An Impasse

Abstract

Dawson had received widespread recognition, but died too soon to be given any special award from a scientific body. Twenty years later his achievement was commemorated by the erection of a memorial stone at the site of the gravel pit at Barkham Manor. Sir Arthur Smith Woodward had taken the initiative in this and borne most, if not all, of the expense. The unveiling was done, at his request, by his old friend Sir Arthur Keith at the well-attended ceremony on 22 July 1938. Keith gave a brief but eloquent oration. He dwelt on the wonderful achievement of the keen-sighted amateur Dawson, an achievement which he likened in the history of discovery to that of the French lock-keeper, Boucher de Perthes—the first man, three-quarters of a century ago, to recognize clearly the human workmanship of the Ice Age flint hand-axes of the Somme. The discovery at Piltdown ranked worthily, too, with that of Neanderthal man discovered in 1857, the first known of all fossil men. These discoveries had encountered tremendous opposition before acceptance was won. The claims of Perthes had brought incredulity and set the scientific world a momentous problem, and only after years of stormy argument were these claims conceded; the discovery of Neanderthal man likewise brought disagreement and controversy. But this fossil form was accepted in the end. As Keith said, then came Dawson’s discovery, and this brought the greatest problem of all. But Keith did not go on to claim that all was now well with ‘the earliest known representative of man in Western Europe’, of which he had just finished a laborious re-study. A puzzle it had always been and a puzzle it was still. Keith could not hide his underlying doubt, and ten years later he expressed it again in the Foreword which he wrote at Lady Smith Woodward’s request to Woodward’s own book, The Earliest Englishman, published posthumously in 1948. He declared: ‘The Piltdown enigma is still far from a final solution.’ Why should Keith still express such doubt and bewilderment? But it was no longer surprising.