until 1915.” I then responded to this 
potential interpretation: 
Dawson would not blow his cover in 
such a crude way. For Dawson took Smith 
Woodward to the second site on several 
prospecting trips in 1914, always finding 
nothing. Now Teilhard and Smith Wood- 
ward were also fairly close. Dawson had 
introduced them in 1909 by sending to 
London some important mammal speci- 
mens (having nothing to do with Pilt- 
down) that Teilhard had collected. Smith 
Woodward was delighted with Teilhard’s 
work and praised him lavishly in a pub- 
lication. He accepted Teilhard as the only 
other member of their initial collecting 
trips at Piltdown. Moreover, Teilhard was 
a house guest of the Smith Woodwards 
when he visited London in September 
1913, following his discovery of the ca- 
nine. If Dawson had shown Teilhard the 
Piltdown 2 finds in 1913, then led Smith 
Woodward extensively astray during sev- 
eral field trips in 1914, and if an innocent 
Teilhard had told Smith Woodward about 
the specimens (and I can’t imagine why 
he would have held back), then Dawson 
would have been exposed. 
Dodson also grants my central point 
but a single paragraph, says nothing 
at all about the inconsistency in dates 
for Piltdown 2, and argues only that 
the series of slips should be seen as 
a tatonnement, or “groping,” on Teil- 
hard’s part. Dodson merely asserts this 
interpretation without mentioning the 
details of a single slip and without 
even acknowledging my central claim 
that all the slips have a common theme 
and thus cannot represent, in my view, 
a groping to remember the truth. 
Von Koenigswald, also treating my 
central point in one paragraph, ignores 
the chronological problems of Pilt- 
down 2. (Thus, only one commentator 
in three even deigns to mention my 
single strongest argument.) He uses 
one of Teilhard’s subsidiary slips (mis- 
stating the year he met Dawson) as 
evidence of his general forgetfulness, 
again not acknowledging my claim 
that all the errors form a pattern, 
whereas general failure of memory 
should not yield order. By the way, 
Professor von Koenigswald is mistaken 
in stating that Teilhard was “inad- 
vertently dragged into the Piltdown 
fraud” wh<jn he discovered the canine 
in 1913. Teilhard accompanied Daw- 
son and Smith Woodward during their 
very first excavation together in 1912. 
In fact, Smith Woodward had re- 
quested that Dawson include no locals 
in the work, and Dawson had per- 
mitted only Teilhard to accompany 
them, declaring to Smith Woodward 
that the young priest was “quite safe.” 
2. Teilhard’s silence. Teilhard wrote 
one short article on Piltdown for a 
popular journal in 1920, correctly 
stated that the skull and jaw belonged 
to two separate creatures, and then 
proceeded to avoid the subject for the 
rest of his career. It is the profundity 
of his silence that I find so startling. 
Through twenty volumes of collected 
works, I can find only half a dozen 
incidental references, either an item 
in a list, a dot on a graph, or a mention 
in a footnote— never so much as a 
single sentence. Yet, as I argued, the 
Piltdown skull (which, if he was in- 
nocent, should have remained a genu- 
ine human fossil in his eyes, even if 
he attributed the jaw to an ape) rep- 
resented his best argument for a cen- 
tral claim in his evolutionary philos- 
ophy — multiple, parallel lineages 
striving upward toward the domina- 
tion of matter by spirit. Why did he 
not use it? He wrote volumes on the 
legitimate Peking man and at least 
four review articles on human evo- 
lution in general. These articles treat 
dubious and fragmentary remains, of 
which Teilhard had no personal knowl- 
edge, in detail. Why did he leave Pilt- 
down out if he believed the skull to 
be genuine? 
Since writing my article, I have 
learned of another small point that 
makes the silence even more puzzling. 
When Peking man was discovered, its 
cranium was reconstructed incorrectly 
to yield a capacity lying, like Pilt- 
down’s, in the modern human range. 
This unleashed a volume of commen- 
tary about the relationship between 
Piltdown and Peking. Now Teilhard 
was in China and was contributing 
(as a geologist) to the original Peking 
finds. He was the only one there with 
personal knowledge of Piltdown. Yet, 
so far as I can tell, he said nothing 
at all. His own mentor, Marcellin 
Boule, published a paper comparing 
the Peking and Piltdown craniums. It 
included long quotations from Teil- 
hard about the geology of the Peking 
site, but not a word from him about 
the craniums. 
Washburn again gives this second 
major claim but a single paragraph, 
presenting two implausible alternative 
suggestions to explain Teilhard’s si- 
lence. First, he conjectures that Teil- 
hard’s precarious position with the 
church may have led him to avoid 
the controversy. But if Teilhard was 
playing it safe, why did he write, and 
circulate extensively in samizdat, the 
many volumes that the church truly 
regarded as heretical and enjoined him 
from publishing — the posthumously 
printed works that made him a cult 
figure after his death? Second, Wash- 
burn conjectures that Teilhard simply 
wasn’t interested in Piltdown and de- 
bates about single fossils, but in a 
“general philosophy of man.” But this 
makes no sense for two reasons. As 
I stated above, Piltdown was Teil- 
hard’s best empirical argument for 
this “general philosophy,” and he 
never used it. And if he had so little 
interest in single fossils, why did he 
write volumes about Peking man and 
many review articles about the em- 
pirical data of human paleontology — 
including all the other dubious and 
problematical fossils. Teilhard was not 
a man who avoided controversy. 
Dodson at least gives my point some 
space and consideration. He mentions 
a suite of other human fossils to 
counter my claim that Piltdown was 
Teilhard’s strongest argument for mul- 
tiple, parallel lineages. But all these 
other fossils are consistent with a uni- 
linear phylogeny of Pithecanthropus- 
Neanderthal-modern humans, and 
many of Teilhard’s contemporaries ar- 
ranged them in just such a scheme 
(others considered Neanderthal as a 
side branch). Piltdown was the one 
clear demonstration of multiple lin- 
eages, for Piltdown, with its modern 
skull (literally, as we now know), was 
the contemporary of big-jawed, beetle- 
browed Neanderthal. 
Dodson’s alternative explanation for 
Teilhard’s silence is reasonable and 
I considered it in my article — that 
Teilhard knew Piltdown was a fake 
but did not participate in the forgery 
himself. I agree that Teilhard’s ex- 
traordinary silence only demonstrates 
his knowledge or strong suspicion of 
forgery, not his participation in it. But 
this is why my case is multifaceted. 
The silence indicates his knowledge 
of fraud; had I found this alone, 1 
would not have implicated him di- 
rectly. It is my other finding — the pat- 
tern of slips and later evasions in the 
letters to Oakley — that seems to me 
best explained as Teilhard’s attempt 
to cover up an actual involvement. 
For if he were innocent and only sus- 
picious, why the telling slip in the 
dating of Piltdown 2 and why a pattern 
of errors and evasions that seems de- 
signed to divert a consideration of his 
own possible role? 
According to von Koenigswald, 
28 
