Piltdown Man

Title: Current history, Volume 14 Current history. Publisher: New York Times Co., 1921. Original from: Harvard University. Digitized: Aug 4, 2008. This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.This applies to the United States, where Works published prior to 1978 were copyright protected for a maximum of 75 years. See Circular 1 "COPYRIGHT BASICS" PDF . Works published before 1923, in this case 1921, are now in the public domain.

After the restoration modelled by J- H. McGregor. December 18, 1912, Piltdown Man discovered. The "Piltdown Man" is a hoax concerning the finding of the remains of an unknown early human. The hoax find consisted of fragments of a skull and jawbone collected in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, a village near Uckfield, East Sussex, England. More than 40 years elapsed from its "discovery" to its full exposure as a forgery in 1953.

The identity of the Piltdown forger remains unknown, suspects have included Dawson, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Arthur Keith, Martin A. C. Hinton, Horace de Vere Cole and Arthur Conan Doyle and numerous others.

Facts suggest that Martin A.C. Hinton, a volunteer at the British Museum was the culprit. He was attempting to embarrass Arthur Smith Woodward, curator of the Museum's paleontology department, because Woodward had refused Hinton's request for a pay raise.