Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes (20 page)

This conclusion raises two final issues. First, to cycle back to my introduction, conspiracies have a tendency to spread. Once we admit Teilhard into the plot, should we not wonder about others as well? In fact, several knowledgeable people have strong suspicions about some young subordinates in the British Museum. I have confined my work to Teilhard’s role; I think that others may have participated.

Second, what about motive? However overwhelming, the evidence cannot satisfy us without a reasonable explanation for why Teilhard might have done such a thing. Here I see no great problem, although we must recast Piltdown (at least from Teilhard’s standpoint) as a joke that went too far, not as a malicious attempt to defraud.

Teilhard was not the dour ascetic or transported mystic that his publications sometimes suggest. He was a passionate man—a genuine hero in war, a true adventurer in the field, a man who loved life and people, who strove to experience the world in all its pleasures and pains. I assume that Piltdown was merely a delicious joke for him—at first. At Hastings, he was an amateur natural historian, with no expectation of a professional career in paleontology. He probably shared the attitude toward professionals so common among his colleagues—there but for the vagaries of life go I. Why do they have the fame, the reputation, and the cash? Why do they sit at their desks and reap rewards while we, with deeper knowledge born of raw experience, amuse ourselves? Why not play a joke to see how far a gullible professional could be taken? And what a wonderful joke for a Frenchman, for England at the time boasted no human fossils at all, while France, with Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon, stood proudly as the queen of anthropology. What an irresistible idea—to salt English soil with this preposterous combination of a human skull and an ape’s jaw and see what the pros could make of it.

But the joke quickly went sour. Smith Woodward tumbled too fast and too far. Teilhard was posted to Paris to become, after all, a
professional
paleontologist. The war broke out, and Teilhard had to leave just as the last act to quell skepticism, Piltdown 2, approached the stage. Then Dawson died in 1916, the war dragged on to 1918, and professional English paleontology fell further and further into the quagmire of acceptance. What could Teilhard say by the war’s end? Dawson could not corroborate his story. The jobs and careers of other conspirators may have been on the line. Any admission on Teilhard’s part would surely have wrecked irrevocably the professional career he had desired so greatly, dared so little to hope for, and at whose threshold he now stood with so much promise. What could he say beyond
comme par exprès
.

Shall we then blame Teilhard or shall we forgive him? We cannot simply laugh and forget. Piltdown absorbed the professional attention of many fine scientists. It led millions of people astray for forty years. It cast a false light upon the basic processes of human evolution. Careers are too short and time too precious to view so much waste with equanimity.

But who among us would or could have come clean in Teilhard’s position? Unfortunately, intent does not always correlate with effect in our complicated world—yet I believe that we must judge a man primarily by intent. If Teilhard had acted for malice or in hope of reward, I would have no sympathy. But I cannot view his participation as more than an intended joke that unexpectedly turned to a galling bitterness almost beyond belief. I think that Teilhard suffered for Piltdown throughout his life. I believe that he must have cried inwardly as he watched Smith Woodward and even Boule himself make fools of themselves—the very men who had befriended and taught him. Could the anguish of Piltdown have been on his mind, when he made the following pledge from the trenches during World War I?

Teilhard paid his debt and lived a full life; may we all do so well.

I CAN’T FEIGN
either sad scholarly surprise or the wounded indignation of a friendly critic branded as a dishonest miscreant. I knew what would happen when I published the preceding essay. I have not been so certain of swift retribution since I hit that glorious game-winning triple one sunny afternoon in 1950 (on my stickball court, home runs cleared the opposite building, but triples went through the third story windows). If hell has no greater fury than a woman scorned, then true believers know no greater disillusion than a God humanized. Teilhard was an international cult figure during the late 1950s and 1960s. His star burns less brightly today, fickleness being the norm in matters of fashion, but a core of devotees still waves his banner and stands ready to crush underfoot any suggestion that Teilhard’s behavior may have been less worthy (or more human) than the most rarefied notion of ethereal saintliness. Nothing I say will call off their dogs of war, but may I reiterate for others more disposed to listen: honest to God, I am not out to destroy Teilhard. I think that he was a complex and fascinating man—far more inspiring as a real human than as the piece of celestial cardboard touted by his devotees. Also, though it is obviously not for me to say, I really do forgive him if he did what I suspect. He was young; he did not act for profit, either monetary or personal; he suffered; he maintained steadfast and admirable loyalty to all involved; he made no excuses.

Having thus unburdened, I shall proceed, in formulating this reply, to ignore most of the personal and vituperative commentary directed at me. I shall also withhold comment upon the larger volume of supportive and friendly letters—except to say, “Thanks so much for understanding what I tried to do.”

