Of Paleopolitics and Missing Links - The Fossil Chronicles - page 6

Figure 1. John Cooke's oil painting The Piltdown Committee. Back (left to right):
Frank Orwell Barlow, Grafton Elliot Smith, Charles Dawson, and Arthur
Smith Woodward. Front: Arthur Swayne Underwood, Arthur Keith, William
Plane Pycraft, and Edwin Ray Lankester. A portrait of Charles Darwin hangs
in the background. Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History
Library, Image #PC11-203.
tion of the 'earliest Englishman' into the annals of British science” and
“because it neatly captured the underlying geometry of the Piltdown
controversy,” the now famous painting created a stir and was reputed
to be the highlight of the exhibition. 14 In keeping with the widely pub-
licized debate, Cooke depicts Arthur Keith demonstrating Piltdown's
large braincase, as Elliot Smith points to it approvingly. 15 Standing
behind Keith and to his left, the most likely mastermind of the hoax (as
discussed below), Charles Dawson, looks on with his colleague Arthur
Woodward, as the latter's reconstruction is being “corrected” by Keith.
While most scientists accepted Piltdown as a legitimate missing link