Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes

by Stephen Jay Gould

  The Piltdown case, surely the most famous and spectacular fraud of twentieth-century science, has experienced this tension ever since its exposé in 1953. The semiofficial, contained version holds that Charles Dawson, the lawyer and amateur archeologist who “found” the first specimens, devised and executed the entire plot himself. Since J. S. Weiner’s elegant case virtually precludes Dawson’s innocence (The Piltdown Forgery, Oxford University Press, 1955), conspiracies become the only reasonable refuge for challengers. And proposals for coconspirators abound, ranging from the great anatomist Grafton Elliot Smith to W. J. Sollas, professor of geology at Oxford. I regard these claims as farfetched and devoid of reasonable evidence. But I do believe that a conspiracy existed at Piltdown and that, for once, the most interesting hypothesis is actually true. I believe that a man who later became one of the world’s most famous theologians, a cult figure for many years after his death in 1955, knew what Dawson was doing and probably helped in no small way—the French Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

  TEILHARD AND PILTDOWN

  Teilhard, born in Auvergne (central France) in 1881, belonged to an old, conservative, and prosperous family. Entering the Society of Jesus in 1902, he studied on the English island of Jersey from 1902 to 1905 and then spent three years as a teacher of physics and chemistry at a Jesuit school in Cairo. In 1908, he returned to finish his theological training at the Jesuit seminary of Ore Place in Hastings, providentially located right next to Piltdown on England’s southeast coast. Here he stayed for four years, and here he was ordained a priest in 1912.3 As a theological student, Teilhard was talented enough, but lackadaisical. His passion at Hastings was, as it always had been, natural history. He scoured the countryside for butterflies, birds, and fossils. And, in 1909, he met Charles Dawson at the focus of their common interests—in a stone quarry, hunting for fossils. The two men became good friends and colleagues in pursuit of their interest. Teilhard described Dawson to his parents as “my correspondent in geology.”

  Dawson claimed that he had recovered the first fragment of Piltdown’s skull in 1908, after workmen at a gravel pit told him of a “coconut” (the entire skull) they had unearthed and smashed at the site. Dawson kept poking about, collecting a few more skull pieces and some fragments of other fossil mammals. He did not bring his specimens to Arthur Smith Woodward, keeper of paleontology at the British Museum, until the middle of 1912. Thus, for three years before any professional ever heard of the Piltdown material, Dawson and Teilhard were companions in natural history in the environs of Piltdown.

  Smith Woodward was not a secretive man, but he knew the value of what Dawson had brought and the envy it might inspire. He clamped a tight lid upon Dawson’s information prior to its publication. He wanted none of Dawson’s lay friends at the site, and only one naturalist accompanied Dawson and Smith Woodward in their first joint excavations at Piltdown—Teilhard de Chardin, whom Dawson had described as “quite safe.” More specimens came to light during 1912, including the famous jaw with its two molar teeth, artificially filed to simulate human patterns of wear. In December, Smith Woodward published and the controversy began.

  The skull fragments, although remarkably thick, could not be distinguished from those of modern humans. The jaw, on the other hand, except for the wear of its teeth, loudly said “chimpanzee” to many experts (in fact, it once belonged to an orangutan). No one smelled fraud, but many professionals felt that parts of two creatures had been mixed together at the Piltdown site. Smith Woodward stoutly defended the integrity of his creature, arguing, with flawed logic, that the crucial role of brain power in our mastery of the earth today implies a precocious role for large brains in evolutionary history as well. A fully vaulted skull still attached to an apish jaw vindicated such a brain-centered view of human evolution.

  Teilhard left England late in 19124 to begin his graduate studies with Marcellin Boule, the greatest physical anthropologist of France. But in August 1913, he was back in England for a retreat at Ore Place. He also spent several days prospecting with Dawson and on August 30 made a major discovery himself—a canine tooth of the lower jaw, apish in appearance but worn in a human fashion. Smith Woodward continued his series of publications on the new material, but critics persisted in their belief that Piltdown man represented two animals improperly united.

