I was planning to save some of this for April, but due to circumstance I felt now was the time to give you all a glimpse at the infamous Piltdown Man. Certainly the greatest and most well-known scandal in the history of paleoanthropology, and for good reason. As the combination of a Medieval skull cap and Orangutan jaw bone, the pieces couldn’t be more mismatched. What’s more, the scientists of that era certainly knew enough cranial anatomy to recognize that. I’ve caught glimpse of such critiques from that time, though I can’t currently locate them. Do note, I do not refer merely to the combination of ape and human characteristics, but rather that the growth of the jaw is not wholly separate from the rest of the skull.
In short, it was not some masterful hoax as some claim, and those scientists who were misled were misled because they wished to be. If there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s that even expert authorities upon a subject will often turn a blind eye to their better judgement and see only what they want to, and that may be even more the rule than exception in anthropology even if cases as egregious as Piltdown Man are rare.
There’s a common trend among many of the peoples of the world to seek to make their homeland the first, the origin of every great civilization or of humanity itself, and such is the petty truth of the matter here. The English wanted the first man and so failed to question it as they should. Such distortions continue to this day, not always in the same pattern but some still curiously similar. The “Archaic Homo” of China are one such example I intend to explore later.
As a sculptor, I must commend J.H. McGregor for doing a most excellent job here. It’s certainly a lifelike, if colorless, visage, but that’s almost the problem itself. When all the pieces are put together, the result is fairly mundane. In proportion and form, Piltdown Man approximates Homo sapiens. He looks very modern. Perhaps not English, but still very much a member of our species with maybe only a handful of truly unusual characteristics that can be seen, if even that. There are members of our species, not just among the fossilized, without an ape jaw swapped in that look more distinct than he.
What I mean to say is that Piltdown man is visually quite boring if the artist doesn’t actively seek to emphasize the few simian characteristics that stand out. All too easily, a reconstruction reveals the truth behind the fraud. Little else but a very modern looking human.
-The Curator
Sources: Google Arts & Culture, History, Wellcome Collection
Artist: J.H. McGregor
Species: Piltdown Man, Eoanthropus dawsoni
The Early Man Gallery 
