Human Origins: A Manual of Prehistory vol. I 1924

[323] ... [334] When it came to fitting the fragmentary lower jaw to the cranium, difficulties multiplied; it was the right half of the mandible, and the articular condyle was missing. Even had the condyle been present, there was no right glenoid fossa to receive it. A part of the left temporal bone, including its glenoid fossa, had been preserved, but it was typically human. The lack of the parts necessary to bring the mandible and cranial base into actual contact served to cloak the lack of harmony existing between the two. This lack of harmony was likewise further obscured by the incompleteness of the symphysial region.

The proximity of the brain case and lower jaw in the gravel bed; their apparent agreement in size and the nonduplication of parts present; the fact that they both bore the same marks of fossilization, showing "no more wear and tear than they might have received in situ "; the failure of previous discoveries to confirm the presence of higher apes among the European Pleistocene faunas; and, perhaps above al, the belief that a "generalized type" had been found, led inevitably to the association of cranium and mandible as parts of one individual or species. In dealing with the contents of a gravel bed, however, it is easy to overestimate the importance of proximity. Had Piltdown been a cave deposit or a camp site, the case for proximity might have been somewhat stronger; even in these, however, association can never be made to take the place of articulation.

From the start there were not lacking those who hesitated to accept the cranium and mandible as belonging to the same individual. This was the stand taken by Lankester on the occasion of the first report of the discovery before the Geological Society of London. On the same occasion Waterston was even more emphatic, saying it was very difficult to believe that the two specimens could have come from the same individual, since the mandible resembled that of a chimpanzee, while the skull was human in all its characters. In a later paper on the Piltdown mandible, he concludes that referring the mandible and cranium to the same individual would be [335] equivalent

to articulating a chimpanzee foot with the bones of a human thigh and leg.

Objections soon came also from France and Italy. Basing his opinion on the cranial characters,

Anthony thought the specific name should have been Homo dawsoni instead of Eoanthropus dawsoni. About the same time a similar conclusion was reached by Giuffrida-Ruggeri. To Boule the Piltdown mandible is exactly like that of a chimpanzee; so that if this mandible had been found alone in the gravels of Piltdown associated with remains of Pliocene animals, it would certainly have been called Troglodytes dawsoni. Without rejecting Smith Woodward's interpretation, which Boule considers to be within the realm of the possible, even of the probable, it would nevertheless seem to him prudent to leave the matter still open. He objects to the choice of the name Eoanthropus, and finally in his judgment Woodward's restoration does not ring true ("elle somme

faux"). It was this seemingly false note that impressed the author most of all on seeing the restoration for the first time. Dr. Gerrit S. Miller of the Unites States National Museum has compared the cast of the Piltdown mandible with casts of chimpanzee mandibles mutilated in the same manner, and finds not only similarity but "absolute" identity.

So much for the first two phases through which discussion of the Piltdown specimens has passed. In the first phase, the lower jaw, though admittedly apelike in character, was nevertheless regarded as having belonged to the same individual as the skull. Then came a period when in the minds of many the mandible was referred to a genus entirely different from that of the skull, namely Pan vetus, a fossil chimpanzee. In the present or third phase, it is asserted by the British group that important and hitherto overlooked features of the lower jaw are positively human, and that the teeth are not only human but fundamentally unlike those of the great apes. Eight different characters are invoked to prove this: (1) The (long-crowned) Piltdown molars are more hypsodont than those of the chimpanzee. (2) The protoconid, metaconid, and hypoconid (the three tubercles on the outer side of the molars) are larger than those in the largest chimpanzee tooth, and, furthermore, the sulci dividing the cusps from one another are shorter and less conspicuously marked than in the chimpanzee.

Fig. 210A. Development of the lower jaw

Inner side of the lower jaw of Piltdown (B), compared with that of the chimpanzee (A), Heidelberg man (C), and modern man (D). A and B differ from C, and D in the absence of genial tubercles (t.) and of the mylohyoid ridge (m.r.); also in the position of the mylohyoid groove (m.g.), which is back of the foramen instead of connected with it. Scale 1/2. After Smith Woodward.

(3) In the [336] Piltdown teeth the crown passes almost insensibly into the root, and is not perceptibly wider or longer at its base than at its grinding surface, the reverse being the case with the molars of the chimpanzee. (4) Radiographs of the Piltdown jaw show that the molars are of the typical "taurodont" type, therein differing from the molars not only of the chimpanzee, but of all the great apes. (5) The enamel is thicker in the Piltdown teeth than in the chimpanzee. (6) The Piltdown jaw more nearly resembles that of the Kaffir than that of the chimpanzee. (7) The conformation of the inner surface of the body of the jaw forms in the chimpanzee two well marked types; between the extremes of these two types of chimpanzee lower jaw every gradation will be found, but in no case would there be any possibility of confusing the Piltdown fragment (or any similar fragment of a modern human jaw) with similar fragments of chimpanzee jaws.

Fig. 210B. Development of the lower jaw

Outer side of the lower jaw of Piltdown man (B), compared with that of the chimpanzee (A), Heidelberg man (C), and modern man (D) (see also Fig. 210A opposite). c, Canine tooth; m. I,

first molar. Scale 1/2. After Smith Woodward.

(8) In the chim]337]panzee the two lines, one drawn down the middle of the tooth row from the canine backwards, and the other drawn down through the ascending ramus, converge in front of the canine, while in the Piltdown jaw they do not (Fig. 210 A and B).

Miller has attempted to demonstrate that not one of these eight characters brought forward is human in the diagnostic sense in which the Piltdown brain case and nasal bones are human. On the contrary, he believes them to be character common to both man and the anthropoids. While it may be possible through additional material to prove that Eoanthropus is a valid genus, in his opinion neither the original fossils nor the circumstances of their chance association have yet been shown to demonstrate its existence. ...