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One hundred years ago, the Piltdown man was introduced to the world, who was at first the discovery of the century, and then turned out to be one of the most daring and brilliant fakes in the history of science, the Daily Telegraph writes. But is everything in this story fully clarified?
Bones and stones found in a gravel pit near the Piltdown Heath in Sussex, England, on the eve of World War I, were exposed half a century ago, the newspaper writes. However, until now we do not know either the name of the hoaxer or his motives. However, soon, with the help of the latest methods of forensic examination, the mystery may be solved. Or, perhaps, new revelations await us?
Today, fragments of the skull and jaw, as well as mammalian fossils and flint tools, are kept in the safe of the Museum of Natural History. Meanwhile, on December 18, 1912, at a meeting of the Geological Society of London, they made a splash: the oldest man was found, the tools he made and the remains of the animals he hunted. It seemed that finally found the missing link between man and monkey, predicted by Charles Darwin.
The discovery was made by the lover of antiquities Charles Dawson, who brought the finds to his friend Arthur Smith Woodward, the superintendent of the geology department of the Museum of Natural History of London. He at stake his reputation (and the reputation of the museum), naming a copy in honor of his friend Dawn Man of Dawson ("Dawson's Dawn Man"), Eoanthropus dawsoni.
And the time was not easy: scientists have been hotly discussing the problem of human origin for 50 years, but the number of fossil finds left much to be desired. Something at that time had already been found in France, Germany, Belgium and Java, and the queen of the seas could not boast of anything. Therefore, Dawson and Smith Woodward were very out of place. Just think: the oldest man was British!
The humanoid skull of the Piltdown man and the monkey-shaped jaw - this is what they expected from their ancestor. In 1914, a large bone instrument was found in the same place, which also turned out to be unique. Made from the feet of an extinct elephant, it was flat at one end and pointed at the other. No one could understand what it was intended for, but this did not bother scientists. Smith Woodward even imagined this man’s daily life: what he ate, how he cooked, what he wore. It was believed that the ancestor lived 0.51 million years ago.
To be honest, skeptics were then on the alert. Voices were heard that the human skull and monkey jaw could not belong to one individual, or even to one species. Perhaps they accidentally ended up together in the same pit. But in 1913, the find of a canine, very similar to the predictions of Smith Woodward, shook the position of critics. Then in 1915, three kilometers from the gravel pit, Dawson came across skull fragments and a tooth similar to previous finds. Doubters had to shut up.
And only forty years later, when methods of more accurate dating appeared, it turned out that the Piltdown man was a fake. The skull belonged to a modern man who lived several centuries ago, the jaw was borrowed from an orangutan, and it was broken to hide the evidence of this fact, and the teeth were filed. In addition, all the artifacts were painted so that they looked natural among the Piltdown gravel.
A scandal erupted, and of course, everyone wanted to know who did it. Oil was added to the fire by the fact that someone was not just harmlessly joking, but staged a deliberate hoax that influenced the development of the science of the origin of man. But there was no fingerprints, no penitential letter, no carefully crafted bone detection protocol.

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