The serious negative commentary came in two waves. For six to nine months after my article appeared in August 1980, I received replies that provided no new information, but gave different interpretations (upholding Teilhard’s innocence) to the same data I presented—usually with arguments that I had anticipated and (at least to my own satisfaction) countered in the original article. The three most interesting pieces in this mode—by Professors Dodson, Washburn, and von Koenigswald—were published along with my response in
Natural History
for June 1981. I have not reprinted them here, both because I do not wish to burden this volume with too much of my own private passion in this matter, and because I do not feel that either the comments or my response added anything substantive to the debate. But people with a special interest in the subject, particularly those who do not share my opinion, should consult this exchange and not take my word for it.

In the second wave, rebuttals based on new information finally began to appear. I shall discuss here every substantive point that has come to my attention. I believe that the intense scrutiny devoted to my case has so far failed to weaken it—though readers must judge for themselves whether this claim merely reflects my own blind egoism, or a judicious account of the situation.

OTHER INTERPRETATIONS OF TEILHARD’S LETTERS TO OAKLEY

As one of my two strong points, I argued that Teilhard made a crucial slip in dates when he claimed that Dawson had pointed to the site where he had already discovered the remains of Piltdown 2. But, in the “official” chronology, this second find occurred in 1915, while Teilhard was mustered into the French army in 1914 and never saw Dawson again. I discussed three “innocent” interpretations of this slip in my original article, and gave my reasons for preferring a fourth reading—that Teilhard knew about Piltdown 2 because he had either planned or discussed this future episode with Dawson before he left.

Mary Lukas, a biographer of Teilhard and my most persistent critic, offered a first substantive rebuttal in immediate reaction to my article. She charged that Kenneth Oakley and I and all who ever read the Oakley letters had uniformly misinterpreted them. She claimed that Teilhard was referring not to the second Piltdown site—the one that supposedly yielded fossils in 1915—but to a second pit at the first site (which could have been excavated by 1913). But this cannot be because each of three times that Teilhard mentions this second find, he refers to it explicitly as the place “where the two small fragments of skull and the isolated molar were supposedly found in the rubble.” Only one place yielded two skull fragments and a molar: the second
site
, “discovered” by Dawson in 1915. Since Lukas has since written several pieces attacking my hypothesis, but has never raised this charge again, I assume that she now recognizes its invalidity.

Ms. Lukas’s major article appeared in the Jesuit journal,
America
, for May 23, 1981. It is primarily a detailed—and quite correct—argument for a different substantive point. In short, she spends most of her article demonstrating that Dawson probably took Teilhard to the site of Piltdown 2 in 1913. She characterizes my case in the following words:

Having thus portrayed my case, and then demonstrating that Dawson did show the second site to Teilhard, Lukas concludes her rebuttal:

I trust that careful readers of the original essay will realize that Lukas completely misrepresents me, and that I have never doubted that Dawson showed Teilhard the site of Piltdown 2 in 1913. I said so explicitly in my original article: “
Teilhard did visit the second site with Dawson in 1913, but they did not find anything. Dawson ‘discovered’ the skull bones at Piltdown 2 in January 1915, and the tooth not until July 1915
.”

It is a clear matter of public record that Dawson showed the second site to several people before 1915, not only to Teilhard in 1913, but also to Smith Woodward several times in 1914 (as also mentioned in my article). But these trips led to
no fossil discoveries
. The bones of Piltdown 2 were “officially” unearthed in 1915, after Teilhard left England to join the French army. Yet Teilhard claimed knowledge of the finds before his departure. Lukas has spent a great deal of effort demonstrating something that everyone knows and admits—and that has no relevance to the case.

If these two claims worried me not at all, a third raised in April 1981 initially seemed far more serious. Indeed, I was quite willing to recant this part of my argument (and thus seriously compromise the entire case), if the claim could be substantiated as made. In short, Dr. J. S. Weiner, one of the original Piltdown debunkers and author of a fine book setting out the case for Dawson’s complicity (
The Piltdown Forgery
, Oxford University Press, 1955), presented a lecture at Georgetown University as part of a celebration for the centenary of Teilhard’s birth. He brought with him a previously unpublished letter from Dawson to Smith Woodward dated July 3, 1913. Reports of the lecture (I was not invited and did not attend) held that the letter spoke of fossil finds—not merely fruitless visits—at the second site in 1913. In fact, the 1913 letter supposedly reported the discovery of a skull fragment that later became part of the Piltdown 2 material. Now, if Dawson actually “found” material at Piltdown 2 in 1913, he might well have mentioned it to Teilhard (why not, since he had already written to Smith Woodward), and my case would evaporate. (I could not, after all, charge Teilhard for his claim that he had seen all three items of Piltdown 2, when Dawson had told him of the skull fragment alone. A clear memory of
some
fossil material from Piltdown 2 could easily be conflated, forty years later, with the entire later find.)

Thus, I approached the archives of the British Museum (where the original letter resides) in February 1982 with a strong sense of trepidation and humility. But I soon found that the July 3 letter does not speak about the material of Piltdown 2 at all; the smoking gun turned out to be a red herring. The letter reads:

Now the material of Piltdown 2 does include two fragments of skull, one a frontal—and one is considerably thinner than the distinctive and remarkably thickened skull pieces of Piltdown 1. But the thin fragment of Piltdown 2 is an occipital, not a frontal (that is, a piece of the back, not the front, of the skull). (It is also cleverly cut to imitate the thinnest portion of the Piltdown 1 skull, and therefore not to arouse suspicion for its differences.) The frontal fragment of Piltdown 2 is as thick as the skull material from Piltdown 1—indeed (in restrospect) it
is
part of the same skull used to construct the original forgery. Thus, the
thin
frontal fragment described by Dawson in 1913 is not part of the Piltdown 2 material. In fact, Dawson himself recognized the differences in his 1913 letter and speculated that the thin frontal fragment might be a “descendant of
Eoanthropus
” (
Eoanthropus
was the official taxonomic designation of Piltdown man).

This resolution pleased me because the tale of the 1913 letter never made much sense. If Dawson had actually found a skull piece of Piltdown 2 in 1913, then why did he re-report it in his first explicit letter about Piltdown 2 on January 9, 1915? I recognize, of course, that this resolution leaves us with another interesting mystery—namely, what ever happened to the thin frontal fragment described in the 1913 letter? For it is never mentioned again so far as I know, and it forms no part of the Piltdown lode. I have no idea, and know no source of potential evidence. I would conjecture, however, that Dawson showed it to Smith Woodward, and that they judged it to be just what Dawson had suggested—a descendant of Piltdown, in fact a fragment from a modern skull—and therefore paid no further attention to it. Perhaps, for once, Smith Woodward didn’t fall, and Dawson chose not to press his luck.

I do, of course, recognize that one could still construct, from the 1913 letter correctly interpreted, a scenario for Teilhard’s exoneration: Dawson told Teilhard about the 1913 fragment; Teilhard knew at the time that it had nothing to do with a second site coeval with Piltdown 1; he also knew that it did not come from the site of Piltdown 2 that he had visited with Dawson in 1913; he forgot all this later, remembered that something else had been found somewhere in 1913, and confused this information with the later find of Piltdown 2. But this degree of special pleading makes a weak and conjectural case. It is surely no stronger than the simpler and related claim that I discussed and rejected in the original article—that Teilhard saw only the site of Piltdown 2, but misremembered forty years later and thought that Dawson had told him about the fossils as well.

THE NATURE OF TEILHARD’S LIFE AT ORE PLACE

Under the classical rubric of “opportunity,” several critics familiar with Jesuit life have charged that Teilhard was so restricted by the rules of his seminary that he could not have spent sufficient private time with Dawson to hatch and execute such a plot.

Karl Schmitz-Moorman, editor of the excellent facsimile edition of Teilhard’s technical works, raised two arguments on this theme (
Teilhard Newsletter
, vol. 14, July, 1981; Ms. Lukas reiterates them in a related article in the same issue, as did Thomas M. King, S.J. of Georgetown University in a private communication to me). First, Schmitz-Moorman argues, strict Jesuit rules kept Teilhard virtually confined to quarters or chaperoned by other Jesuits when outside—in other words, no opportunity for private plotting:

Second, Schmitz-Moorman reminds us that Teilhard was not a frequent visitor to the actual site of Piltdown 1: “When Teilhard left England in the summer of 1912 to begin his studies in Paris, he had been only once to Piltdown” (p. 3). He also excavated there with Dawson and Smith Woodward twice during August, 1913. Ore Place, Teilhard’s seminary, was located some forty miles from Piltdown 1.

I must reject the premise of the second argument and the claim of the first. “In order to have taken part in the Piltdown hoax,” Schmitz-Moorman argues, “Teilhard would have had to make many visits to Uckfield in East Sussex” (p. 3)—the site of Piltdown 1. But why? Must all conspirators pull the trigger itself? I have never charged Teilhard with putting the actual bits in the ground; I have always assumed that Dawson played this role. There were so many other things to do—getting, breaking, and doctoring specimens just for starters.

Schmitz-Moorman’s first argument reminds me of Casey Stengel’s immortal distinction between general categories and specific cases. (When asked why he blew the Mets’s first draft choice on a particularly inept catcher, Stengel remarked: “If you don’t have a catcher, you’re likely to have a lot of passed balls.”) Same problem (in reverse) with Schmitz-Moorman. I do not doubt his generality about life in Jesuit seminaries. But the specific record for Ore Place indicates that Teilhard had more than enough freedom to work with Dawson. First of all, his own letters (see bibliography) speak of a frequency and range of excursions far in excess of what the general rules would allow. Second, the standard biography of Teilhard (
Teilhard de Chardin
by Claude Cuénot, p. 12) states: