2.35 The Missing Link
The Piltdown Man - Bringing the Cradle of Civilisation to the Home Counties.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution had put into doubt the whole idea of God having created the world and everything in it, including mankind1. Yet belief in God, and the special relationship that he had with England and Englishmen was not to be given up without a struggle.
To those who believed in the pre-eminence of a nation which was still at the centre of an empire upon which the sun never set, Darwin’s suggestion that the birthplace of modern man was probably in Africa2 had been an affront. Other theories which considered somewhere further East to be more likely were just as bad. So, when the distinguished geologist Arthur Smith Woodward, and the amateur palaeontologist Charles Dawson, presented their findings to the Geological Society of London in December 1912 they were received with enthusiasm and gratitude.
They presented a few pieces of a skull with a cranium large enough to accommodate a modern sized brain, along with a jawbone containing a couple of human like molars. These fragments were seized upon as evidence that the Cradle of Civilisation was, as it ought to be in England. Specifically in the Home Counties, in Piltdown gravel pit, outside the village of Uckfield, just under twenty miles from Brighton.
Those bits of bone were hailed as the missing link between man and the apes which had been sought for generations. Well before Darwin expounded his theory of evolution naturalists had believed that there must be an undiscovered link in the great chain of being. With God at the top, the hierarchy of all things from the angels between him and the kings, who were God’s representatives on Earth, the great chain linked down through the rest of mankind, the animal kingdom, birds, fish, worms, insects and plant to non sentient rocks and minerals. It wasn’t an evolutionary chain, as everything in it had been created at the same time. But some people believed that one link in it was tantalisingly yet to be found, a half human half animal link, perhaps like a centaur or a werewolf.
In 1891 a Dutch palaeontologist, Eugene Dubois had discovered what he believed to be the missing link in Java, and named it Homo Erectus (upright man) estimating that he had appeared around 2,000,000 years ago. Many people disputed its status, it was too ape like, and besides, it wasn’t British. The search persisted for another, more recent relative. One that would come before our species, Homo Sapiens (wise man) who appeared about 250,000 years ago. Woodward and Dawson’s fragments fitted the bill. The Piltdown Man (Homo Piltdownensis) was an ape-human hybrid with a big enough brain for conscious thought.
Even the Americans were excited, as direct descendants of the English, it was of comfort to them to know that their origins were indeed in the cradle of civilisation, they had just moved that civilisation a bit further west.
In 1915 a Donald Marquis, a 37 year old journalist who worked for the New York Sun, had his first book of poetry, Dreams and Dust published3. It contained around sixty poems in its 187 pages, including one on Charles Dickens4, many on Christian religious themes, and a fair few on the nightmare of the war that had recently broken out in Europe. It also contained a poem called The Piltdown Skull.
This poem is quite touching in the way it suggests that Piltdown man was the worlds first thinker, using his new found power to do things much as we do, and to grapple with ideas of the eternal, grasping at a hint of God. It is almost a shame that the poem is tied to the concept of the Piltdown man. The idea of the dawn of conscious rational thought, along with reasoning expressed by some sort of language is an interesting one.
It is interesting to reflect on consciousness, what we do with it and what it means. Despite the fact that we now consider other animals to have some level of consciousness and reasoning, as far as we know, no other animal creates art, or expresses language in a pictorial form such as writing, and it is through these means that we spread information and communicate over expanses of time and space, meaning that we more quickly develop cultures and technologies that endure5. Marquis touches on these thoughts in his poem.
The Piltdown Skull - Don Marquis
What was his life, back yonder In the dusk where time began, This beast uncouth with the jaw of an ape And the eye and brain of a man?-- Work, and the wooing of woman, Fight, and the lust of fight, Play, and the blind beginnings Of an Art that groped for light?-- In the wonder of redder mornings, By the beauty of brighter seas, Did he stand, the world's first thinker, Scorning his clan's decrees?-- Seeking, with baffled eyes, In the dumb, inscrutable skies, A name for the greater glory That only the dreamer sees? One day, when the afterglows, Like quick and sentient things, Rose out of the shaken ocean With a rush of their vast, wild wings, As great birds rise from the sod, Did the shock of their sudden splendour Stir him and startle and thrill him, Grip him and shake him and fill him With a sense as of heights untrod?-- Did he tremble with hope and vision, And grasp at a hint of God? London stands where the mammoth Caked shag flanks with slime-- And what are our lives that inherit The treasures of all time? Work, and the wooing of woman, Fight, and the lust of fight, A little play (and too much toil!) With an Art that gropes for light; And now and then a dreamer, Rapt, from his lonely sod Looks up and is thrilled and startled With a fleeting sense of God!
Of course, the Piltdown man turned out to be a hoax. Charles Dawson had probably placed the bones in the Piltdown area himself. No more were ever found after he died in 1916, even though Woodward went on excavating the area well into the 1920s. It turned out that Dawson had concocted a number of other fraudulent finds including the missing link between dinosaurs and mammals which was called Plagiaulax Dawsoni in his honour. He discovered everything within a convenient 40 mile radius of his home in Hastings.
There were many who disputed the authenticity of the Piltdown Skull even when it was first presented, but it was too good to be denied. those who denied it were dismissed as jealous foreigners, who wanted the cradle of civilisation for themselves. It wasn’t until the 1953 that the bones were officially revealed as a hoax. By that time not only Dawson, but also Woodward were long dead, as was the poet Marquis, who had succumbed to a stroke in 1937.
After Dreams and Dust, Marquis had had enjoyed success writing, newspaper columns, short stories, novels and plays, becoming well known as a humorist. He claimed that his most famous works were written on his typewrirer in his absence by a cockroach named Archy, who jumped on one key at a time, laboriously creating poetry and stories, all in lower case as he couldn’t operate the shift key. Surely that is even more implausible than the Piltdown Man.
I explored the impact of Darwin’s theories, along with Matthew Arnold’s poem Dover Beach in an earlier essay, Great Uncle Charles and the Darkling Plain.
Darwin made his claim for man’s African genesis in The Descent of Man, his 1871 follow up to On the Origin of Species.
Marquis was born in the delightfully named village of Walnut, Illinois, where the locals are known as Walnutonians.
The Dickens poem is particularly interesting, as it is based on the true story of Captain Scott and his men, who had been trapped in Antarctic ice for six months in the winter of 1910 with nothing to read but a copy of David Copperfield whilst they waited for the spring thaw.
Then Dickens spoke, and, lo! the vast Unpeopled void stirred into life; The dead world quickened, the mad blast Hushed for an hour its idiot strife
Simon Winchester’s excellent 2023 book, Knowing What We Know goes into great detail about how we have spread knowledge through recorded language, telling the story from Clay tablets all the way through to the internet age.
Thanks for post.I knew a bit about Piltdown man whilst doing a night class but never have really reflected on the more jingoistic aspect of the story. I suppose realistically every nation wants to be 'on top'and some Britains were probably having an identity crisis at the time. As Normal I found your notes equally enlightening though rather sad regarding Captain Scott and his men.I still find it difficult even to think about their experiences, probably as I watched Scott of the Antarctic at far too young an age and all I can think about Captain Oates saying he was going out and might be a while, or words to that effect