The charming eccentric with a passion for pranks

By Roger Highfield

UK News Electronic Telegraph Thursday May 23 1996 Issue 390

Clash over funding for rodent remains led to 'missing link' fraud

Martin Hinton was an enthusiastic and somewhat eccentric individual who joined the Natural History Museum in 1910 as a "voluntary worker" and rose to be keeper of zoology, a post he held

until his retirement in 1945.

Today's announcement marks the best evidence to date of his involvement but there was always a suspicion that Hinton was responsible for the Piltdown fraud.

The late Lord (Solly) Zuckerman - who called Hinton a charming eccentric – pointed out in an article in New Scientist in 1990 that one of the first papers rejecting the notion that the Piltdown jaw belonged to cranial fragments was published in 1915 and, when it appeared, the young Hinton wrote to congratulate the author on his "dissolution" of the bogus Piltdown skull.

Other signs pointed to Hinton. When his entry first appeared in Who's Who in 1935 it included the admission that he was interested in hoaxes, and had studied many of them.

In a letter written by Hinton after the fraud was exposed, he said: "The temptation to invent such a discovery of an ape-like man in a Wealden gravel might well have proved irresistible to some unbalanced member of old Ben Harrison's circle," a reference to his Sussex-based geologist colleagues.

"This reads as almost a signed confession," Dr Henry Gee, of Nature, said.

Old canvas trunk holds identity of Piltdown hoaxer

Telegraph Group Ltd. May 1996

Roger Highfield

[1] A canvas travelling trunk with the initials of Martin A C Hinton, found at the Natural History Museum, has ended decades of speculation over who was behind the Piltdown hoax, the most notorious scientific fraud. Hinton was a curator of the museum in 1912 when the confection of modern human and medieval orang-utan bones was announced as the "Dawn Man of Piltdown". His trunk contains bones, stained and carved in the same way as the forged fossils and associated artefacts, that point to him as the architect of a hoax that fooled many great minds in palaeoanthropology until the early 1950s when the remains were finally exposed as a forgery. When amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson found a human skull, jaw fragments and primitive artefacts at a gravel pit in Piltdown, Sussex, he caused a sensation. Here was the "first Englishman," proof of man's ape-like ancestry that fitted in with "missing links" suggested by Charles Darwin. Tomorrow Prof Brian Gardiner, of King's College, London, will tell the Linnean Society that research with Dr Andrew Currant, who first analysed the trunk's contents, has identified Hinton unequivocally as the person who planted the hoax. His motive was to embarrass Prof Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the museum. One artefact he used to give the human fossils an authentic context was what can only be described as a Pleistocene cricket bat (as befits the first Englishman) carved from a leg bone of an extinct elephant. When Prof Smith Woodward found the bat, he solemnly pronounced it to be "a supremely important example of the work of palaeolithic man". Dr Henry Gee, of Nature, said: "Hinton was well-known for his elaborate practical jokes. The Piltdown fraud would have been an ideal way to get back at the pompous, stuffy keeper of palaeontology." Even when the find was announced in the lecture room of the Geological Society in London by Dawson and Smith Woodward in 1912, several people were suspicious, refusing to accept that the cranium and primitive jaw belonged to the same species, let alone the same individual. The Piltdown forgery suggested that the first modem human feature to emerge was an enlarged brain. But subsequent research showed humanity evolved with the brain expanding relative appears to be an argument between Smith Woodward and Hinton about funding for a catalogue of rodent remains. The row affected Hinton's career. Though he was a fossil expert, Hinton spent most of his subsequent career in the zoology department, away from the palaeontology department. Prof Smith Woodward defended his find to the end. On his deathbed, he dictated his book, The Earliest Englishman, which was published in 1948. Hard evidence of the forgery emerged a few years later, [2] after chemical analysis by Kenneth Oakley, keeper of anthropology at the Natural History Museum. He analysed fluorine in the fragments - a technique that gave a reasonably accurate date for fossils - and in 1950 published his results: the fluorine content suggested the lower jaw was relatively modern, its colour superficial and it appeared to have been applied artificially. However Oakley's analysis did show the Piltdown fossils were enriched in iron, as one would expect if they were genuinely old. Analysis of stained pieces of fossil hippo and elephant found in the trunk by Dr Currant and Prof Gardiner are also enriched in iron, and manganese, having the same proportions as the Piltdown specimens. Hinton himself, at the age of 16, had published a paper showing how fossils in river gravels would be impregnated with oxides of iron and manganese, staining them a chocolate brown colour. Chromium provided another clue. All the Piltdown fossils are enriched with chromium because Hinton used chromic acid to etch the bone surface as part of his staining process. However, the orang-utan jaw had no chromium and the sleuths say that was consistent with the hoax: the jaw could not have been etched by Hinton because it contained two teeth - and acid etching of the teeth would have shown a forger at work. Further confirmation came when Prof Robert Savage, executor of Hinton's estate, sent Gardiner some of Hinton's glass tubes. They contained eight human teeth stained in various ways, just as if Hinton had been testing his concoction of iron, manganese and chromium. Hinton chose the Piltdown gravels for the fraud because he was an expert on that geology and chose Dawson because he knew him to be an incompetent geologist who "would serve as the dupe," said Dr Gee. "Dawson had already unknowingly traded stone implements stained to look old by Hinton," he said.

