An Hypothesis

Towards the end of July 1953 a congress of palaeontologists was held in London under the auspices of the Wenner-Gren Foundation. The problems of fossil man were the subject of its deliberations. Java man, Neanderthal man, Rhodesian man, the South African prehumans—all these were given close attention. But Piltdown man was not discussed. Not surprisingly. He had lost his place in polite society. What more could one usefully say about him? Yet, unofficially, the Dawn Man did manage an appearance. Most of those present had not seen the original fossil specimens, so on a tour of the Natural History Museum these were shown along with others housed there. The sight of the actual fragments provoked the familiar tail-chasing discussion. As always there were those who could not feel that the famous jaw really harmonized with the rest, but there were others who took the opposite view. The enigma remained. At the dinner that night Dr. Oakley remarked casually to Dr. Washburn of Chicago and myself that owing to Dawson’s early death in 1916 the Museum had no record of the exact spot where the remains of the second Piltdown had been found. They knew the place—Sheffield Park—but the actual spot or even the field had never been marked on a map. ‘The fact is’, said Oakley, ‘that all we know about site II is on a postcard sent in July 1915 by Dawson to Woodward, and an earlier letter in that year, from neither of which can one identify the position of Piltdown II.’ This was surprising. The second group of finds had done so much to convince many people that the first Piltdown man was by no means an isolated phenomenon. One had imagined that if it were ever thought worthwhile it would be possible to go and excavate the second site. Now it appeared that this had never been done because the second site could not be located, though Woodward had apparently visited it before the second find. This curious piece of information greatly puzzled me.

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Cartography · Genealogy · Geography · Natural (archaeology) · Sight · Subject (documents) · History · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology