436 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 192 8 



July 24, 1921, a most memorable service in Westminster Abbey, a building 

 which enshrines many of the great of all time, the writer repaired to the 

 British Museum in the afternoon to see the remains of the now thoroughly 

 vindicated " dawn man " of Great Britain. From a steel fireproof safe these 

 few precious fragments of one of the original Britons, which had been 

 preserved in this manner from the bombs thrown by German aviators, and 

 which will probably be thus guarded from thieves for all future time, were 

 taken out and placed on the table by Doctor Woodward, so that full and 

 free opportunity was given for the closest comparison and study. At the 

 end of two hours, in which also worked flints and a large implement of cut 

 mastodon thigh bone were examined, the writer was reminded of an opening 

 prayer of college days, attributed to Iiis professor of logic in Princeton Uni- 

 versity : " Paradoxical as it may appear, O Lord, it is nevertheless true," etc. 

 So the writer felt. Paradoxical as it appears to the comparative anatomists, 

 the chinless Piltdown jaw, shaped exactly like that of a chimpanzee and 

 with its relatively long narrow teeth, does belong with the Piltdown skull, 

 with its relatively flat, well-formed forehead and relatively capacious brain 

 case! ... In conclusion, the writer desires not only to recant his former 

 doubts as to the association of the jaw with the skull, but to express his 

 lidmiration of the great achievement of his life-long friend, Arthur Smith 

 AVood\^'ard, in making the discovery and in finally establishing beyond question 

 the authenticity of the " dawn man " of Piltdown. We have to be reminded 

 over and over again that nature is full of paradoxes and that the order of 

 the universe is not the human order; that we should always expect the 

 unexi>ected and be prepared to discover new paradoxes. 



Writing in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (vol. 

 5, pp. 337, 347, December, 1922), Doctor Hrdlicka thus describes the 

 impressions which he received : 



During his recent trip to Europe, and thanks to the courtesy of Dr. Smith 

 Woodward, the writer was able to submit the original of the lower jaw of 

 Piltdown to a detailed ijersonal examination. This revealed a number of 

 features which have either not been mentioned as yet or have not been enough 

 accentuated in previous reports, and which throw further and it seems conclu- 

 sive light upon the mooted question as to the human or nonhuman nature of 

 the specimen. 



The first strong impression which the specimen conveys is that of normality, 

 shapeliness, and relative gracility of build rather than massiveness. When, 

 after studying the specimens for a good part of two days, the observer took 

 in hand the thick Piltdown skull, there was a strong feeling of incongruity and 

 lack of relationship, and this feeling only grew on further study. As a rule 

 there exists a marked correlation between the massivity of the skull — particu- 

 larly if, as in this case, the upper facial parts were involved in the same — and 

 the lower jaw. A finely chiseled mandible of medium or submedium strength 

 belongs as a rule to a skull that is characterized in the same way, and vice 

 versa. To connect the shapely, wholly normal Piltdown jaw with the gross, 

 heavy Piltdown skull into the same individual, seems very difiicult. After pro- 

 longed handling of both the jaw and the skull there remained in the writer a 

 strong impression that the two may not belong together, or that if they do 

 the case is totally exceptional. 



An individual, or even genetic, specific, association of the Piltdown jaw 

 with the massive remains of the two Piltdown skulls is, it may be repeated 

 once more, exceedingly difiicult of acceptance. The more the lower jaw is 

 studied and understood the less in harmony it appears with the skulls, and 



