IDNO

P.9846.ACH1

Description

On Catalogue Card: Inner aspect of the right half of the Piltdown mandible contrasted with that of a young adult female chimpanzee.

Place

Europe British Isles; United Kingdom; England; East Sussex; Uckfield; Piltdown

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

Photographer

None

Collector / Expedition

Date

Collection Name

Mounted Haddon Collection

Source

Format

Print Black & White Mounted

Primary Documentation

Other Information

Context: “The "Piltdown Man" is a famous paleontological hoax concerning the finding of the remains of a previously 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. The fragments were thought by many experts of the day to be the fossilised remains of a hitherto unknown form of early man. The Latin name Eoanthropus dawsoni ("Dawson's dawn-man", after the collector Charles Dawson) was given to the specimen. The significance of the specimen remained the subject of controversy until it was exposed in 1953 as a forgery, consisting of the lower jawbone of an orangutan that had been deliberately combined with the skull of a fully developed modern human.” [Source: Wikipedia, Reference, Russell, Miles (2003), Piltdown Man: The Secret Life of Charles Dawson & the World's Greatest Archaeological Hoax, Stroud: Tempus Publishing, ISBN 0752425722., JD 17/5/2010]