  The impasse broke in Smith Woodward’s favor in 1915. Dawson had been prospecting at another site, two miles from Piltdown, for several years. He probably took Teilhard there in 1913; we know that he searched the area several times with Smith Woodward in 1914. Then, in January 1915, he wrote to Smith Woodward. The second site, later called Piltdown 2, had yielded its reward: “I believe we are in luck again. I have got a fragment of the left side [it was actually the right] of a frontal bone with a portion of the orbit and root of nose.” In July of the same year, he announced the discovery of a lower molar, again, apish in appearance but worn in a human fashion. The bones of a human and an ape might wash into the same gravel pit once, but the second, identical association of vaulted skull and apish jaw surely proved the integrity of a single bearer, despite the apparent anatomical incongruity. H. F. Osborn, America’s leading paleontologist and critic of the first Piltdown find, announced a conversion in his usual grandiloquent fashion. Even Teilhard’s teacher Marcellin Boule, leader of the doubters, grumbled that the new finds had tipped the balance, albeit slightly, in Smith Woodward’s favor. Dawson did not live to enjoy his triumph, for he died in 1916. Smith Woodward stoutly supported Piltdown for the rest of his long life, devoting his last book (The Earliest Englishman, 1948) to its defense. He died, mercifully, before his bubble burst.

  Meanwhile, Teilhard pursued his calling with mounting fame, frustration, and exhilaration. He served with distinction as a stretcher bearer in World War I and then became professor of geology at the Institut Catholique of Paris. But his unorthodox (although always pious) thinking soon led him into irrevocable conflict with ecclesiastical authority. Ordered to abandon his teaching post and to leave France, Teilhard departed for China in 1926. There he remained for most of his life, pursuing distinguished research in geology and paleontology and writing the philosophical treatises on cosmic history and the reconciliation of science with religion that later made him so famous. (They all remained unpublished, by ecclesiastical fiat, until his death.) Teilhard died in 1955, but his passing only marked the beginning of his meteoric rise to fame. His treatises, long suppressed, were published and quickly translated into all major languages. The Phenomenon of Man became a best seller throughout the world. Harvard’s Widener Library now houses an entire tier of books devoted to Teilhard’s writing and thinking. Two journals that were established to discuss his ideas still flourish.

  Of the original trio—Dawson, Teilhard, and Smith Woodward—only Teilhard was still living when Kenneth Oakley, J. S. Weiner, and W. E. le Gros Clark proved that the Piltdown bones had been chemically stained to mimic great age, the teeth artificially filed to simulate human wear, the associated mammal remains all brought in from elsewhere, and the flint “implements” recently carved. The critics had been right all along, more right than they had dared to imagine. The skull bones did belong to a modern human, the jaw to an orangutan. As the shock of revelation gave way to the fascination of whodunit, suspicion quickly passed from two members of the trio. Smith Woodward had been too dedicated and too gullible; moreover, he knew nothing of the site before Dawson brought him the original bones in 1912. (I have no doubt whatsoever of Smith Woodward’s total innocence.) Teilhard was too famous and too present for any but the most discreet probing. He was dismissed as a naïve young student who, forty years before, had been duped and used by the crafty Dawson. Dawson acting alone became the official theory; professional science was embarrassed, but absolved.

  DOUBTS

  I was just the right age for primal fascination—twelve years old—and a budding paleontologist when news of the fraud appeared on page one of the New York Times
one morning at breakfast. My interest has never abated, and I have, over the years, asked many senior paleontologists about Piltdown. I have also remarked, both with amusement and wonder, that very few believed the official tale of Dawson acting alone. I noted, in particular, that several of the men I most admire suspected Teilhard, not so much on the basis of hard evidence (for their suspicions rested on what I regard as a weak point among the arguments), but from an intuitive feeling about this man whom they knew well, loved, and respected, but who seemed to hide passion, mystery, and good humor behind a garb of piety. A. S. Romer and Bryan Patterson, two of America’s leading vertebrate paleontologists and my former colleagues at Harvard, often voiced their suspicions to me. Louis Leakey voiced them in print, without naming the name, but with no ambiguity for anyone in the know (see his autobiography, By the Evidence).5

