems. And the first of these happens in late June 1914. So, you know, the build-up to the First World War. And a particular

moment that Woodward describes in his brilliantly titled book, The Earliest Englishman. I was watching the workman who was using a broad pick or mattock when I saw some small splinters of bones scattered by a blow blow i stopped his work and searching the spot with my hands pulled out a heavy blade of bone of which he had damaged the end and there's something very weird about this heavy blade of bone which woodward himself in his book points out which is that it looks exactly like a cricket bat i mean eerily made of stone made of elephant bone right so what was tilt down man doing with a cricket bat. I mean, eerily. Made of stone. Made of elephant bone. Right. So what was Piltdown Man doing with a cricket bat? I mean, it's a question that the outbreak of war kind of slightly

buries. Just a coincidence, Tom. And then there's another coincidence, which happens two years later in August 1916, which is very sadly Dawson dies. He's only 52, dies of pernicious anemia. Yeah. And from that point on, no further fossils are found at the site. None at all. None at all. And again, possible cause to raise an eyebrow there. Anyway, just perhaps two slight flies in the ointment that we could explore after the break to find out whether Piltdown Man really is what Dawson and Woodward had claimed it was. So return after the break and Tom will solve the mystery of Pilledown Man.

I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club.

If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Now, today's episode has focused on an extraordinary historical mystery, the story of Piltdown Man. And Tom, after the death of Dawson, they don't find any more fossils at the site. But most people agree, don't they, that there's no cause for alarm or suspicion about any of this, that clearly this is a tremendous find, been authenticated by absolutely top people. And it shows beyond any real doubt that the very first sort of recorded human beings, what we can say human beings, originated, as many of us have long believed, in England. In Sussex.

Yes. are interpreted. So in 1924, an amazing find is made in a South African cave, and it's a very small ape-like, bipedal, human-like creature that will go on to be called Australopithecus. And again, this confirms what the Java man specimen had seemed to suggest, that bipedalism evolved first, and then the larger brains came later, which of course is exactly the contrary to what Piltdown Man suggests. And so British scientists in the 1920s basically ignore the evidence of Australopithecus because it doesn't tally with the evidence of Piltdown Man. But as the decades go by, more and more finds are made in Africa, in China, all of which support the thesis that it's the bipedalism that comes first. And as a result of that, Piltdown Man comes to be seen as a kind of weird aberration.

Yeah. Maybe a separate line of development to the mainstream of human evolution. Perhaps the first Britons, Tom, evolved separately from the rest of the human race. Yeah, maybe, maybe. But it's still not seen as a fake. And then in 1953, so I mean, that's decades on. Yeah, 40 years on. A bombshell. So shall I quote The Guardian again? Do, because we've found out The Guardian is completely trustworthy on these kind of issues.

So 23rd of November, this report appears in The Guardian. Recent improvements in the technique of fluorine analysis made possible some of the tests, which led three scientists to conclude that the mandible and canine tooth of the piltdown skull were, quote unquote, deliberate fakes. What a shock. And more to finally, the report that the Guardian is quoting there had appeared in the Bulletin of the British Museum of Natural History. So the house journal of the museum in which Woodward himself was the head of geology.

Yeah. And the report does its best to exonerate the scientists who had claimed that Piltdown Mann was authentic. So it says the problem was not capable of solution on the available evidence, i.e. back in 1912. And the perpetration of the hoax seems to have been so entirely unscrupulous and inexplicable as to find no parallel in the history of paleontological discovery. And today in 2024, chiefly thanks to dating techniques that weren't available in 1912, we know that the skull that was found by Dawson, the thick skull, was actually medieval and that its thickness was due to a condition called Paget's disease,

which is a kind of hereditary thickening of the bone that the jaw came from an orangutan and it wasn't even pilt down man it was pilt down woman because the orangutan was female and that the teeth which had been found had been filed down to make them look more human they were kind of orangutan teeth so the guardian said uh the perpetration of the hoax seems to have been so entirely unscrupulous and inexplicable. Unscrupulous, I mean, if the teeth are literally being filed down to make them look more human, it's

clearly been carefully conceived and cold-bloodedly carried out. But the question is, by whom? Right. So who planted this evidence? So the first mystery, what was Piltner Man, is now solved, but that leaves the other mystery. Who was the fraudster? Who was the hoaxer? Yeah. And there've been, as you can imagine, all kinds of theories over the years.

