Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes (19 page)

To what profundity, then, did Teilhard refer Piltdown as evidence? Teilhard believed that evolution moved in an intrinsic direction representing the increasing domination of spirit over matter. Under the thrall of matter, lineages would diverge to become more unlike, but all would move upward in the same general direction. With man, evolution reached its crux. Spirit had begun its domination over matter, adding a new layer of thought—the noosphere—above the older biosphere. Divergence would be stemmed; indeed, convergence had already begun in the process of human socialization. Convergence will continue as spirit prevails. When the last vestiges of matter have been discarded, spirit will involute upon itself at a single point called Omega and identified with God—the mystical evolutionary apocalypse that secured Teilhard’s fame.
⁸

But convergence is a thing of the future. Scientists seeking evidence for such a scheme must look to the past for twin signs of divergence accompanied by similar upward direction—in other words, for
multiple, parallel lineages
within larger groups.

I have read all of Teilhard’s papers from the early 1920s. No theme receives more emphasis than the search for multiple, parallel lineages. In an article on fossil tarsiers, written in 1921, he argues that three separate primate lineages extend back to the dawn of the age of mammals, each evolving in the same direction of larger brains and smaller faces. In a review published in 1922 of Marcellin Boule’s
Les hommes fossiles
, Teilhard writes: “Evolution is no more to be represented in a few simple strokes for us than for other living things; but it resolves itself into innumerable lines which diverge at such length that they appear parallel.” In a general essay on evolution, printed in 1921, he speaks continually of oriented evolution in multiple, parallel lines within mammals.

But where was Piltdown in this extended paean of praise for multiple, parallel lineages? Piltdown provided proof, the only available proof, of multiple, parallel lineages within human evolution itself—for its skull belonged to an advanced human older than primitive Neanderthal. Piltdown was the most sublime argument that Teilhard possessed, and he never breathed it again after the 1920 article.

These two arguments have been abstract. A third feature of the 1920 article is stunning in its directness. For I believe that Teilhard fleetingly tried to tell his colleagues, too subtly perhaps, that Piltdown was a phony. In discussing whether the Piltdown remains represent one or two animals, Teilhard laments that the direct and infallible test cannot be applied. One skull fragment contained a perfect glenoid fossa, the point of articulation for the upper jaw upon the lower. Yet the corresponding point of the lower jaw, the condyle, was missing on a specimen otherwise beautifully preserved at its posterior end. Teilhard writes: “Since the glenoid fossa exists in perfect state on the temporal bone, we could simply have tried to articulate the pieces,
if the mandible had preserved its condyle:
we could have learned, without possible doubt, if the two fit together.” I read this statement in a drowsy state one morning at two o’clock, but the next line—set off by Teilhard as a paragraph in itself terminated by an exclamation point—destroyed any immediate thought of sleep: “As if on purpose [
comme par exprès
], the condyle is missing!”

“
Comme par exprès
.” I couldn’t get those words out of my mind for two days. Yes, it could be a literary line, a permissible metaphor for emphasis. But I think that Teilhard was trying to tell us something he didn’t dare reveal directly.

OTHER ARGUMENTS

1. Teilhard’s embarrassment at Oakley’s disclosure. Kenneth Oakley told me that, although he had not implicated Teilhard in his thoughts, one aspect of Teilhard’s reaction had always puzzled him. All other scientists, including those who had cause for the most profound embarrassment (like the aged Sir Arthur Keith, who had used Piltdown for forty years as the bedrock of his thought), expressed keen interest amidst their chagrin. They all congratulated Oakley spontaneously and thanked him for resolving an issue that had always been puzzling, even though the solution hurt so deeply. Teilhard said nothing. His congratulations arrived only when they could not be avoided—in the preface to a letter responding to Oakley’s direct inquiries. When Teilhard visited London, Oakley tried to discuss Piltdown, but Teilhard always changed the subject. He took Teilhard to a special exhibit at the British Museum illustrating how the hoax had been uncovered. Teilhard glumly walked through as fast as he could, eyes averted, saying nothing. (A. S. Romer told me several years ago that he also tried to conduct Teilhard through the same exhibit, and with the same strange reaction.) Finally, Teilhard’s secretary took Oakley aside and explained that Piltdown was a sensitive subject with Father Teilhard.

But why? If he had been gulled by Dawson at the site, he had certainly recouped his pride. Smith Woodward had devoted his life to Dawson’s concoction. Teilhard had written about it but once, called it as correctly as he could, and then shut up. Why be so embarrassed? Unless, of course, the embarrassment arose from guilt about another aspect of his silence—his inability to come clean while he watched men he loved and respected make fools of themselves, partly on his account. Marcellin Boule, his beloved master, for example, correctly called Smith Woodward’s
Eoanthropus
“an artificial and composite being” in the first edition of
Les hommes fossils
(1921). The skull, he said, could belong to “
un bourgeois de Londres
” the jaw belonged to an ape. But he pondered the significance of Piltdown 2 and changed his mind in the second edition of 1923: “In the light of these new facts, I cannot be as sure as I was before. I recognize that the balance has now tipped a bit in the direction of Smith Woodward’s hypothesis—and I am happy for this scientist whose knowledge and character I esteem equally.” How did Teilhard feel as he watched his beloved master, Boule, falling into the abyss—when he contained tools for extraction that he could not use.

2. The elephant and the hippo. Bits and pieces of other fossil mammals were salted into the Piltdown gravels in order to set a geologic matrix for the human finds. All but two of these items could have been collected in England. But the hippo teeth, belonging to a distinctive dwarfed species, probably came from the Mediterranean island of Malta. The elephant tooth almost surely came from a distinctive spot at Ichkeul, Tunisia, for it is highly radioactive as a result of seepage from surrounding sediments rich in uranium oxide. This elephant species has been found in several other areas, but nowhere else in such highly radioactive sediments. Moreover, the Ichkeul site was only discovered by professionals in 1947; the doctored specimen at Piltdown could not have come from a cataloged museum collection.

