Piltdown

Charles Dawson found me in London. I had a study across from the Natural History Museum, where I could work without the disturbances of the larger building. I only gave the address of my real office to the members of the Royal Archaeological Institute. Dawson was not a member of the Royal Archaeological Institute, a fact which never left his head. He was, however, a dear friend.

He preferred to make an entrance, not notifying any of the building staff or writing beforehand. Dawson pushed inside, out of breath from the stairs and damp from the rain, but with a broad smile that warped his mustache. His eyes always gleamed. This light seemed more manic than usual.

“Sir Arthur Woodward, I’m about to change your life.”

“Sit down first, Charles.” I gestured to the seat across from my desk. “What has the Wizard of Sussex brought for me?”

He laughed and took off his flat cap. His hair had thinned, clinging to his tight skull like wispy gray grass. He was still breathless as he sat down, making his body swell and heave with a motion to match the wild excitement in his eyes. From inside his coat pocket, Dawson drew out a brown paper parcel, and pressed one pale hand over it, as if to stop me from tearing it open before he finished his preamble.

“I’ve spent the last few years at a dig site in Sussex, a place called Piltdown. While I’m aware of the skepticism of those on the continent, I am certain that the gravel pits could be ripe with fossils, particularly those of early hominids.” He paused to lick his lips, and I felt a flicker in my stomach. The dramatics of this display might not be misplaced. “If we are to uncover remains of the missing link between man and ape, Sussex might well be the place for it.”

Dawson unfolded the parcel. Carefully, he withdrew a small triangle of burnt black, stone-like material. It fit neatly between his thumb and pointer finger. As soon as he passed it to me, I felt the familiar density of fossilized bone.

I lifted it to my lamp, watching the shadows scrape across the porous, time-scoured edges. A fragment of a skull, perhaps? Thicker than average, clearly prehistoric. It could be simian.

“Are you certain this is what you think it is?” I asked. “The missing link?”

“We can find out.” Dawson said. He reached across the desk and grabbed my shoulders. I met his eyes and found that I couldn’t look away. “Arthur, you’re the first person I’ve told. You and I share something special among scientists. Faith in what we’re looking for.”

I stared at him with open wonder. The man had been driven out of his senses, but with every word, my excitement rose to match his. This could be the most important archaeological discovery in history.

“You want me to come to Sussex?”

Dawson nodded. “Just for the summer. Help validate whatever else we find at the site. This will change the world.”

His hands were still on me, his eyes still on mine, glowing like candles. How could I have refused?

Dawson had two rooms in a local pub within walking distance of the site. Piltdown was the archetype of southern English town: quiet, small, and surrounded by miles of grassy fields. The roads were lined with slanted fences and bushes that sat fat under the summer sun.

After I’d put down my suitcases, we set off. It was hotter than I’d have preferred, but not at all unpleasant. I rolled up my sleeves as we followed a little dirt road out of town to where the gravel pits began.

Wooden signs designated the area as a dig site under the authority of the Society of Antiquaries of London. A few men walked around, stepping over the twine lines that sectioned off the pits, bringing down wooden beams to support the sides of the excavated areas, or toting wheelbarrows full of earth. Dawson introduced me to the diggers, most of whom seemed to stop listening after “from the Natural History Museum.”

Dawson and I started trotting around supervising, delegating, and examining, but quickly realized that we’d have to rely on the laborers to identify anything of interest if we were expecting to finish the excavation by the end of summer. After a while, of course, boredom convinced both of us to pick up spades and help with the actual digging.

At the end of the first day, when the shadows grew long enough to fully conceal anything below ground level, Dawson and I sat together against the wall of one of the larger pits. My fingers scraped absently at the gravel beside us, as if the remains of the hominid were only millimeters further down.

“Not much of a laborer, myself,” Dawson said, lighting his pipe. “Never had the constitution.”

I nodded. “Good thing we have all this help.” I gestured to the men, who had started taking out flasks and cigarettes as they finished depositing the loose earth.

“I suppose we can’t all have passions that are so fundamental.”

I laughed as he passed his pipe. I would have been content to dig alongside Dawson even without the promise of a find. He was one of those men who could convince you you’d known them for all your life, and make you wish to know them for the rest of it.

That night, I was sitting in my room reading when I heard a heavy impact from across the hall. I set down my book and crossed the corridor to Dawson’s door.

“Charles?” I called through the wood.

I was met with a lazy laugh. “Come in, Arthur.”

Dawson was on the ground, coat and all. He smiled up at me, with the whites of his eyes glazed the same color as his skin.

“Are you alright?” I made to help him up, but Dawson waved me off and climbed unsteadily to his feet. His movements were slow, as if he was half-asleep.

“I’m alright, Arthur.” Dawson sat heavily on the bed.“It’s the medicine.”

“What?” I saw a bottle on his nightstand. Laudanum, about half-full, with an empty glass beside it.