So one theory is, you know, it was someone who wasn't even involved in the dig, who basically just did it for the bants. Right. Because this is a golden age of great British hoaxsters. Yeah. And the greatest of them all is a man called Horace Devere Cole, generally reckoned, I think, to be Britain's greatest prankster. And he was very posh, kind of Anglo-Irish aristocrat, old Etonian, went to Trinity College, Cambridge, officer in the Boer War. But he was also very, very Justin Trudeau. Right.

He was a great man for the blackface. He was always doing it. Right. So as an undergraduate, he dressed up as the uncle of the Sultan of Zanzibar, who was visiting London at the time. And he paid his own college at Trinity a ceremonial visit. And no one spotted him. No one unmasked him.

No one spotted him. And then in 1910, he did it again to even more spectacular effect. Because his ceremonial visit to the college, he'd done with his best friend, who was called Adrian Stephen. And in 19 1910 he teams up with Adrian Stephen again and with Adrian Stephen's sister Virginia who of course Dominic in due course will become Virginia Woolf your great hero not a friend of the rest is history yeah so the three of them actually a few more they all dress up as an official delegation from abyssinia and are received by the captain of hms dreadnought kind of welcomed aboard and shown round and um again

it's a tremendous coup for any prankster but the fact that virginia wolf is in blackface tom very on brand for her isn't it yeah but uh it has to be said that it doesn't really seem to vehicle style because he's he's essentially a man for a stunt, not for a hoax. Yeah, his are kind of japes and they involve basically him blacking up. Not exclusively. There's a very good story that he has a bet with a friend of his who's a kind of fellow MP that he'll be able to beat him in a race, even though he gives him a 10 meter start. And so they agree. The bloke has a 10 meter start running down Piccadilly and Devere Cole shouts out,

that man's stolen my watch. And he's planted his watch in the man's coat. So he gets arrested by the policeman and Devere Cole is able to win his race. So it's that kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. But that's the point. He's involved in the stunt.

So if he'd blacked up and laid in the ground and allowed himself to be dug up, I would believe it. But the sort of very methodical nature of this and the planning it long in advance is not his style, is it? Right. So maybe you want someone who's fascinated by paleontology and ape men. Yeah. Maybe has a medical background,

all that stuff about teeth and nasal bones and so on, and someone who's on the scene. And if you throw into the mix the fact that perhaps there's someone has published a novel which comes out the same year that Piltdown Man has been found and features people going and looking for ape men, you might point the finger of suspicion at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Yes. And in fact, you know, when it's discovered that Piltdown Man has been faked, they go to the lost world and they read it through and they find

all kinds of what seem to be kind of giveaway lines. So in the novel, the narrator meets with a sceptical friend of his at the beginning of the book where they're wondering whether the lost world really exists. And this sceptical friend says, if you are clever and you know your business, you can fake a bone as easily as you can a photograph. Come on, that's a giveaway. That's got to be a giveaway. Well, Dominic, there's more. You remember the mysterious elephant bone that looks like a cricket bat?

Yeah. Conan Doyle was a very good cricketer. And very keen on it. Yeah, he got WG Grace out in a first-class match, so that's good. And I guess the question is, Conan Doyle doesn't have

a reputation as a great hoaxer. He has a reputation, actually, as a victim of hoaxes because of, obviously, the fairies, photographs. Well, basically, he believes everything. And he believes in spiritualism.

