Vital to understanding the evolution of life on earth
is discovering what lies beneath the surface.
On two days in history
the fields of geology and archaeology
have caused a seismic shift in our perception of the past.
The discovery of the first dinosaur
and the piltdown man hoax.
Defining moments when science shaped the course of history.
Based on eye witness accounts
this is a dramatised reconstruction of events as they happened on two days that shook the world.
It is September 1824.
In Latin America peru
becomes the last colony to gain independence from Spain.
In the Greek town of Missalongi,
British poet Lord Byron has died of marsh fever
aged 36.
In London the National Gallery
has been founded to house a new national collection.
And in rural England
the mystery of the earth's prehistoric inhabitants is about to be revealed.
Sussex, the south coast of England.
An area renowned for the beauty of its scenery.
From the gently undulating hills and wooded valleys of the wield
to the dramatic escarpments
and precipitous chalk cliffs of the South Downs.
One man intimately familiar with the surrounding geographical landscape
is a 34 year old physician from Lewes, Gideon Mantell.
Since he was a child Mantell has roamed every inch of the Sussex countryside
indulging in his favourite pastime of fossil collecting.
The strange skeletal shapes and unfamiliar bones he finds embedded in the local rocks
hold a great fascination for him.
Today he is making the five hourjourney
to London to visit the Hunterian museum
which houses one of the finest fossil collections in England.
Mantell is convinced he has in his possession a set of fossils
that will not only transform man's understanding of the prehistoric world
but will secure his reputation as England's greatest amateur geologist.
60 miles away, at the Hunterian museum,
part of the Royal College of Surgeons the curator
prepares for Mantells visit.
William Clift has spent the last 30 years faithfully
cataloguing the vast collection of fossils bequeathed to the nation
by the renowned anatomist John Hunter.
Since the 1790s
collecting fossils from England's beaches has become a fashionable pastime.
But in an age when the majority of people believe
God created the world in seven days
the mysterious creatures
embedded in rock are hard to explain.
A common belief
is that they are the remains of animals drowned in Noah's flood.
But this view is being challenged by the new and controversial science of geology.
Already the discovery of giant mammoth bones
has proved the existence of prehistoric mammals.
Now a radical new theory from France
talks of an ancient age of reptiles,
a time when strange lizards inhabited the seas
before the arrival of man.
But as yet there is scant proof such creatures ever existed.
In a work room within the museum
Clift's assistant Samuel Stuchberry is carrying out his research.
An enthusiastic young naturalist,
Stuchberry is known for acquiring
new and unusual specimens of plants and animals for the museum.
His source is London's dockyards where he regularly meets ships
as they arrive from the West Indies and South America.
One of his latest acquisitions is a common,
edible iguana from Barbados.
As Stuchberry carefully preserves the new arrival
he's unaware that this lizard
is about to play a vital role in unlocking the secret of prehistoric life on earth.
While Gideon Mantell travels to London
his wife Mary is left to take care of the children.
Six year old Ellen Maria and four year old Walter
are used to their father's long absences
as he pursues his dream of making a great scientific breakthrough.
But after eight years of marriage
Mary is becoming increasingly intolerant of her husband's obsession with fossils.
- Mother, please may excuse me. - Of course, dear.
Thank You.
You play nicely.
Their family life is
a far cry from what she'd anticipated when they were first married.
Gideon Mantell was then a successful country doctor
with a flourishing medical practise
and a particular skill as a male midwife.
I am very well dear but tired.
Busy day? Very...
The couple first met
when Gideon had treated Mary's ailing father
...a prosperous linen draper living in paddington.
During his visits they formed an attachment
and eight years ago, in May 1816, they were married.
She had colic, she had wind.
And then I was brought up by Mrs Henderson
who complained of St Vitus Dance
Already Gideon's childhood interest in fossils
had blossomed into an engrossing pastime.
And Mary began to assist him by dutifully masterin the difficult art of scientific illustration.
- Mmm. Very good. - Thank you.
