CHAPTER XIX 
THE ANTIQUITY OF THE PILTDOWN RACE 
A GREAT company assembled in the rooms of the Geological 
Society of London on the evening of December i8th, 
1912, to receive the first authentic account of the discovery 
at Piltdown. An unknown phase in the early history of 
humanity was to be revealed ; a revelation of that kind 
stirs the interest of many men, and draws them from their 
studies and laboratories to brave the heated atmosphere 
of overcrowded meeting-rooms. The various fragments 
of the skull had been pieced together ; the missing parts 
had been filled in ; a complete skull was thus brought 
before the meeting. It was quite plain to all assembled 
that the skull thus reconstructed by Dr Smith Woodward 
was a strange blend of man and ape. At last, it seemed, 
the missing form — the link which early followers of 
Darwin had searched for — had really been discovered. No 
one had ever suspected that a secret of this kind lay hid 
away in the Weald of Sussex. We shall attend the meet- 
ing of geologists, however, not so much to learn what 
kind of beings those ancient inhabitants of England were, 
as to ascertain their position in the scale of time — to see 
their place in the scheme of man's evolution. We want 
to hear from the lips of those who have studied the recent 
history of the earth, and who have discovered the sequence 
and the dates of more recent land changes and deposits, 
how long ago it is since these ancient people lived in the 
Weald of Sussex. We shall take, in the first place, the 
opinion of Dr Smith Woodward himself. In his opinion 
the Piltdown remains " are almost (if not absolutely) of 
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