  I finally decided to get off my butt and probe a bit after I wrote a column on Piltdown for other reasons (Natural History, March 1979). I read all the official documents and concluded that nothing excluded Teilhard, although nothing beyond his presence at Piltdown from the start particularly implicated him either. I intended to drop the subject or to pass it along to someone with a greater zeal for investigative reporting. But at a conference in France last September, I happened to meet two of Teilhard’s closest colleagues, the leading paleontologist J. Piveteau and the great zoologist P. P. Grassé. They greeted my suspicions with a blustering “incroyable.” Then Père François Russo, Teilhard’s friend and fellow Jesuit, heard of my inquiries and promised to send me a document that would prove Teilhard’s innocence—a copy of the letter that Teilhard had written to Kenneth Oakley on November 28, 1953. I received this letter in printed French translation (Teilhard wrote it in English) in October 1979 and realized immediately that it contained an inconsistency (a slip on Teilhard’s part) most easily resolved by the hypothesis of Teilhard’s complicity. When I visited Oakley at Oxford in April 1980, he showed me the original letter along with several others that Teilhard had written to him. We studied the documents and discussed Piltdown for the better part of a day, and I left convinced that Romer, Patterson, and Leakey had been right. Oakley, who had noted the inconsistency but interpreted it differently, agreed with me and stated as we parted: “I think it’s right that Teilhard was in it.” (Let me here express my deep appreciation for Dr. Oakley’s hospitality, his openness, and his simple, seemingly inexhaustible kindness and helpfulness. I always feel so exhilarated when I discover—and it is not so rare as many people imagine—that a great thinker is also an exemplary human being.) Since then, I have sharpened the basic arguments and read through Teilhard’s published work, finding a pattern that seems hard to reconcile with his innocence. My case is, to be sure, circumstantial (as is the case against Dawson or anyone else), but I believe that the burden of proof must now rest with those who would hold Father Teilhard blameless.

  The Case against Teilhard

  THE LETTERS TO KENNETH OAKLEY

  The main virtue of truth, quite apart from its ethical value (which I hold to be considerable), is that it represents an infallible guide for keeping your story straight. The problem with prevarication is that, when the going gets complex or the recollection misty, it becomes very difficult to remember all the details of your invented scheme. Richard Nixon finally succumbed on a minor matter, and Sir Walter Scott spoke truly when he wrote the famous couplet: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave,/When first we practice to deceive!”

  Teilhard made just such a significant slip on a minor point in his letter to Oakley. Teilhard offered no spontaneous recollections about Piltdown and responded only to Oakley’s direct inquiries for help in establishing the forger’s identity. He begins by congratulating Oakley “most sincerely on your solution of the Piltdown problem. Anatomically speaking, ‘Eoanthropus’ [Smith Woodward’s name for the Piltdown animal] was a kind of monster…. Therefore I am fundamentally pleased by your conclusions, in spite of the fact that, sentimentally speaking, it spoils one of my brightest and earliest paleontological memories.”

  Teilhard then stonewalls on the question of fraud. He refuses to believe it at all, declaring that Smith Woodward and Dawson (and, by implication, himself) were not the kind of men who could conceivably do such a thing. Is it not possible, he asks, that some collector discarded the ape bones in a gravel pit that legitimately contained a human skull, the product of a recent interment? Could not the iron staining have been natural, since the local water “can stain (with iron) at a remarkable speed”? But Teilhard’s notion can explain neither the artificial filing of the teeth to simulate human wear nor the crucial discovery of a second combination of ape and human at the Piltdown 2 site. In fact, Teilhard admits: “The idea sounds fantastic. But, in my opinion, no more fantastic than to make Dawson the perpetrator of a hoax.”

  Teilhard then goes on to discuss Piltdown 2 and, in trying to exonerate Dawson, makes his fatal error. He writes:

  He [Dawson] just brought me to the site of Locality 2 and explained me [sic] that he had found the isolated molar and the small pieces of skull in the heaps of rubble and pebbles raked at the surface of the field.