On May 4th 1820
Mantell wrote in his diary...
This is the fourth anniversary of my wedding
and at this moment our domestic happiness is certainly greater than ever.
But despite his apparent contentment
Mantell was highly ambitious
and believed his fossils
were the key to achieving a high status in society.
By May 1822
Mantell felt confident enough to present his work
in a book on the geology of Sussex.
Its here... the book
The venture involved considerable financial risk
but the doctor capitalised on his existing social connections.
...a list of the subscribers...
And by the time of publication The Fossils of the South Downs
boasted a list of 200 eminent subscribers.
His Majesty George IV - four copies.
That's wonderful!
The book was an extravagantly handsome volume...
...and contained 42 plates
engraved by his wife, Mary.
- Engravings executed by... - Mrs Mantell
And I wrote the preface.
I... I didn't want to show this to you, let me... let me read it to you.
"As the engravings are the first performances of a lady
but little skilled in the art
I am most anxious to claim for them every indulgence.
I am well aware that the partiality of a husband
may render me insensible to their defects.
But although they may be destitute of that neatness and uniformity
which distinguish the works of the professed artist,
they will not, I trust,
be found deficient in the more essential requisite of correctness".
My dear, d'you know what this means?
This is the book that's going to make my name.
D'you realise that with this I will be taken seriously by those that matter.
His Majesty George IV - four copies.
This is a wonderful day, my dear.
It is a wonderful day.
Ironically,
it was not Gideon's book
but a chance discovery by Mary
that was to turn the world of natural science on its head.
The exact circumstances of the find are shrouded in mystery
but the most plausible account states that the breakthrough was made
one morning in 1820 or 21
when Mary accompanied her husband on one of his medical rounds.
Bye bye
While Mantell tended to a patient,
Mary went for a walk.
On such occasions she regularly went looking for fossils
and this morning was no exception.
After a while
she noticed a pile of stones left by workmen as they repaired the road.
In amongst the debris her well-trained eye
spotted an odd shaped stone.
She'd never seen anything quite like it.
It appeared to be the fragment of some sort of giant tooth.
But it's shape
wasn't like anything she'd seen in her husband's fossil collection.
Pleased with her morning's work she now waited eagerly for her husband to return.
When Gideon appeared...
...Mary showed him her discovery.
I found something quite exciting in the woods.
Gideon immediately grasped the fossil's significance.
- What is it? - It's a tooth.
This is the largest fossil tooth I have ever seen.
It was indeed part of a large tooth.
But it's shapes was completely unfamiliar to him.
It was just... it was just lying there on its own.
Can you remember exactly where it was?
- Yes, I'll show you. - Well show me.
Is it far?
- No, just down here. - Show me.
There were nowjust two questions on Gideon's mind.
Where did the tooth come from
and were there any more to be found?
Today, a few year's later,
as Gideon travels to the Hunterian museum in London
he's succeeded in answering both these questions.
In doing so he's made an extraordinary discovery.
He traced the rubble in which the giant tooth
was found to a quarry in the Sussex wield.
There he found several more similarly shaped teeth.
Each one is huge
with a blunt and worn down crown,
as if flattened by continuous chewing.
It seems, therefore, that the animal must have been a herbivore,
roaming the earth millions of years ago.
What's more, it appears that this creature was immense,
larger than any beast currently roaming the earth.
For Mantell
there can only be one startling conclusion,
that he has found the first known evidence of a gigantic,
plant-eating creature from the ancient age of reptiles.
Such an idea is extremely radical
but if he's right the fame and recognition
he so badly craves will soon be his.
Yet despite utter conviction in his theory
the fulfilment of his dreams
is rested precariously on the shoulders of one man.
The very scientist behind the theory of the age of reptiles - Baron George Couvier.
The professor at the prestigious National Museum of Natural History in paris,
Baron Couvier reigned supreme as the undisputed master of European geology.
A man of prodigious intelligence,
he burst onto the geological scene aged just 27.