“I get these headaches,” Dawson said. “The doctor said laudanum would stop the pain.”

“Here,” I reached over and helped him pull his arms from his coat sleeves. Dawson then reclined against his pillows. “This much laudanum for a headache?”

“They’re no small headaches,” Dawson chuckled. In the light from his bedside lamp, I could see his skin was even paler than usual, and small beads of sweat were forming on his forehead.

“Are you fit to be outside all day?”

“You’re very kind.” Dawson smiled. “But the fresh air will do me good, and so will finding more bones.”

“It upsets me that you’re overexerting yourself looking for a fossil that might not be there.”

“It’s there, Arthur.” Dawson snapped, his forcefulness cutting through the opium haze. “We’ll find it”

And the next day, we did. I was half-asleep against a fencepost when I heard Dawson shouting. By the time I’d jogged over, every worker was crowding around the edge of the pit, with Dawson at the bottom, crouching over something in the dirt.

I climbed down after him. Dawson beamed at me, and straightened, pointing with a trembling finger at three pieces of bone, half-unearthed. One was a clear jaw fragment, while the other two were curved like part of a skull, one larger than my hand.

“Good God, Arthur.” Dawson embraced me with such force that I fell back against the earthen side of the hole. I could feel every muscle in his body shaking with excitement. “Good God, we found it.”

“Esteemed gentlemen of the Royal Archaeological Institute, I present the findings of myself and Mr. Dawson, from Piltdown, Sussex.”

The assembly was quiet. The bone fragments were lying out on a wooden table, the surface slanted to allow better viewing from across the lecture hall. “These fossils constitute part of a hominid’s frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes, as well as a fragment of the mandible.”

I flipped the papers on my chart, showing diagrams of the reconstructed skull. It resembled a modern human, with the prominent jaw and brow of a more ape-like organism.

“These are between five hundred thousand and one million years old, disproving the estimate that humans evolved from apes two million years ago. Eoanthropus Dawsoni, as we are calling the hominid, contains all the makings of the missing link between ape and man, predicted by Darwin in The Descent of Man. Eoantrhopus Dawsoni proves man descended from apes, in Britain.”

The gentlemen applauded. My older fellows were more restrained, but the younger men were standing, whooping in celebration like I had announced our victory in war. I met Dawson’s eyes and matched his beaming smile. His gaze was somehow brighter than ever before.

After a moment, the assembly calmed down and returned to their seats, but for one. Sir Arthur Keith, an anthropologist. I recognized his dull eyes, like he had already started to fossilize.

“Sir Woodward, you and Mr. Dawson have my utmost respect as men of knowledge and integrity, and please know that I only say this in the name of thoroughness.” Keith had the attention of the room now. I felt exposed alone on the stage. “I fear that this skull is not that of a pre-human ape, but a composite, partially ape and partially human. The mandible appears to be from a different creature than the skull.”

“Consider the canine tooth. Protrusion as shown in this reconstruction would prevent lateral motion, which is evidenced by the wear on the molars. This creature could not have moved its mouth in the way which the bones imply that it must have.”

I heard murmuring. Dawson looked pale.

“I appreciate your input, Sir Keith,” I said, my heartbeat quickening. “Dawson and I may have overestimated the size of the canine. We felt the importance of the discovery mandated that we report it as soon as possible. We are still searching for more remains of Eoanthropus Dawsoni.”

Keith nodded. “I wish you gentlemen continued luck with your dig. I would be fascinated to see the articulation justified.”

I finished the presentation as quickly as I could, trying to reclaim the authority and composure that I had begun it with. Was Keith simply jealous that such a discovery had been made by a museum curator, and an amateur? Did he not love his country?

I said this to Dawson as we left the hall, once I was sure we were out of earshot of our fellows. While most seemed ecstatic about the Piltdown Man, Keith’s objection had soured my mood. Dawson, however, had recovered with flawless composure and optimism.

“It’s just as you told the assembly” His hand was on my shoulder. “We’ll go back to Piltdown, we’ll find more of the skull, and we’ll prove that we’re right.”

As word of the Piltdown Man spread, our excavation crew grew, and we made progress at tenfold the speed of our dig last summer, but the weather worsened, and spirits drained away. Some days the rain was so constant that we were unable to work and instead stood gloomily underneath umbrellas and listened to the rain patter off the tarps we’d staked over the top of each pit. Maybe we were wasting our time.

Dawson didn’t believe so. We dug for months. The workers would watch him each day, in case he finally decided to admit defeat. Dawson was captivated by either extreme optimism in our dig or a severe wave of despair, but he never suggested giving up. Only once did he appear on the site in an opium haze, the laudanum weighing down every step. I helped him back to bed and forbade anybody from mentioning the episode.

One night, after a disheartening day, Dawson called me into his room. He wore the somber expression of his medicine. His headaches had worsened over time.

“Arthur,” Dawson said, his eyes dark in the lamplight. I couldn’t see the raindrops on the black windows, but I could hear them hitting the pub roof. “Do you believe there are more hominid fossils in the gravel pits?”

