Piltdown. Even today the name sends a shiver down the collective spine of the scientific community, for this was the most dramatic and daring fraud ever perpetrated upon the world of science and academia. Between 1908 and 1912, a series of amazing discoveries relating to what appeared to be the earliest human were made close to the little village of Piltdown in Sussex. These remains belonged to the developmental 'missing link' between man and ape. The basic principles of evolution, first propounded by Charles Darwin some fifty years before, now appeared as indisputable fact. The Manchester Guardian ran the first headline: 'THE EARLIEST MAN?: REMARKABLE DISCOVERY IN SUSSEX. A SKULL MILLIONS OF YEARS OLD' it screamed, adding that the discovery was 'one of the most important of our time'. The news spread quickly around the world, with many voicing their eagerness to examine the find. Few archaeological discoveries have the capacity to be front-page news twice over, but 'Piltdown Man' is a rare exception. Forty-one years after he first became famous, the 'Earliest Englishman' was again hot news. It was late November 1953, and the world was about to discover that Piltdown Man had been a hoax. Not just any hoax mind, the London Star declared it to be 'THE BIGGEST SCIENTIFIC HOAX OF THE CENTURY'.

The human and animal remains discovered almost 100 years ago at Piltdown, near Lewes in Sussex were at the time hailed as the "missing link" between ape and man. It was not until 1953 that modern analysis conclusively revealed an ingenious hoax. The perpetrator was almost certainly the antiquarian excavator Charles Dawson who, as Miles Russell shows, was responsible for 16 other archaeological forgeries during his lifetime.

The Piltdown Man hoax began in 1912, when Charles Dawson claimed to have discovered fossils belonging to a "missing link" between man and ape. For decades it was the subject of heated debate among paleontologists. It wasn't until the early 1950s that the hoax was revealed, though it continued to be a mystery as to the identity of the hoaxer. This book traces the story with new research from the archives of the British Museum (Natural History) to find an answer.

In 1913 amateur fossil hunter and archaeologist Charles Dawson found in a gravel pit the cranium and jaw of an entirely new species of humanoid, which became known as Piltdown man, which caused headlines worldwide as the missing link between man and ape. In 1952, it was exposed as a hoax. With eight pages of photos, this book is a wonderful detective story, and the first examination the convincingly fingers the perpetrator.

Piltdown. Even today the name sends a shiver down the collective spine of the scientific community, for this was the most dramatic and daring fraud ever perpetrated upon the world of science and academia. Between 1908 and 1912, a series of amazing discoveries relating to what appeared to be the earliest human were made close to the little village of Piltdown in Sussex. These remains belonged to the developmental ‘missing link’ between man and ape. The basic principles of evolution, first propounded by Charles Darwin some fifty years before, now appeared as indisputable fact. The Manchester Guardian ran the first headline: ‘THE EARLIEST MAN?: REMARKABLE DISCOVERY IN SUSSEX. A SKULL MILLIONS OF YEARS OLD’ it screamed, adding that the discovery was ‘one of the most important of our time’. The news spread quickly around the world, with many voicing their eagerness to examine the find. Few archaeological discoveries have the capacity to be front-page news twice over, but ‘Piltdown Man’ is a rare exception. Forty-one years after he first became famous, the ‘Earliest Englishman’ was again hot news. It was late November 1953, and the world was about to discover that Piltdown Man had been a hoax. Not just any hoax mind, the London Star declared it to be ‘THE BIGGEST SCIENTIFIC HOAX OF THE CENTURY.'

"With wit and authority, Falk tells the parallel stories of two fossil discoveries that surprised the world, revealing the larger significance of these finds. Her lively recounting combines new historical research with her first-hand involvement in controversial interpretations."—Pat Shipman, author of The Animal Connection and The Man Who Found the Missing Link “An absorbing and engagingly personal account, by a leading participant, of two of the major “brain wars” that have raged along the path to our current understanding of human evolution.”--Ian Tattersall, author of The Fossil Trail and Human Origins “In The Fossil Chronicles, Falk engages us with a ‘tale of two brains’. While navigating the surfaces of these ancient brains, she reveals the convolutions of scientific controversies and how personalities and paleopolitics shape the ways we think about human evolution.”—Nina G. Jablonski, author of Skin: A Natural History