He was the first to identify the mammoth as an extinct species,
separate from the modern elephant.
More recently his belief that an age of reptiles
had preceded the era of mammals
was deeply influential throughout Europe,
not least to the ambitious Gideon Mantell.
At the heart of all Couvier's work was
his acclaimed technique of comparative anatomy.
This stated that each individual part of every animal
had a specific purpose,
according to the laws of nature,
and that by comparing a single fossil to the bones of an existing animal
it was possible to identify
the appearance and size of the creature the fossil had once belonged to.
In June 1823
Gideon Mantell hoped that Couvier's comparative anatomy
would shed light on his discredited fossils.
Desperate, and with his reputation
resting on a knife edge,
he sent Baron Couvier a single tooth believing that his...
...powerful mind and enlightened genius could,
like the fabled wand of the sorcerer,
cause to pass before us the beings of former ages.
When Couvier saw the tooth
he pronounced his opinion without hesitation.
The worn down tooth,
according to the most eminent geologist in Europe,
was merely the upper incisor of a rhinoceros.
Mantell finally had to accept defeat.
Baron Couvier's crushing conclusion
was quickly circulated amongst the scientific community in England...
...and with it any chance of Gideon's teeth being taken seriously was lost.
Even Mary, once such a willing supporter of his work,
had reached breaking point.
You used to spend time with me. You used to spend time with the children and now...
Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed!
Look! The house is surrounded by this.
I shall make a name for myself.
You will not, Gideon. You've got to give up.
Nothing has changed, I...
No, Gideon. Things have changed. We need...
- Nothing has changed. - We are...
Nothing has changed.
We have been through it, Gideon, but it doesn't seem to be getting through to you!
No it does not!
Yet, as his wife was well aware,
Gideon possessed the drive and tenacity of a religious zealot.
By the spring of 1824
he'd recovered enough to write once more to George Couvier,
this time enclosing an entire series of fossilised teeth.
Now Couvier was able to compare the teeth
from a young creature with those of an older animal.
And the conclusions he reached this time were wildly different.
It was three months ago
on the 20th June 1824
that Mantell received the momentous reply from paris.
Monsieur, I have waited to give you my opinion
until I had time to examine them.
Today, since I have done just that,
I express my gratitude
and offer a few ideas inspired by the curious teet which are part of your package.
These teeth are certainly unknown to me.
They are not from a carnivore.
Nevertheless, I believe they belong to the order of reptiles.
Might we not have here a new animal?
An herbivorous reptile?
The message was clear.
Mantell had been right all along.
Baron Couvier believed the fossilised teeth
were compelling evidence for the giant plant-eating lizard.
Finally, four years after his wife's discovery
in a pile of roadside rubble,
the self-taught provincial geologist was vindicated.
Against the unanimous disapproval of his esteemed colleagues in England
he had succeeded in securing the backing of the world's most eminent professor of geology.
Today at the Hunterian museum in London,
after years of imagining what his giant reptile might have looked like,
he will come face to face with his creature's nearest ancestor.
When Mantell arrives at the museum
the curator William Clift
and his assistant Samuel Stuchberry
are working on the collection.
Clift.
Ah, Gideon. How are you? Lovely to see you.
How are you? Very good to see you.
The social circles in which geologists mix are very small
and Clift and Mantell are already well acquainted.
It is very, very exciting.
These are teeth.
They are reptilian...
Mantell immediately outlines his plan.
He wants to find a tooth
that is as close a match as possible to his fossils.
According to Couvier's theory of comparative anatomy
any such creature
will share striking characteristics with
Gideon's ancient reptile.
And the first thing I wanted to do...
It could provide a glimpse of what his reptile looked like
and just how gigantic it might have been.
It's a long shot
but Clift agrees to help.
Some bear teeth.
Well, no, that's not right. What else have you got?
In his work room Clift's assistant Samuel Stuchberry
has finished preserving his latest acquisition,
a common edible iguana from Barbados.
