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\Gee, Henry. "Box of Bones 'Clinches' Identity of
Piltdown Palaeontology Hoaxer," Nature 381 (23 May
1996), pp. 262-262.\
London. A trunk discovered under the roof of London's
Natural History Museum appears to have provided vital
evidence allowing the Piltdown fraud -- one of the most
successful hoaxes in scientific history -- finally to
be put to rest.
The canvas travelling trunk is marked with the
initials of Martin A. C. Hinton, a curator of zoology
at the museum at the time of the fraud. It contains
bones stained and carved in the same way as the
Piltdown fossils and associated artefacts.
The discovery is the first solid evidence in the
case after decades of speculation. As Brian Gardiner,
professor of palaeontology at King's College, London,
is due to announce in his presidential address to the
Linnean Society in London tomorrow (24 May), it appears
to identify Hinton unequivocally as the hoaxer.
The story of what was to turn into the longest-
running parlour game, in the history of
palaeoanthropology began in 1912 when Charles Dawson, a
lawyer and antiquary, unearthed human skull and jaw
fragments and primitive artefacts at a gravel pit at
Piltdown, Sussex, in the south of England.
The find caused a sensation. The Piltdown skull
seemed remarkably advanced, given the great age
indicated by the bones of archaic forms of fossil
mammal characteristic of Pliocene deposits. But the jaw
seemed very primitive, and almost ape-like. Both tied
in with the prevailing views of human ancestry, namely
that humanity was the culmination of a very ancient
lineage, and that the first modern human feature to
emerge was the enlarged brain.
Several people immediately suspected fraud. But
many considered the skull to be an immensely important
find, in particular Arthur Smith Woodward, keeper of
palaeontology at the museum.
Subsequent research showed humanity evolved quite
differently. The human lineage turns out to be
relatively young, and expansion of the brain took place
relatively late in human history. Piltdown Man was
increasingly seen as an aberrant offshoot.
Nevertheless, Smith Woodward remained convinced of
the authenticity of the skull until the day he died;
his book The Earliest Englishman, published in 1948,
was dictated on his deathbed. But just five years
later, chemical analyses by Kenneth P. Oakley of the
museum showed that all the artefacts were of recent
date. The skull came from a modern human, the jaw from
an orangutan. The accompanying mammal fossils, it
emerged, had been 'planted' to give the human fossils
an authentic context. All the objects had been
carefully stained and abraded to appear old. Artefacts
such as a piece of elephant bone carved to look like a
cricket bat (a fitting accoutrement for the 'first
Englishman') were seen as part of an elaborate joke.
But who was the joker, and why?
Dawson was the prime suspect. But as he died in
1916, he could hardly be confronted with the evidence.
Indeed, since 1953, virtually everyone connected with
Piltdown Man has come under suspicion as the hoaxer,
from the distinguished anatomists Arthur Keith and
Grafton Elliot Smith to Teilhard de Chardin, the
palaeontologist priest, and even Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, who lived nearby
and is known to have visited the site.
Hinton has not escaped previous suspicion. Writing
in The Common but Less Frequent Loon and Other Essays,
published this year, Keith S. Thomson suggested that
Dawson initially perpetrated the fraud, but that it was
immediately spotted by Hinton. But Thomson claimed that
because Hinton was afraid of exposing his boss, Smith
Woodward, to ridicule, he sought to expose the hoax by
planting increasingly ridiculous fossils, such as the
'cricket bat', at the site in order to scare Dawson and
expose him as a fraud in the eyes of Smith Woodward.
But the new evidence contained in Hinton's trunk
disproves this scenario. It now turns out that all the
Piltdown remains were stained with the same chemical
recipe, one that was invented by Hinton. The evidence
appears to identify Hinton as the sole fraudster -- and
Dawson as his unwitting dupe.
The trunk came to light in the mid-1970s, when
contractors were clearing the loftspace in the
southwest tower of the museum before maintenance work
was carried out on the roof It came to the notice of
Andrew Currant, a researcher at the museum
specializing, as did Hinton, in fossil rodents.
The trunk contained hundreds of vials of rodent
dissections -- described by Currant as "quite
macabre". But the bottom lay a hidden treasure: a
collection of carved and stained pieces
of fossil hippopotamus and elephant teeth, as well as
assorted bones, that looked as if they belonged in the
Piltdown collection.
Realizing the potential importance of what could
be the 'smoking gun' to one of the great hoaxes of the
century, Currant mentioned the existence of the trunk
to Gardner, who had been on the Piltdown trail since
the hoax was first exposed in 1953, and was already
certain from circumstantial evidence that it led to
Hinton's door.
The trunk was the final piece of the puzzle -- and
the clinching solid evidence -- that Gardiner needed to
establish his case. He and Currant have spent the last
few years studying its contents and reanalyzing the
Piltdown collection. As Gardiner is due to announce to
the Linnean Society tomorrow, they are now certain that
Hinton was the sole author of the fraud.