He's always going to seances and nonsense like that. He does. So, I mean, him carrying out the hoax seems like an odd... The theory is that he wants revenge on the scientific establishment for mocking spiritualism. Okay, I find that not entirely implausible. Do you? It's completely implausible. It's a mad theory.

Why? Well, I quote Stephen Jay Gould, the great evolutionary biologist. What can one say of an evidence-free argument based on speculations about motive? Well, you can say it sounds very plausible, like I've just done. I mean, just because Stephen Jay Gould thinks it's implausible, you haven't convinced me. No, it's absolutely not the kind of thing that Conan Doyle would have done. Because as you said, he has no background as a hoaxer, and he is absolutely the kind of person who would be hoaxed.

So let's say that there are more plausible candidates to hand. Let's hear them. So let's look at some of them. So what about one of the scientists studying Piltdown Man? Yeah. So there've been various suggestions. So there's a guy called Arthur Keith, who was a very celebrated anatomist, anthropologist. He was head of the Ahunterian. And he'd started out very sceptical about Piltdown Man. He then swung massively behind it, huge enthusiast for the idea that it was authentic. And then when presented with the evidence in 1953, accepted that it was a fake. He's all over the place. I mean,

he doesn't know what he thinks. He is all over the place. And so it has been suggested that this is a deliberate attempt to kind of obfuscate. Again, I think it's implausible. Then there's an extraordinary character called Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who was a French Jesuit Darwinist paleontologist. Okay. It's definitely him. No question in my mind. So as a young man, he'd been posted to Sussex by the Jesuit superior. And because he was so interested in paleontology, he'd been fascinated by Piltdown to come and

join the dig in 1912. You know, he joined Woodward and Dawson at the excavation. Such French behavior, like dropping little bits of other bones in the thing while he's pretending to dig. I can see it now. And he would go on. He was involved in a dig that found a Java man equivalent in China. Right.

Peking man, as it was called. So I can't quite remember what the reasons are for thinking that he might have done it. But there are people who think that he did it. Yeah. And then some people have even suggested Arthur Smith Woodward even though obviously he comes out of the whole affair looking an absolute idiot. Yeah. I don't believe a gaunt tall man

would have done it, Tom. With a beard like a goat. So there's no evidence that any of these people were involved in it. And in fact, there is only one scientist who does seem to have

questions to answer. This is a man called Martin Hinton who in 1912 was working as a volunteer at the Natural History Museum underneath Woodward and really detested him, really disliked him. And he goes on to have a very distinguished career. He

ends up as the museum's keeper of zoology. And in 1970, a trunk that had belonged to Hinton was found that Hinton had left in storage at the Natural History Museum. And it was opened and it was found to contain animal teeth and bones that had been stained in a manner very reminiscent of the Piltdown bones. Why? What's the explanation? The theory has been advanced that he disliked Woodward so much that he wanted to make him look an idiot. He would have needed to enlist the other guy though, wouldn't he? He would. So that's the flaw in the argument. And so essentially there is really only one obvious suspect, which is the guy who initially found the bone, which is of course the boiled egg headed country

solicitor, Charles Dawson. Jovial. Jovial with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. Never trust a man with a twinkle in his eye. And he's always been the most plausible suspect. And there is now absolutely no doubt that it was him. Really? There really isn't a mystery. So there are two brilliant books on Dawson that came out last 20 years by Mars Russell, brilliant archaeologist, specialist in the Iron Age now. And these books combined conclusively prove it. So I'll quote him in his most recent book the piltdown man hoax case closed which absolutely does what it says on the tin so russell writes the question of whether dawson was in any way involved in the piltdown controversy can no longer be in doubt he is the only person implicated at every stage of the fraud and the only one with the means opportunity and as far

as we can ascertain in the absence of surviving personal correspondence or indeed of a signed confession motive. And yet, Tom, he's a tremendous fellow. Everybody says he's brilliant. He's found all these amazing and very plausible artefacts in the past. How could anyone possibly believe this? It would sound like a character for him, wouldn't it? Right.