...shark tooth. - No sir, no sir.
But his attention is distracted by the commotion Mantell and Clift are making outside.
If I had something else to show you, I would show you.
No, I'm quite aware of that. I'm not blaming you.
I'm just saying I'm very eager...
- Gentlemen... - Stuchberry, hello.
He's intrigued and offers to help the two men in their search
D'you know anything that equates with that tooth?
Well this... this seems strangely familiar.
The... I... l've recently taken possession of a... of a specimen of an iguana from...
from the West Indies and... and this...
this looks remarkably similar.
- Well where is it? - It's in my work room.
Well show me.
What have we?
This is the common edible iguana.
It's from the West Indies, from Barbados
and it's a herbivore.
Are you certain?
Yes. It feeds on plant matter and... and the tips of flowers.
How long has it been here?
Lt... it arrived yesterday afternoon. I picked it up myself at the dock.
Um this is its lowerjaw.
- Yes, show me. - Here... here.
When one of Mantell's prehistoric teeth
is compared to the tiny teeth of the modern iguana
the similarities are striking.
...the teeth
It's very similar. It's markedly similar.
The... the serrations are... are similar and the...
Both have a distinctive ridged surface on one side
and a smooth, rounded inner surface.
And in both animals an initial row of baby teeth appears
to have been replaced by a second set as the reptile reached adulthood.
In fact, the only real difference between the two sets of teeth is their size.
The iguana's teeth are one or two millimetres long.
- And the big tooth bigger than... - Yes
By contrast, the teeth of Gideon's prehistoric reptile
measure three or four centimetres, 20 times as large.
Some basic mathematics reveals the full scale of Mantell's discovery.
I should just say that this... this... isn't a fully grown iguana.
No, no, no, no, but the size.
Lf... if this tooth belonged to an animal of the same species...
- It does. I'm sure it does... - lf... if these teeth...
please, tell me the size.
If this tooth belongs to an animal of the same species as the iguana
then the tooth would belong to an animal 100ft long.
A hundred feet long.
Show me.
- Just... - show me.
A hundred feet long.
It's a remarkable breakthrough.
With Stuchberry's help Gideon Mantell has succeeded
in identifying the world's first giant plant-eating reptile,
what would later be more commonly known as a dinosaur.
The early illustrations depict a reptile walking on all fours
and possessing a distinctive horn on his nose.
Both these assumptions are later proved wrong
with the horn reassigned as a thumb bone.
Also, the creature's length
will be scaled down from 100ft to 30ft.
But in all other respects
it is believed to be exactly as Gideon Mantell first imagined it.
As soon as his discovery is made public
Mantell's fame quickly spreads.
In February of the following year
he's admitted to the prestigious council of the Geological Society.
He initially names his reptile Iguanasaurus, meaning iguana-lizard
but he later changes it to Iguanodon or iguana-teeth
on the advice of a colleague.
Two more dinosaurs are identified at around the same time -
the meglasaurus and the hyliosaurus.
But it's not until 1842
that Richard Owen, the great British anatomist
and founder of the Natural History Museum
coins the term for the terrible lizards -
the dinosaurs.
Despite his success
Gideon Mantell never achieves the financial independence
to allow him to concentrate on his studies.
In 1839 he is forced to sell his fossil collection
to the British museum.
And the same year his wife Mary,
the woman who discovered the first iguanodon tooth,
leaves him, never to be heard of again.
Gracious being,
oh enable me to bear up under the miseries that surround me on every side.
Oh take me from a world for which I am so wholly unsuited.
Mantell gets his wish in 1852
when back pain from a severe carriage accident
causes him to take an overdose of opiates
and he dies aged 62.
His final request is
that any body parts of medical interest
be donated to the Hunterian museum.
His spinal column, severely twisted as a result of the accident,
is duly put on display.
Mantell, the first man in the world to discover a plant-eating dinosaur
ultimately became a museum exhibit himself.
