It was a practical joke born of petulant dislike for Beringer, yetsomething beyond malice seems to have been involved: there is an undertone of hostility toward science.
This brings up the American Goliath, born of animosity toward hard-shell Protestants. An Iowa cigar manufacturer named Hull and a preacher named Turk argued about giants in the earth. Reverend Turk of course defended the Bible. Hull, choking with disgust, resolved to mock him as viciously as Eckhart had mocked Beringer.
In the summer of 1868 Hull bought a five-ton block of gypsum at a quarry near Fort Dodge and sent it by rail to Chicago where a stonemason was hired to sculpt a proper giant. The monster was then aged with acid and shipped to the New York village of Cardiff where Hull had a relative—William Newell—who buried it on his farm.
A year later Newell employed some laborers on the pretext of digging a well. Very soon their picks struck a stony ten-foot corpse, and considering that they knew nothing of the plot their fright does not seem unreasonable.
Thousands of sightseers arrived, so many that the town of Syracuse put a horse-drawn omnibus in service to Newell’s farm. Among these visitors was Ralph Waldo Emerson who judged the slumbering colossus to be “undoubtedly ancient.” The curator of the New York State Museum called it “the most remarkable object yet brought to light in this country”—a comment that might be variously interpreted. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes also paid a visit. Dr. Holmes drilled a hole behind one ear in order to inspect the substance, which suggests that at the very least he was uncertain. Most people thought it was a fossilized antediluvian man.
Whether or not Reverend Turk made a pilgrimage to Newell’s farm, we don’t know; but it would be safe to assume that when he heard about this giant in the earth he fairly quivered with satisfaction. How vindicated he must have felt. How joyous. How proud. Maybe a little complacent. Even a bit pontifical. If only we knew what he said to the diabolic cigar manufacturer.
And when Hull at last decided to crucify the gullible pastor, how did Reverend Turk respond? Did he pray? Did he forgive? Did he foam at the mouth? Furthermore, one can’t help wondering if the experience taught him anything. Probably not. Fundamentalists are apt to be so fundamental.
More sophisticated, more enigmatic, and infinitely more knowledgeable than our cranky American atheist was the British sponsor of Piltdown Man—that veritable missing link with a human cranium and the jaw of an ape.
“Several years ago I was walking along a farm-road close to Piltdown Common, Fletching, when I noticed that the road had been mended with some peculiar brown flints not usual in the district. On enquiry I was astonished to learn that they were dug from a gravel-bed on the farm, and shortly afterwards I visited the place, where two labourers were at work. . . .”
So begins the account of Mr. Charles Dawson, a rotund Uckfield lawyer and amateur antiquarian who discovered the famous skull. He told his story in 1912 at a meeting of the London Geological Society, to which he had been invited by Dr. Arthur Smith-Woodward of the British Museum, and his remarks later were printed in the society’s journal. Several renowned scientists were present when Dawson spoke, and for many years a painting titledDiscussing the Piltdown Man hung on the staircase of the society’s headquarters.
Dawson said that after coming upon fragments of a skullcap he got in touch with Smith-Woodward, who examined the bones and considered them so important that he joined the search. Together they turned up quite a lot. According to Dawson: “Besides the human remains, we found two small broken pieces of a molar tooth of a rather early Pliocene type of elephant, also a much-rolled cusp of a molar ofMastodon, portions of two teeth ofHippopotamus, and two molar teeth of a Pleistocene beaver.”
From an adjacent field they recovered bits of deer antler and the tooth of a Pleistocene horse. All the specimens, including those of Piltdown Man, were highly mineralized with iron oxide.
The Piltdown cranium did not quite fit the Piltdown jaw, which made a few scientists uneasy. Yet they had been excavated at the same level, and despite the apelike lower jaw the molars were flat, indicating that the jaw worked with an acceptably human rotary motion. Then too, it would be exceedingly strange if, side by side, a prehistoric man had left only his skullcap while a prehistoric ape left only its jaw. Therefore they must belong to the same beast.
So excited was Dr. Smith-Woodward that he built a little house nearthe gravel bed, and when visitors arrived he could talk about nothing else.
A few more specimens were picked up: small bones from the nasal bridge and some delicate turbinal bones which support the membrane inside the nasal cavity. These turbinal bones were quite fragile; they fell apart when lifted out, but the shards were collected and glued together. And one hot August day Father Teilhard de Chardin, who had become interested in the project, was seated on a dump heap
