Of Paleopolitics and Missing Links - The Fossil Chronicles - page 3

eral ideas about evolution had been published for slightly over half a
century and had gained wide acceptance among scholars . 4 Paleontolo-
gists were on the lookout for missing links that would support Darwin's
theories about human evolution, and several specimens had appeared
as possible candidates. In 1891, the Dutch anatomist Eugène Dubois
had discovered remains in Java that he christened Pithecanthropus erectus
(“ape-man upright,” now Homo erectus ), or Java Man . 5 The skullcap of this
new species was not only small but also long, low, and thick, which made
its potential role as a human forerunner highly contentious. Just three
months before Piltdown was unveiled, Pithecanthropus was rejected as a
human ancestor in a report to the International Congress of Anthropol-
ogy and Prehistoric Archaeology in Geneva, by the influential French
paleontologist Marcellin Boule, who echoed the earlier opinion of the
German pathologist Rudolf Virchow by claiming it was nothing more
than an extinct gibbon . 6 While he was at it, Boule eliminated another
potential human ancestor, the big-brained but primitive-looking Nean-
derthals from Europe, which he thought should be dropped entirely
from the human family tree . 7
Under these circumstances and despite disagreements about the
details of Piltdown's restoration, it is understandable that most of the
leading scholars in British paleoanthropology eagerly accepted the dis-
covery of a missing link from their very own gravel beds as “the most
important ever made in England, and of equal, if not of greater impor-
tance than any other yet made, either at home or abroad.” 8 The main
thing that convinced these scientists of Piltdown's significance was its
modern human braincase, because it fit better than the skulls of either
Pithecanthropus or Neanderthal with prevailing expectations of how a
very old missing link should look.
Having been personally embroiled in controversies surrounding
the two hominins that are the focus of this topic, I was nonetheless
surprised to learn from the Piltdown episode that the passionate fights
and acrimony that accompany the science of paleoanthropology are