Since then archaeology and geology
have allowed us to paint a picture of life in the prehistoric world.
But some 130 years after Mantell some fossilised remains
would once again stir up controversy,
only this time the bones appeared to be human.
It is November 1953.
In the Soviet Union Nikita Cruschev
has become Communist party leader following the death of Joseph Stalin.
In the USA Senator Joseph McCarthy
is investigating communist subversion in America.
In Cambridge, England, Francis Crick and James Watson
have unveiled their double-helix structure for DNA.
And elsewhere in England
scientists are about to expose the most audacious fraud in the history of archaeology.
Saturday morning.
The quite suburban town of Amersham in Buckinghamshire.
- How was the lecture last night, darling? - Oh it went...
In a large modern bungalow
seven year old Giles Oakley waits for breakfast to finish
so he can go outside and ride his bicycle.
Giles, come and have your breakfast.
His father, Dr Kenneth Oakley,
is a geologist and anthropologist
at the Natural History museum.
Giles.
Let him play, darling. He'll come when he's ready.
Last night he gave a talk to the Royal Institution of Great Britain
as part of a series of lectures in the run up to Christmas.
Some... one or two distinguished names there.
His subject was the dawn of man in South Africa.
...so all in all I was... I was rather pleased with the whole thing.
Interesting though it was,
this topic has not been at the forefront of his mind in recent months.
Instead, his attention has been focused on a far more sensational piece of research.
Ajournalist from The Times...
His work in trying to solve the riddle of piltdown Man.
In November 1912
the startling discovery was announced of the remains
of what was claimed to be the earliest known human being.
The finds were made in a gravel pit near the village of piltdown in Sussex.
They included several pieces of human skull,
the fragment of a lowerjaw and a canine tooth.
When the skull was reconstructed
it seemed that the shape of the head resembled modern man
while the jaw and teeth were more ape-like.
Piltdown man was therefore heralded as
the long awaited missing link between ape and human.
Finally, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution
was proven beyond any reasonable doubt.
Dr Oakley was approached by ajournalist from The Times
who persuaded him to reveal details of the report.
- Mmmm. Not in there. - Not there.
Er. No.
There it is.
"Piltdown man forgery - elaborate hoax.
The startling discovery that one of the most famous of anthropological specimens,
the piltdown skull,
is a forgery has been made as a result of investigations..."
The other newspapers are furious.
They believe the National History museum,
as a public body,
should have broken the news to everyone fairly.
But it's too late.
The news is out.
And The Times has the scientific scoop of the year.
Oakley's colleague, Dr Joe Viner
is on his way to Amersham.
An anthropologist from Oxford University,
Viner was the first to spot that piltdown man might be a clever hoax.
But the identity of the perpetrator remains a myst
Today Viner is on a mission
to root out the audacious hoaxer.
A chief suspect
is the eminent 87 year old anatomist Sir Arthur Keith.
At the time of the piltdown discovery
Keith was curator of the Hunterian museum
at the Royal College of Surgeons.
He had both the knowledge and ability to carry out the hoax.
Viner is particularly suspicious of Keith's behaviour
once the piltdown finds were announced.
Keith claimed initially to be sceptical of the way the skull was reconstructed
but then switched,
becoming a key advocate for the find.
He even published a book, The Antiquity of Man,
in which piltdown man took centre stage
in the process of human evolution.
Now, with the news out that the discovery was a hoax
Keith knows he will face tough questions
about what took place in the small village of piltdown almost 50 years ago.
The first fragments of skull from piltdown
was discovered in 1908 by
a well respected solicitor and amateur antiquarian, Charles Dawson.
An important local figure in his home town of Uckfield,
Dawson was nick-named "the wizard of Sussex"
thanks to the number and importance of his archaeological finds.
He was even responsible for identifying three new species of dinosaur,
one of which was later named Iguanodon Dawsoni.
At some time in the late 1890s business took Dawson
to Barkham Manor,
an estate near the village of piltdown in Sussex.