Hinton himself, who published widely on many
aspects of zoology and palaeontology, was something of
a prodigy. In 1899, at the age of sixteen, he published
a paper showing how fossils in river gravels would be
impregnated with oxides of iron and manganese, staining
them a characteristic chocolate-brown colour.
Oakley's analyses showed that the Piltdown fossils
were enriched in iron, as one would expect if they were
genuinely old -- even though their recent age was
indicated by other factors. But Oakley did not look for
manganese. Crucially, analyses of the contents of
Hinton's trunk by Currant and Gardiner show that they
are enriched in iron as well as manganese -- in the
same proportions as in the Piltdown specimens.
The Piltdown fossils -- with one important
exception -- as well as the contents of Hinton's trunk,
are also enriched with chromium. This appears to have
been a result of the staining process.
Before staining, Hinton would have used chromic
acid as an ingredient in a recipe to turn the apatite
(the mineral component of bone) to gypsum. This process
would have etched the bone surface, making it easier
for the manganese and iron oxides to penetrate the
specimens. But traces of chromium would remain.
The one exception was the orangutan jaw. This
could not be etched because it contained two teeth, and
acid-etching of the teeth would have been a clear sign
of a forger at work. Hinton was therefore careful not
to treat these in the same way. The teeth were lightly
stained so as not to risk etching, and an isolated
canine tooth was painted further with paint (possibly
burnt umber) rich in manganese and iron.
Gardiner and Currant's suspicions about Hinton's
difficulties with teeth received support in 1991 after
Gardiner contacted Robert J. G. Savage, then professor
of geology at the University of Bristol, telling him of
Currant's discovery of the Hinton trunk. Savage had
been the executor of Hinton's estate -- a considerable
task, given that Hinton was a lifelong hoarder.
Savage sent Gardiner some glass tubes from
Hinton's hoard. These contained eight human teeth that
had been stained in various ways. The teeth, together
with the contents of the trunk, reveal a forger testing
out his methods. The staining recipe of iron, manganese
and chromium seems to have been Hinton's own, based --
on his knowledge of post-depositional processes
affecting fossils in gravel.
Why the Piltdown gravels? Hinton was an expert
on the geology of the Weald area of Sussex, in which
Piltdown is located: Gardiner and Currant believe
Hinton chose the Piltdown gravels precisely because
they were entirely unfossiliferous, leaving Hinton a
clear field to execute the fraud. Dawson and, through
him, Smith Woodward, was led to the scene -- and the
rest is history.
Hinton knew Dawson was an incompetent geologist
and would serve as the dupe; Dawson had already
unknowingly traded a stone implement, stained to look
old by Hinton, with Harry Morris, an expert on stone
tools. This later turned up in Morris's collection
labelled that it had been stained by Dawson with intent
to defraud. Gardiner argues that Dawson is unlikely to
have traded a flint he had faked with an expert such as
Morris if he had he done it himself.
The real victim seems to have been Smith Woodward,
and the motive an argument about money. In 1910, Hinton
wrote to Smith Woodward asking for vacation employment
cataloguing rodent remains at he museum. Woodward
agreed, provided the payment of œ130 was made after
completion of the work, as was customary.
Hinton responded with a letter requesting that the
sum be paid as a weekly wage, and detailing elaborate
and costly plans for a catalogue. Woodward's reply, if
any, does not survive, but as a senior figure (and
experienced cataloguer) he is unlikely to have been
impressed by the presumption of a junior colleague.
Whatever the outcome of the dispute, Hinton spent
most of his subsequent career in the zoology department
of the museum, away from Woodward's palaeontology
department -- even though much of Hinton's work
concerned fossils.
Although the evidence of Hinton's responsibility
appears strong, some doubts will inevitably remain
among those who have studied the case closely. "It's a
very convincing link between Piltdown and Hinton," says
Chris Stringer, a palaeoanthropologist at the Natural
History Museum. "But I still have my suspicions that
Dawson was involved."
But Gardiner feels that the evidence for Hinton
having been the sole hoaxer is now conclusive. He
points out, for example, that Hinton was well-known for
his elaborate practical jokes. The Piltdown fraud would
have been an ideal way to get back at the pompous,
stuffy keeper of palaeontology. Such suspicions are
strengthened by the text of a letter Hinton wrote in
1954 to the evolutionary biologist Gavin de Beer --
then the director of the British Museum (Natural
History), now the Natural History Museum -- after the
fraud had been exposed.
"The temptation to invent such a discovery of an
ape-like man associated with late Pliocene mammals in a
Wealden gravel might well have proved irresistible to
some unbalanced member of old Ben Harrison's circle at
Ightham," wrote Hinton, a reference to his circle of
Sussex-based geologist colleagues. "He [Harrison] and
his friends [of whom Hinton was one] were always
talking of the possibility of finding a late Pliocene
deposit in the Weald." Given what we now know, this
reads as almost a signed confession.
[End]