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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



visits to the [gravel] pit, one of the men 

 handed to me a small portion of an 

 unusually thick human parietal bone. 

 I immediately made a search, but could 

 find nothing more, nor had the men 

 noticed anything else. The l)ed is full 

 of tabular pieces of iron-stone closely 

 resembling this piece of skull in color 

 and thickness; and, although I made 

 many subsequent searches, I could not 

 hear of any further find nor discover 

 anything — in fact, the bed seemed to 

 be quite unfossiliferous." But incited 

 by the skull fragment already obtained, 

 Mr. Dawson renewed the search in the 

 autumn of 1911, when he was rewarded 

 for his persistence by picking up among 

 the rain-washed spoil-heaps of the gravel- 

 pit, another and larger piece belonging 

 to the frontal region of the same skull. 

 " As I had examined a cast of the Heidel- 

 berg jaw," he continues, "it occurred to 

 me that the proportions of the skull were 

 similar to those of that specimen. I 

 accordingly took it to Dr. A. Smith 

 Woodward at the British Museum 

 [Natural History] for comparison and 

 determination. He was immediately im- 

 pressed with the importance of the dis- 

 covery, and we decided to employ 

 labor and to make a systematic search 

 among the spoil-heaps and gravel, as 

 soon as the floods had abated ; for the 

 gravel-pit is more or less under water 

 during five or six months of the year. 

 We accordingly gaA'e up as much time 

 as we could spare since last spring (1912), 

 and completely turned over and sifted 

 what spoil-material remained; we also 

 dug up and sifted such portions of the 

 gravel as had been left undisturbed by 

 the workmen. . . .Apparently the whole 

 or greater portion of the human skull 

 had been shattered by the workmen, 

 who had thrown away the pieces un- 

 noticed. Of these we recovered from 

 the spoil-heaps as many fragments as 



possible. In a somewhat deeper de- 

 pression of the undisturbed gravel I 

 found the right half of a human mandible. 

 So far as I could judge, guiding myself 

 by the position of a tree three or four 

 yards away, the spot was identical with 

 that upon which the men were at work 

 when the first portion of the cranium 

 was found several years ago. Dr. 

 Woodward also dug up a small portion 

 of the occipital bone of the skull from 

 within a yard of the point where the jaw 

 was discovered, and at precisely the 

 same level. The jaw appeared to have 

 been broken at the symphysis, and 

 abraded, perhaps when it lay fixed in the 

 gravel, and before its complete deposi- 

 tion. The fragments of the cranium 

 show little or no sign of rolling or other 

 abrasion, save an incision at the back 

 of the parietal, probably caused by a 

 workman's pick.' " 



Further exploration during 1913 re- 

 sulted in the finding, by Father P. 

 Teilhard de Chardin, S. J., of an apelike 

 canine tooth in the dark bed of the 

 gravel, the same stratum which had 

 yielded the skull and the mandible. 

 The nasal bones were also found in the 

 same bed. 



Geological Age of the Piltdown Man 



The question of the geological age of 

 these now celebrated specimens is nat- 

 urally of first importance. It has been 

 suspected by some that geologically 

 they are not old at all; that they may 

 even represent a deliberate hoax, a ne- 

 gro or Australian skull and a broken ape- 

 jaw, artificially fossilized and "planted" 

 in the gravel-bed, to fool the scientists. 

 Against this suggestion tell the whole 

 circumstances of the discovery as above 



i"Tliis wretched pickaxe added yet another 

 obstacle. It cut off the fore-part Of the jaw, 

 bearing the front cheek-teeth, the 'eye" teeth, or 

 canines, and the cutting-teeth." W. P. Pycraft 