He went for a walk and noticed labourers
digging an ancient gravel pit
in search of stones to mend the farm's road.
As I surmised that any fossils found in the gravel would probably be interesting
I specially charged the men to keep a look out.
When he returned to the manor in 1908
his forward thinking paid off.
Oh my man, have you found anything?
No sir. Just here.
Not sure if it's anything though.
One of the labourers handed to me a small piece of bone
which I recognised as being a portion of human cranium.
I at once made a long search
but could find nothing more.
Just about... about there, sir.
Over the next four years Dawson visited the gravel pit several times.
By 1912 he had accumulated another
large piece of skull
and a fragment of hippopotamus tooth.
On the 28th March, he wrote
to the keeper of geology at the Natural History museum.
Arthur Smith-Woodward was widely regarded as a world authority in his field
and had been a friend of Dawson's for 25 years.
With the promise that he would be the first to view the finds,
Dawson invited Smith-Woodward to Sussex to have a thorough look at the gravel pit.
I would of course take care that
no one sees the pieces of skull
who has any knowledge of the subject and leave all to you.
On second thoughts, I have decided to wait
until you and I can go over by ourselves to look at the bed of gravel.
It is not far to walk from Uckfield and it will do us good.
Smith-Woodward eagerly accepted
and plans were made for the excavation to begin in three month's time.
It is what happened during this infamous excavation
in the summer of 1912
that Dr Viner knows is pivotal to discovering the identity of the hoaxer.
With the help of Kenneth Oakley
and staff at the Natural History museum he has launched an extensive enquiry.
He intends to question every survivor
either present at the dig itself or closely involved with the study of the finds.
Today they're targeting
one of their prime suspects.
When the excavation first began in June 1912
Dawson and Smith-Woodward's progress was agonisingly slow.
...very, very disappointing. It is, very.
But I am sure... sure there's something in here.
Oh absolutely.
- Could you give me some more, please? - Yes... yes
The discovery of bones and teeth,
all stained brown in a dark coloured gravel
which was full of bits of iron stone and brown flints
needed very close and slow examination of every fragment.
...wonderful find. - Absolutely.
Every spadeful had to be watched and generally passed through a sieve.
But during the ensuing months,
the two men's painstaking efforts gradually appeared to yield results.
- Yes, it is. - Yes, yes.
- It is. - Yes
Between them they found several more fragments of skull, a number of flints,
some fossilised animal bones
and what appeared to be a piece of the lowerjaw.
It amounted to an astonishing haul.
Smith-Woodward was a skilled geologist.
Using the fragments he was able to reconstruct wha he believed to be the original shape of the skull.
The results were guaranteed to stun the world.
On the evening of the 18th December 1912
at a meeting with the geological society in London,
Dawson and Smith-Woodward unveiled their discovery.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
thank you very much for coming along to Burlington House this evening.
May we present to you, Leanthropus Dawsoni,
the piltdown man.
The atmosphere in the room was charged with excitement.
Here in England was tangible and incontrovertible proof of man's apelike ancestry.
Area's of the skull that you see in brown were excavated locally.
For years scientists had been anticipating
the discovery of the missing link in human evolution.
The creature that possessed a large enough brain to house a superior intelligence
but which had not yet lost its apelike jaw and fighting teeth.
Piltdown man confirmed these expectations.
So you can see, I think, marked differences between piltdown man and a normal human skull.
That the find was both authentic and of great antiquity
was not questioned.
And when we look at the human jaw...
But there were some voices of descent.
...you can see very marked difference there between...
Arthur Keith, an anatomist from the Hunterian museum,
was unhappy with the way Woodward had reconstructed
the skull from the fragments that he and Dawson had found.
...which have all been found on the site.
But the following summer
a decisive piece of evidence was unearthed.
A single canine tooth
was found close to the spot where the jaw had been discovered.
...piltdown man.
Its shape, size and the way it had been worn flat
was exactly as Smith-Woodward had predicted
in his initial reconstruction of the piltdown skull.