I paused. sure that this was what I had been half-hoping for and half-dreading. The excavation was complete. It was time to admit to the scientific community that the Piltdown Man fossils were as full of a record of Eoanthropus Dawsoni that we were going to get at this point. “No,”

“Do you believe that there was an organism, Eoanthropus Dawsoni, that serves as the missing link in the evolutionary chain between man and ape, with the characteristics that our fossil record shows?”

“I do.”

“Do you believe that modern man evolved in Britain, and that skeletal remains could plausibly be found as a fossil record in Sussex?”

“Yes.”

Dawson nodded and stepped over to his trunk. He took out a small brown parcel tied with twine, the exact same way he’d wrapped up the first fragment he showed me. This piece was longer and narrower, and I recognized it before it was fully unwrapped. A canine tooth stained and ragged with age.

“Charles!” I blinked. “When did you dig that up?”

“I didn’t dig it up,” Dawson said, his eyes leaving mine and focusing on the tooth. “I haven’t even buried it yet. It’s from an orangutan, stained with oxides and filed down to size. It’s going to be unearthed tomorrow at the dig site, and it’s going to prove that we’re right.”

“You’re going to falsify a fossil?” I felt dizzy. “Have you lost your mind?”

Dawson looked like a completely different person. A pale statue of himself. The last pieces slid together.

“You lied the whole time,” I said. “You buried the skull and the jaw pieces, then acted surprised when we found them. This is a hoax.”

“Arthur, listen— “

“You’re despicable.” I felt bile rising in my throat. “You have no integrity. You’re not a scientist, you’re a fraud, and you’ve ruined my career. I defended you in front of the Royal Institution, and you were lying to my face.”

“Arthur, I’ve got less than a year to live.”

“What?” I felt like my brain was being cleaved. “You’re dying?”

“It’s anemia. The doctor called it ‘pernicious’.” Dawson raised a pale hand to touch my arm, and I let him. “My life is at an end.”

“Charles, that doesn’t justify this, you can’t just rewrite the history of our own species for your own— “

“I’m not rewriting anything,” Dawson said, his voice quiet. “I’m not planting anything that I don’t already know is there. Eoanthropus Dawsoni existed, and just because the skull is a composite— “

“It’s fake, Dawson.”

“The Piltdown Man fits what we know. it raises no issues and answers every question. Why do we need proof when we have faith in our own science? Man descended from ape; we know this is true. Man is from Britain; this simply follows logic. I’m filling a gap in our understanding of the natural world.”

Either out of emotion, or some effect of his disease, Dawson’s frame was trembling. His grip on my arm weakened, but his eyes were still gleaming.

“Arthur, I’ll be dead by 1917. But history doesn’t change. In the year 2000, people will know our names. Darwin, Mendel, Linnaeus, and Dawson and Woodward. We’ll be immortalized.”

“Stop saying ‘we’.”

He grabbed my other arm, pulling himself to me. “Please, Arthur. We’re in this together.”

I brushed off his hands. Then I turned and left Dawson’s bedroom, ignoring his protests. By the time the sun fully rose the next morning, I was on a train leaving Piltdown.

Dawson sent me letters for weeks, with an impressive facade. He described amazing new finds; a canine that fit into the Piltdown Man’s jaw and even a cricket bat carved from the leg of a prehistoric elephant. Then they became more sentimental and transparent. He referenced Piltdown, the summer we spent digging. He thanked me for being part of it all, and said that he had been happy. I understood what his desperation meant but did all I could to avoid thinking of him. This man lied to me for a year, jeopardized my career, and made a mockery of the field that I devoted my life to.

Yet I still find myself imagining Sussex, walking through those fields with Dawson next to me. I wonder if they’ve filled the gravel pits back in, or if they’d left them as they were.

Then the worst letter came. Dawson was dead.

The ultimate presentation of the Piltdown Man fossils was a more emotional affair than I’d expected. The gentlemen sat solemn, as if Dawson’s death had been grim payment for the advancement he made in human knowledge. It was my last chance to speak out about how the Piltdown Man was false, the pits in Sussex held nothing but gravel and clay, and Dawson was no more an archaeologist than an ape himself.

But when I pronounced Eoanthropus Dawsoni, I clung to the syllables of his name. I remembered how easily he’d convinced me to drop everything and follow him, how little I’d ever doubted him. When I was done, the entire hall stood to applaud. I nodded listlessly, deafened by the noise. I suppose I’m simply a coward.

Dawson is in Lewes, buried six feet deep in the Sussex loam, slowly turning into a real British skeleton. I’m in London, in my private office across from the Natural History Museum. There's a memorial in Piltdown, right next to the pits. It’s cement, the same height as Dawson and the roughly phallic shape of an elongated gravestone. I’ve heard that both of our names are on it, but I’ve never been back. There’s nothing there.