  But this cannot be. Teilhard did visit the second site with Dawson in 1913, but they did not find anything. Dawson “discovered” the skull bones at Piltdown 2 in January 1915, and the tooth not until July 1915. And now, the key point: Teilhard was mustered into the French army in December 1914 and was shipped immediately to the front, where he remained until the war ended. He could not have seen the remains of Piltdown 2 with Dawson, unless they had manufactured them together before he left (Dawson died in 1916).

  Oakley caught the inconsistency immediately when he received Teilhard’s letter in 1953, but he read it differently and for good reason. At that time, Oakley and his colleagues were just beginning their explorations into whodunit. They rightly suspected Dawson and had written to Teilhard to gather evidence. Oakley read Teilhard’s statement when he was simply trying to establish the basic fact of Dawson’s guilt. In that context, he assumed that Dawson had shown the specimens to Teilhard in 1913, but had withheld them from Smith Woodward until 1915—more evidence for Dawson’s complicity.

  Oakley wrote back immediately, and Teilhard, realizing that he had tripped, began to temporize. In his second letter of January 29, 1954, he tried to recoup:

  Concerning the point of “history” you ask me, my “souvenirs” are a little vague. Yet, by elimination (and since Dawson died during the First World War, if I am correct) my visit with Dawson to the second site (where the two small fragments of skull and the isolated molar were found in the rubble) must have been in late July 1913 [it was probably in early August].

  Obviously troubled, he then penned the following postscript.

  When I visited the site no. 2 (in 1913?) the two small fragments of skull and tooth had already been found, I believe. But your very question makes me doubtful! Yes, I think definitely they had been already found: and that is the reason why Dawson pointed to me the little heaps of raked pebbles as the place of the “discovery.”

  In a final letter to Mable Kenward, daughter of the owner of Barkham Manor, site of the first Piltdown find, Teilhard drew back even further: “Dawson showed me the field where the second skull (fragments) were found. But, as I wrote to Oakley, I cannot remember whether it was after or before the find” (March 2, 1954).

  I can devise only four interpretations for Teilhard’s slip.

  1. I thought initially, when I had only read the first letter, that one might interpret Teilhard’s statement thus: Dawson took me to the site in 1913 and later stated in wartime correspondence that he had found the fragments in the rubble. But Teilhard’s second letter states explicitly that Dawson, in the flesh, had pointed to the spot at Piltdown 2 where he had found the specimens.

  2. Oakley’s original hypothesis: Dawson showed the specimens to an innocent Teilhard in 1913, but withheld them from Smith Woodward until 1915. But Dawson would not blow his cover in such a cr
ude way. For Dawson took Smith Woodward to the second site on several prospecting trips in 1914, always finding nothing. Now Teilhard and Smith Woodward were also fairly close. Dawson had introduced them in 1909 by sending to London some important mammal specimens (having nothing to do with Piltdown) that Teilhard had collected. Smith Woodward was delighted with Teilhard’s work and praised him lavishly in a publication. 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 canine. If Dawson had shown Teilhard the Piltdown 2 finds in 1913, then led Smith Woodward extensively astray during several 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.

  3. Teilhard never did hear about the Piltdown 2 specimens from Dawson, but simply forgot forty years later that he had never actually viewed the fossils he had read about later. This is the only alternative (to Teilhard’s complicity) that I view as at all plausible. Were the letters not filled with other damaging points, and the case against Teilhard not supported on other grounds, I would take this possibility more seriously.

  4. Teilhard and Dawson planned the Piltdown 2 discovery before Teilhard left England. Forty years later, Teilhard misconstructed the exact chronology, forgot that he could not have seen the specimens when they were officially “found,” and slipped in writing to Oakley.

  Teilhard’s letters to Oakley contain other curious statements, each insignificant (or subject to other interpretations) by itself, but forming in their ensemble a subtle attempt to direct suspicion away from himself.