Teilhard taught physics and chemistry at a Jesuit school in Cairo from 1905 to 1908, just before coming to Piltdown. His volume of
Letters from Egypt
again records little about theology and teaching, but much about travel, natural history, and collecting. He did not call at Tunisia or Malta on his passage down, but I can find no record of his passage back, and the two areas are right on his route from Cairo to France. In any case, Teilhard’s letters from Cairo abound in tales of swapping and exchange with other natural historians of several North African nations. He was plugged into an amateur network of information and barter and might have received the teeth from a colleague.

This argument formed the base of evidence among my senior colleagues who suspected Teilhard—A. S. Romer, Bryan Patterson, and Louis Leakey (Leakey also mentioned Teilhard’s knowledge of chemistry and the clever staining of the Piltdown bones). According to hearsay, le Gros Clark himself, a member of the trio that exposed the hoax, also suspected Teilhard on this basis. I regard this argument as suggestive, but not compelling. Dawson too was plugged into a network of amateur exchange.

3. Teilhard’s good luck at Piltdown. Although records are frustratingly vague, I believe that all the Piltdown pieces were found by the original trio—Dawson, Smith Woodward, and Teilhard. (In the official version, a workman may have given Dawson the first piece in 1908.) Dawson, of course, unearthed most of the material himself. Smith Woodward, so far as I can tell, found only one cranial fragment. Teilhard, who spent less time at Piltdown than his two colleagues, was blessed. He found a fragment of the elephant tooth, a worked flint, and the famous canine.

People who have never collected in the field probably do not realize how difficult and chancy the operation is when fossils are sparse. There is no magic to it, just hard work. A tooth in a gravel pit is about as conspicuous as the proverbial needle in a haystack. The hoaxer worked hard on his Piltdown material. He filed the canine and painted it to simulate age. Apes’ teeth are not easy to come by. If I had but one precious item, I would not stick it into a large gravel heap and then hope that some innocent companion would find it. It would probably be lost forever, not triumphantly recovered. I doubt that I would ever find it again myself, after someone else had mucked about extensively in the pile.

Teilhard described his discovery in the first letter to Oakley: “When I found the canine, it was so inconspicuous amidst the gravels which had been spread on the ground for sifting that it seems to me quite unlikely that the tooth could have been planted. I can even remember Sir Arthur congratulating me on the sharpness of my eyesight.” Smith Woodward’s recollection (from his last book of 1948) is more graphic:

I also have some doubt about Teilhard’s flint, for it is the only Piltdown item indubitably found in situ. All the other specimens either came from gravel heaps that had been dug up and spread upon the ground or cannot be surely traced. Now in situ can signify one of two things (and the records do not permit a distinction). It may mean that the gravel bed lay exposed in a ditch, cliff, or road cut—in which case, anyone might have stuck the flint in. But it may mean that Teilhard dug into the layer from undisturbed, overlying ground—in which case, he could only have planted the flint himself.

Again, I regard this argument only as suggestive, not as definitive. It is the weakest point of all, hence its place at the bottom of my list. Perhaps Teilhard was simply a particularly keen observer.

Conclusions

What shall we make of all this? I can only imagine three conclusions. First, perhaps Piltdown has simply deluded another gullible victim, this time myself. Maybe I have just encountered an incredible string of coincidences. Could all the slips in the letters have been innocent errors of an aging man; the
comme par exprès
merely a literary device; the failure to use his best argument a simple oversight; his conspicuous silence beyond a few fleeting and unavoidable mentions only an aspect of a complex personality that no one has fathomed; his profound embarrassment just another facet of the same personality; the elephant and hippo Dawson’s property…? I just can’t believe it. Coincidences recede into improbability as more and more independent items coagulate to form a pattern. The mark of any good theory is that it makes coordinated sense of a string of observations otherwise independent and inexplicable. Let us then assume that Teilhard knew Piltdown was a hoax, at least from 1920.

We are left with two possibilities. Was Teilhard innocent in the field at Piltdown? Did he tumble to the hoax later (perhaps when he deciphered the inconsistencies in Piltdown 2)? Did he then maintain silence out of loyalty to Dawson who had befriended him or because he didn’t wish to stir a hornet’s nest when he was not completely sure? But why, then, did he try so hard to exonerate Dawson in the letters to Oakley? For Dawson had used him and played on his youthful innocence as cruelly as he had deceived Smith Woodward. And why did he write a series of slips and half-truths to Oakley that embody, as their only pattern, an attempt to extract himself alone? And why such intense embarrassment and such conspicuous silence if he had guessed right but had been too unsure to say so?

Alan Ternes, editor of
Natural History
, made the interesting suggestion that Teilhard, as a priest, might have heard of the hoax through a confession by Dawson that he could not subsequently reveal. I have not been able to ascertain whether Dawson was Catholic; I do not think that he was. But I am told that priests may regard statements of contrition by other baptized Christians as privileged information. This is the most sensible version I have heard of the hypothesis that Teilhard knew about the fraud but did not participate in it. It would explain his silence, his embarrassment, even the “
comme par exprès
.” But, in this case, why would Teilhard have tried to construct such an elaborate and farfetched theory of Dawson’s innocence in his first letter to Oakley? Confession may have required silence, but surely not sheltering by falsehood. Any why the slips and half-truths for his own exoneration in the subsequent letters?

This leaves a third explanation—that Teilhard was an active coconspirator with Dawson at Piltdown. Only in this way can I make sense of the pattern in Teilhard’s letters to Oakley, the 1920 article, the subsequent silence, the intense embarrassment.