Keith was forced to admit his mistake.
And piltdown man as presented at
the geological society meeting was widely accepted as accurate.
In 1915
a group portrait was painted for
the Royal Academy's annual exhibition.
It symbolised the new unity of the scientist.
Entitled "a discussion on the piltdown skull"
it featured all those closely associated with the discovery.
At the back, in front of a painting of Charles Darwin,
is Charles Dawson.
Next to him is Arthur Smith-Woodward.
And seated prominently at the front, examining the reconstructed skull,
is the eminent anatomist Arthur Keith,
now a powerful advocate
in the defence of piltdown man.
Today, less than 50 years later,
as the news breaks that piltdown man was a hoax
Keith is the only scientist from the original group still alive.
Dawson died soon after
his great discovery in August 1916,
aged just 52.
The exact cause of his illness remains unknown.
Smith-Woodward continued his passionate support
of piltdown man for 30 years
before his death of old age in September 1944.
But Keith, now Sir Arthur Keith,
has since enjoyed a long and illustrious career as a world renowned anatomist.
Now retired,
he lives in the village of Down in Kent
where he is writing a biography of Charles Darwin.
Today he's also Oakley and Viner's chief suspect
in the hunt to find the piltdown man hoaxer.
Viner, Oakley an Oakley's wife Margaret
set off from the house in Amersham at lunchtime.
They are making the journey to Kent
to cross-examine Keith over his involvement in piltdown man.
- How are you, Margaret? - Fine, thank you. How are you?
Viner is suspicious of the way Keith abandoned his initial scepticism of the skull.
He also can't believe such an eminent scientist
could have missed the more obvious signs of forgery.
...check. And I've got the invitation in here as well.
Before the hoax was announced
Oakley wrote to Keith requesting an interview
and last week received a very courteous reply.
My dear Oakley,
you will find me here on Saturday morning, 21st November
and glad to see Mrs Oakley, Dr Viner and you.
You have been a much travelled man of late.
Yours sincerely, Arthur Keith.
...I need to put some lipstick on...
Now the news of the hoax is out
the men are worried Keith may not be quite so welcoming.
Oh Margaret, do hurry up.
Sorry, Giles is being rather naughty.
- How do I look? - Marvellous
Good. We really must go now.
Oakley has asked Margaret to come with them
believing she may be able to smooth the waters
if the conversation becomes hostile.
Also she's an attractive woman
and Keith is known to have a soft spot for the ladies.
Viner and Oakley first began to run tests
on piltdown man three months ago.
At their disposal were several cutting edge techniques
which had not been available to archaeologists
when the bones were first discovered.
What they showed was that the Hoaxer
must have had a highly sophisticated grasp of both archaeology and human anatomy.
With this in mind,
who were the most likely suspects?
Dawson had both the motive and the opportunity.
He was an ambitious amateur
desperate to make a big discovery
and was present when all the finds were made.
But many doubted he had the expertise to carry out
such a convincing hoax, at least not without help.
Smith-Woodward was a highly qualified geologist
but he'd wasted the last 20 years of his life
excavating sites around piltdown
and coming up with nothing.
Hardly the behaviour of a hoaxer.
Arthur Keith not only had the skills to carry out the hoax,
he'd suspiciously switched from criticising the finds to giving them his wholehearted support.
Could he have been the hoaxer's accomplice,
the brains behind the elaborate forgery which had fooled the scientific community for so long?
Viner had some serious questions to put to the eminent anatomist.
- Good afternoon, sir. - Good afternoon.
We have an appointment to see Sir Arthur.
Certainly, sir. Come this way.
We found Keith more or less confined to his bedroom study
in which he had collected all of his most important books and papers.
- And you must be Mrs Oakley. - That's right.
- Please sit down. - Thank you.
He did not look very well.
He was pale and rather pinched looking
and shaky and had a cough.
I've seen it all in The Times.
