Australopithecus 151with a large brain and an apelike face. Fortunately, the
self-correcting nature of science has prevailed, exposing
the Piltdown specimens as a forgery. The discoveries—
primarily in South Africa, China, and Java—of fossils of
smaller-brained bipeds from the distant past caused sci-
entists to question Piltdown’s authenticity. Ultimately, the
application of the newly developed fluorine dating method
(described in Chapter 5) by British physical anthropolo-
gist Kenneth Oakley and colleagues in 1953 proved con-
clusively that Piltdown was a forgery. The skull, which was
indeed human, was approximately 600 years old, whereas
the jaw, which proved to be from an orangutan, was even
more recent. Finally, Dart and the Taung child were fully
vindicated.
Today, genetic and fossil evidence indicates that the
human evolutionary line begins with a small-brained
bipedal ape from Africa. Numerous international
expeditions— including researchers from Kenya, Ethiopia,
Japan, Belgium, Great Britain, Canada, France, Israel, the
Netherlands, South Africa, and the United States—have
scoured East, South, and Central Africa, recovering un-
precedented amounts of fossil material. This wealth of
evidence has allowed scientists to continually refine our
understanding of early human evolution. Even though
debate continues over the details, today there is widespread
agreement over its broad outline. Each new discovery, such
as the Ardi skeleton, confirms our African origins and the
importance of bipedalism to distinguishing humans and
their ancestors from the other African apes.paleontologist, and practicing lawyer who found these
remains—immodestly named them Eoanthropus dawsoni
or “Dawson’s dawn man.” Until the 1950s the Piltdown re-
mains were widely accepted as representing the missing link
between apes and humans; today they are known as one of
the biggest hoaxes in the history of science.
There were several reasons for widespread acceptance
of Dawson’s “dawn man.” As Darwin’s theory of evolution
by natural selection began to gain acceptance in the early
20th century, intense interest developed in finding traces
of prehistoric human ancestors. Accordingly, predictions
were made as to what those ancestors looked like. Darwin
himself, on the basis of his knowledge of embryology and
the comparative anatomy of living apes and humans, sug-
gested in his 1871 book The Descent of Man that early
humans had, among other things, a large brain and an
apelike face and jaw.
Although the tools made by prehistoric peoples were
commonly found in Europe, their bones were not. A
few fossilized skeletons had come to light in France and
Germany, but they were not at all like the predicted miss-
ing link, nor had any human fossils been discovered in
England ever before. Given this state of affairs, the Piltdown
finds could not have come at a better time. Here at last was
the long-awaited missing link, and it was almost exactly as
predicted. Even better, so far as English-speaking scientists
were concerned, it was found on English soil.
In the context of the evidence available in the early
1900s, it was easy to accept the idea of an ancient humanDiscovery of the Pittdown Man in 1911,
Cooke, Arthur Clark (1867–1951)/Geographical
Society, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art LibrarySociety, London, UK/TheBridgemanArtLibraryThe Piltdown forgery was widely
accepted as ancestral to humans, in
large part because it fit with conven-
tional expectations that the missing link
would have a large brain and an apelike
face. No one knows with certainty how
many of the “Piltdown Gang”—scientists
supporting this specimen as the miss-
ing link—were actually involved in the
forgery. It is likely that Charles Dawson
had help from at least one scientist. Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the
Sherlock Holmes detective stories, has
also been implicated.