So despite the fact that the scientists who work on the dig like him, it's clear that he has a very, very unscrupulous side and he has made himself very unpopular with Sussex antiquarian circles. So I mentioned the Sussex Archaeological Society. He had had a massive bust up with them. And Castle Lodge, this wonderful house at the foot of Sussex Castle that he lives in, had originally been the headquarters of the Sussex Archaeological Society and they had employed him to negotiate them a better deal with the landlord. And he'd gone behind their backs and negotiated a long-term contract for himself and then evicted the Sussex Archaeological Society.

Tom, I have to say, I think he's brilliant. I love the sound of him. He and I would get on tremendously. Yeah, well, so I said that he didn't seem to be doing much law, but that shows tremendous ability to leverage conveyancing skills. He should have been leading the National Guard in the French Revolution, so that absolutely wet weekend Lafayette. He'd have sorted out.

So there's that. But there's also, as you said, all these finds that have given him the moniker of the Wizard of Sussex. Yeah. And basically, you know, magic, when you look at it, it always turns out not to be quite what it seems. And it's the same of Sussex. And basically, you know, magic, when you look at it, it always turns out not to be quite what it seems. And it's the same with his finds. So Mars Russell has looked at all the finds he made and pretty conclusively demonstrated that at least 33 of them are

clearly fakes. What? Oh no. So in addition to Piltdown Man, I mentioned the fossil of the Cretaceous mammal. So the whole basis for thinking that this mammal is a new, previously undiscovered species is the fact that its teeth are quite worn. And when Russell went and looked at them, it turned out that they had been filed down in exactly the same way that the teeth of Piltdown Man had been filed down. So a deliberate fake. And what's interesting about that was that this creature was cast as a missing link. So very early on in Dawson's career, he's obviously already kind of moving along these lines. The Roman statuette, you remember that, that was made of cast iron? Yeah. The reason it's made of cast iron is because it's a modern copy. Oh, no one spotted this at the time? No one spotted it

at the time because, well, we'll come to how he's able to get away with all this in a minute. But just to continue the list, the brick, the axe, the boat, all doctored, the mummified toad inside a flint. I mean, you said, I don't know how that's possible. It isn't possible. It's clearly a fake. So basically what he's doing over the course of his career, he's developed certain techniques. And these are that as with Piltdown Man, he always adopts a kind of studied vagueness as to where and when he'd made his finds. He's also constantly claiming that the finds had originally been made by anonymous workmen, who then of course can't be found because he's saying, you know, four years afterwards,

you couldn't possibly find the workmen. So that kind of obscures the process. He's also unbelievably skillful at roping in academics who can serve him as his dupes. So Woodward would be the paradigm of this, but there are others as well. And above all, what he's doing, which is what every confidence trickster does, is he is giving the victims what they want to find. Because of course they will share in the discoveries, right? But also he knows the way their work is leading and he knows what they're anxious to find, and he produces it.

I mean, he is very knowledgeable about paleontology. And so he knows that what British scientists want more than anything else is a large headed missing link found in Britain for all the reasons that we looked in the first half. This is exactly what he serves up. Now, you may ask, you know, what is his motive? And the motive, I think, is very clear. He wants, like all amateurs professional status yeah he wants specifically i think election to the royal society which is the supreme body of british science and he wants a knighthood like you yeah very similar yeah i have a certain amount of feeling for him um and so i think he's come to realize that to have a chance of winning either

or both he needs something really, really spectacular. And this is where Piltdown Man comes in because, you know, the origins of humanity is such a massive theme that it would resonate sufficiently that it might get him the rewards. And Miles Russell makes, I think, a completely convincing argument that actually he gets the idea for Piltdown Man when he was at that lunch with Conan Doyle in 1911, when Conan Doyle had told him about his plans for the lost world. And they talked about missing links and ape men. So I'll read Russell. He says, this was Dawson's moment of revelation, the realization that he had his big find. Much of his antiquarian career to date had been spent providing people in the

academic community with transitional artifacts, missing links in the chain of technological development. But now with Piltdown Man, he's going for the big one. The ultimate missing link. Yeah. And, you know, he has the knowledge to know how this will resonate with the paleontological community. But he also, you know, he knows where to find a likely spot for the fraud to be staged. So the quarry pit at Piltdown is very expertly chosen. Again, to quote Russell, what he needed was an apparently secure sequence of deposits of the right age for early humans,

a reason for their disturbance, ideally road digging or quarrying that would explain how the finds were noticed in the first place, and a landowner who was more than happy to allow additional excavation and investigation that happens on the property of someone that Dawson is a friend of. So this is why he chooses the place that he does. And the final piece in this jigsaw puzzle, Dominic, I mean, it's literally a jigsaw puzzle, isn't it? The shattered fragments of this skull with the mysterious thickness. He has access to a large array of sources, both legitimate and not because of his role, you know, as both a dealer, but also he's involved in all these kinds of various museums. And we know, for instance, that a medieval skull with Paget's disease had disappeared in the 1900s from the museum in Hastings,

and Dawson had been on the committee of the Hastings Museum. I think Dawson, to my mind, you see, unlike many of the listeners will think this is dreadful, but I think he's come out of this absolutely brilliantly. I think he sounds like such a splendid person. But my question is, I mean, he absolutely should have been given a knighthood for services to hoaxes. To hoaxing. Yeah, but did he get the Royal Society membership in the knighthood? No, he didn't.

No, he died before he got either of them. But he did die in the knowledge that this thing had been named after him. Yeah, he did. And it must have been so satisfying. Yeah. And there's that painting where he is the one who is closest to Darwin. Just imagine the glow he must have felt when he went to bed every night, knowing that he'd fooled the world.

I love it. Well, possibly, or possibly he's in a state of constant trepidation that he's going to be rumbled. And that may well have been something that was kind of playing on him because there is one remaining mystery. And this has to do with the cricket bat and Martin Hinton's trunk. And Chris Stringer, who we had on the show talking about Neanderthals, he's at the Natural History Museum, one of the great specialists in prehistoric humans.

He has a theory that provides a single solution to both those puzzles. So his theory is that Martin Hinton had rumbled Piltdown Man as a fraud and was aiming to tip off the culprit. And that this explains the cricket bat. He had basically deliberately planted the most absurd object that he could come up with and thinking that everyone would look at this cricket bat and say, this is obviously mad. But to quote Stringer, Hinton had miscalculated to his horror. Instead of terminating the whole Piltdown saga, this bizarre piece was heralded as the world's oldest bone implement.

And I think that this reflects very well on the British public, that they liked the idea of their prehistoric forebears playing cricket. So I think that to an extent you were right, that it's such an entertaining story, such an improbable story, that we should probably salute the man who made it all possible and to quote miles russell again charles dawson the most successful archaeological and antiquarian forger that the world has ever known well hats off to uh charles dawson and dominic he was british so hooray i'm actually prouder of him and of britain at the end of the story than I was at the beginning, which is nice. So very much a friend

of the show, Charles Dawson. And thank you, Tom. That was enormously good fun. I enjoyed that a lot. Brilliant. And obviously on this podcast, we have an absolutely scrupulous attitude

towards facts of history as listeners to our episode on the Costa Rican Civil War will testify. We would never come up with nonsense in the hope of a knighthood. No, absolutely not.

So on that bombshell, thank you very much, Tom. Superb stuff. I think we should return to the subject of hoaxes in a future podcast because there are many, many tremendous hoaxes which will be fun to investigate. But that's enough for now. Thank you very much and goodbye. Bye-bye.

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