- I'm glad you've come down and I hope you've brought some specimens to show me. - Yes
Oakley starts by showing Keith the samples of bone.
We decided to take some fresh samples from the piltdown...
He describes the strong smell of burning when the bones were drilled.
I thought this was very odd
because in my experience
it is fresh bone that produces that smell
and not bone which we all thought was half a million years old. We also have...
He then produces a caste of the piltdown jawbone
and explains that when Dr Viner
filed down the jaw of a modern ape
it looked almost identical.
Now, we discovered that these back teeth here must have been filed down.
I'm sorry but I've handled many chimpanzee
and orang mandibles
and I just cannot believe I would have been so easily deceived.
Also, I'm far from certain that filing down the teeth
would have produced a result such as this.
Have you filed both orang and chimpanzee?
No
No, only chimpanzee.
But it produced a very similar appearance.
If you say so, Dr Viner, I must accept it.
Reluctantly, Keith agrees
that the jaw is a forgery.
But unfortunately for Viner he has made no admission of guilt
or given any clues as to who the piltdown hoaxer might be.
Oh thank you.
Half way through the conversation Oakley inadvertently makes a breakthrough.
What further tests revealed was that the jaw had been stained using bichromate pot ash.
Wait. I knew the jaw was stained.
It was done to preserve it.
Staining bones with dichromate pot ash
was not an accepted way of preserving bones even in 1912.
Well how had you learnt of the chromate staining?
From Dawson.
I had lots of correspondence with Dawson,
most of it, if not all of it, I destroyed in a bonfire many years ago.
At the time, Keith appears to have dismissed Dawson's unorthodox methods
as an amateur's misguided attempt to preserve the bones.
But now the hoax is out
Viner and Oakley consider Dawson's actions
to be highly suspicious.
You are making a reflection on a Christian gentleman.
We realise this is unfortunately the case.
I liked Dawson a lot.
He was an honest, open chap.
I often talked to him.
Were you not surprised by the number of specimens
yielded by the piltdown pit?
Yes. I felt they kept on finding things with which to confute me.
As far as Viner and Oakley are concerned
it's obvious that Keith played no part in the piltdown man hoax.
They prepare to leave.
- Would you be so kind as to autograph a copy of your biography for me? - Why of course.
That's so kind.
They now believe Keith's failure to spot the forgery
or question Dawson more closely about the staining
was the result of an overwhelming academic desire to accept
the authenticity of piltdown man rather than anything more sinister.
Thank you.
Well, goodbye Sir Arthur.
Goodbye professor Oakley. Goodbye Mrs Oakley.
Goodbye.
- Sir Arthur - Goodbye professor Viner.
We left about 3:50 pm.
He was rather tired but not, I think, very agitated.
Having eliminated Keith from their enquires
Viner and Oakley focus all their efforts on Charles Dawson.
Over the next few months
they will build a strong case against him.
But the evidence remains largely circumstantial.
Viner is forced to conclude that
he cannot prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Dawson was the hoaxer.
The unearthing of the piltdown man hoax
turns Oakley and Viner into minor celebrities.
While Oakley relishes some aspects of his new found fame,
even appearing on an American version of What's My Line?
The media attention ultimately proves
a distraction from their other scientific achievements.
A year later, on the 7th January 1955
Sir Arthur Keith dies
convinced that Dawson was the culprit.
In a letter published posthumously in The Times
he said the news of the hoax...
"...left me in no doubt that the man I had the greatest reverence for
had deliberately mislead his best friend Smith-Woodward and me."
Since the 1950s
several of Charles Dawson's earlier archaeological finds
have also been re-examined and proven to be forgeries.
They include a roman statuette which Dawson claimed
was the earliest evidence of cast iron manufacture in Europe
but which has since been exposed as a modern copy.
Hello sir. Have you found anything interesting yet?
But despite this...
...there remains no conclusive proof that it was Dawson
and Dawson alone
who perpetrated the most daring fraud in the history of science.
The identity of the piltdown man hoaxer remains a mystery.