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XVI.—The Prehistoric Find at Piltdown. An Address delivered on 24th 
January 1921, by the retiring Vice-President, Prof. Waterston, 
M.A., M.D., St Andrews University. 
I HAVE selected as the subject of my address the prehistoric find at Piltdown, 
which seemed to me to be a subject which would prove of interest to workers 
in a good many of the branches of Science represented here. Like all other 
evidence bearing upon the ancestry of man this find has appealed to a wide 
circle, and there has already grown up a large literature on the subject. One 
writer in 1915 gave sixty-eight references, and in 1918 no less than forty-three 
additional ones. The announcement of the discovery of prehistoric human 
remains has too often only been the prelude to an acrimonious discussion 
of the interpretation to be put upon them. The most recent discovery in 
England has been no exception to this rule, and a controversy has arisen 
of which the echoes have not yet died down. It will be a great misfortune 
if the conflict about interpretation should obscure the real value of what is, 
from almost every standpoint, one of the most valuable and instructive finds 
that has ever been made. 
The place of the find was a flint-bearing stratum of gravel, overlying the 
Wealden beds at Piltdown in Sussex, in a portion of the basin of the Sussex 
Ouse. The gravel is found over a large plateau lying about 120 feet above 
sea-level, and 80 feet above the present level of the River Ouse. 
[Prof. Waterston then gave an account of the finding at different places in 
the district of a large number of fossil fragments, which included portions of 
human skulls and of a mandible, of teeth and bones of a Tertiary elephant 
(stegodon), of mastodon, of a form of hippopotamus, etc. | | | 
The authors’ conclusions on the original find were, “ A stratified Pleistocene 
gravel, containing in its lower layers the remains of a destroyed Pliocene 
deposit not far away, consisting of worn and broken fragments.” All the 
ones were of considerable thickness, the left temporal bone being nearly 
complete and beautifully preserved. From the combined human cranial and 
mandibular fragments a skull was reconstructed, and the fragments were 
made the type specimens of a new genus of mankind, Hoanthropus Dawsonit. 
This form differed from other known species in the following characters :— 
1. The skull bones were practically identical with those of modern man, 
and did not show the features of characteristic Pithecanthropus, or 
the Neanderthal man, such as the prominent supraciliary ridges. 
2, The skull, as reconstructed, was of small capacity, and in this feature 
was unlike the majority of prehistoric crania. 
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