 

 

 

 

A CANVAS travelling trunk with the initials of Martin A C Hinton, found at the Natural History Museum, has ended decades of speculation over who was behind the Piltdown hoax, the most notorious scientific fraud. Hinton was a curator of the museum in 1912 when the confection of modern human and medieval orang-utan bones was announced as the "Dawn Man of Piltdown".

His trunk contains bones, stained and carved in the same way as the forged fossils and associated artefacts, that point to him as the architect of a hoax that fooled many great minds in

palaeoanthropology until the early 1950s when the remains were finally exposed as a forgery. When amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson found a human skull, jaw fragments and primitive artefacts at a gravel pit in Piltdown, Sussex, he caused a sensation. Here was the "first Englishman," proof of man's ape-like ancestry that fitted in with "missing links" suggested by Charles Darwin.

Tomorrow Prof Brian Gardiner, of King's College, London, will tell the Linnean Society that research with Dr Andrew Currant, who first analysed the trunk's contents, has identified Hinton unequivocally as the person who planted the hoax. His motive was to embarrass Prof Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the museum.

One artefact he used to give the human fossils an authentic context was what can only be described as a Pleistocene cricket bat (as befits the first Englishman) carved from a leg bone of an extinct elephant. When Prof Smith Woodward found the bat, he solemnly pronounced it to be "a supremely important example of the work of palaeolithic man".

Dr Henry Gee, of Nature, said: "Hinton was well-known for his elaborate practical jokes. The Piltdown fraud would have been an ideal way to get back at the pompous, stuffy keeper of

palaeontology." Even when the find was announced in the lecture room of the Geological Society in London by Dawson and Smith Woodward in 1912, several people were suspicious, refusing to accept that the cranium and primitive jaw belonged to the same species, let alone the same individual.

Further confirmation came when Prof Robert Savage, executor of Hinton's estate, sent Gardiner some of Hinton's glass tubes

The Piltdown forgery suggested that the first modern human feature to emerge was an enlarged brain. But subsequent research showed humanity evolved with the brain expanding relatively late in human history. The reason for the fraud appears to be an argument between Smith Woodward and Hinton about funding for a catalogue of rodent remains. The row affected Hinton's career. Though he was a fossil expert, Hinton spent most of his subsequent career in the zoology department, away from the palaeontology department.

Prof Smith Woodward defended his find to the end. On his deathbed, he dictated his book, The Earliest Englishman, which was published in 1948. Hard evidence of the forgery emerged a few years later, after chemical analysis by Kenneth Oakley, keeper of anthropology at the Natural History Museum.

He analysed concentrations of fluorine in the fragments - a technique that gave a reasonably accurate date for fossils - and in 1950 published his results: the fluorine content suggested the lower jaw was relatively modern, its colour superficial and it appeared to have been applied artificially. However Oakley's analysis did show the Piltdown fossils were enriched in iron, as one would expect if they were genuinely old. Analysis of stained pieces of fossil hippo and elephant found in the trunk by Dr Currant and Prof Gardiner are also enriched in iron, and manganese, having the same proportions as the Piltdown specimens.

Hinton himself, at the age of 16, had published a paper showing how fossils in river gravels would be impregnated with oxides of iron and manganese, staining them a chocolate brown colour.

Chromium provided another clue. All the Piltdown fossils are enriched with chromium because Hinton used chromic acid to etch the bone surface as part of his staining process. However, the

orang-utan jaw had no chromium and the sleuths say that was consistent with the hoax: the jaw could not have been etched by Hinton because it contained two teeth - and acid etching of the teeth would have shown a forger at work.

Further confirmation came when Prof Robert Savage, executor of Hinton's estate, sent Gardiner some of Hinton's glass tubes. They contained eight human teeth stained in various ways, just as if Hinton had been testing his concoction of iron, manganese and chromium. Hinton chose the Piltdown gravels for the fraud because he was an expert on that geology and chose Dawson because he knew him to be an incompetent geologist who "would serve as the dupe," said Dr Gee.

"Dawson had already unknowingly traded stone implements stained to look old by Hinton," he said.

 


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