534 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 31 



they thought was an old coconut obtained from the gravels. He 

 at once rescued the fossilized remains of a piece of a phenomenally 

 thick human braincase, and began excavating there and recovering 

 other pieces. The massiveness of the skull and the Pleistocene age 

 of the deposits suggested to Mr. Dawson's mind that he had found 

 part of the braincase of the only Pleistocene man at that time known 

 in Europe. The Heidelberg jaw had been found in 1907 and is all 

 that we know of this peculiar type of the human family which prob- 

 ably represents the distinct genus of Palaeanthropus. In 1912 he 

 took the fragments to Dr. (now Sir Arthur) Smith Woodward, at 

 that time Keeper of Geology at the British Museum (Natural His- 

 tory) , and they set to work to dig the gravels at Piltdown. 



In the summer of 1912 they found a fossilized jaw, which at once 

 convinced them that they were dealing with a creature totally distinct 

 from the Heidelberg man, one who was very much more primitive 

 and apelike and also much older even than that Pleistocene man of 

 Germany. The announcement of these discoveries, at a meeting of 

 the Geological Society in London in December, 1912, started a series 

 of controversies which were even livelier and more confusing than 

 those which had raged since 1894 around Pithecanthrofus. For 

 there was not only the same element of doubt as to the significance 

 and age of the Piltdown fragments, but there were several new 

 elements of controversy in the Sussex discoveries. The question of 

 age was subject to the same uncertainty as I have mentioned in the 

 case of Pithecanthropus; the fragments of bone had been deposited 

 by running water in gravels; and in these gravels there were the 

 remains of Pliocene as well as Pleistocene mammals. As the skull 

 itself showed no signs of rolling, such as many of the Pliocene fos- 

 sils displayed, it was assumed that it was contemporaneous with the 

 undamaged Pleistocene fossils. But there were many elements of 

 uncertainty in the determination of the geological age of the speci- 

 mens, and recently Professor Osborn has been putting forward a 

 view in opposition to the one which is now commonly accepted, that 

 the Piltdown skull may possibly be Tertiary in age and not Quater- 

 nary as was supposed. " The problem is whether it came from a 

 Pliocene gravel bank with a primitive elephant and mastodon, or 

 from a Pleistocene gravel bank with a primitive hippopotamus." 

 (Science, 1929, p. 217.) There has, moreover, been the liveliest dis- 

 cussion as to whether or not the jaw which was found at Piltdown 

 was not that of a chimpanzee rather than of a human being. Even 

 after 20 years of discussion there is no complete consensus of opinion 

 upon this issue. 



The problem of the precise mode of reconstruction of the skull 

 gave rise to unseemly and wholly unnecessary discussions which 



