The Piltdown Forgery: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, with a New Introduction and Afterword by Chris StringerOUP Oxford, 20 нояб. 2003 г. - Всего страниц: 212 On 21 November 1953, one of the most fascinating puzzles in science was finally solved. Three scientists--Joseph Weiner, Kenneth Oakley, and Wilfrid Le Gros Clark--described their investigations into the important fossilized human remains found at Piltdown in Sussex in the early 1900s. Their conclusion was stunning: the remains, and the accompanying materials that supposedly verified them as ancient fossils, had all been faked.The discovery of Piltdown Man had been announced to the world in 1912 by an amateur fossil hunter, Charles Dawson, and the Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum in London, Arthur Smith Woodward, who had found fragments of a thickset skull and an ape-like lower jaw, along with other bones and stone tools. These fragments pointed to a species of early human who had lived in England a million years ago-a 'missing link' between apes and modern man. But, as Weiner and his colleagues wereto reveal in 1953, the skull was a recent one, and the jaw had belonged to an orang-utan. These and many other 'finds' from Piltdown had been deliberately stained and tampered with to make them appear ancient, and the scientific establishment had been well and truly fooled.Widely praised from its first publication in 1955, The Piltdown Forgery remains the classic account of this story and its many players. In this fiftieth anniversary edition, Professor Chris Stringer, Head of Human Origins at the Natural History Museum in London, provides an introduction to this famous story, and an afterword containing the latest detective-work. Ever-increasing technological powers may one day reveal who did what, and why, but until then this remains an engrossingtale of mixed motives, captivating trickery, and competing egos: a tale fit to rival the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (himself a player in this saga) at his best. |
Содержание
1 A Darwinian prediction | 1 |
2 An impasse | 16 |
3 An hypothesis | 24 |
4 The jaw displaced | 33 |
5 Flint and fauna | 49 |
6 The full extent | 63 |
7 The principals and their part | 71 |
8 Some others | 84 |
10 Events reconsidered | 108 |
11 Entanglement | 126 |
12 The eye wink | 139 |
13 The Sussex wizard | 153 |
14 The question of complicity | 172 |
Epilogue | 185 |
Piltdown 2003 | 188 |
203 | |
Другие издания - Просмотреть все
The Piltdown Forgery: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, with a New Introduction ... J. S. Weiner Недоступно для просмотра - 2003 |
The Piltdown Forgery: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, with a New Introduction ... J. S. Weiner Недоступно для просмотра - 2003 |
Часто встречающиеся слова и выражения
anatomical anatomists antiquity ape-like archaeologist Arthur Smith Woodward Barbe Barcombe Mills Barkham Manor bichromate bone implement British Museum British Museum Natural canine tooth Castle Lodge cent Charles Dawson chemical chromium colour cranial fragments cranial pieces cranium Dawson and Woodward dentine deposit early elephant Elliot Smith Eoanthropus dawsoni eoliths evidence excavations finds fluorine forgery fossil frontal Geol Geological Society geologist Gros Clark Hastings Castle Hinton hippo hoax human Ice Age Ightham iron iron-staining jaw and cranium Kenward letter Lewes Lewis Abbott London mandible Marriott Martin Hinton material molar Morris Morris's Museum Natural History nitrogen Oakley Oxford palaeoliths palaeontological palaeontologist perpetrator Piltdown discoveries Piltdown gravel Piltdown skull Piltdown specimens Pleistocene Pliocene Professor radio-activity Red Crag scientific second Piltdown Sheffield Park Sir Arthur Keith staining Stegodon sulphate surface Sussex Archaeological Sussex Archaeological Society teeth Teilhard de Chardin Uckfield Villafranchian Weald Wealden wear Woodhead wrote X-ray