Frank Spencer doesn鈥檛 look like a detective 鈥� he looks like what he
is, a bespectacled academic approaching 50 years of age, a quiet, curious
man. But he might just have been instrumental in solving one of the longest-standing,
most important mysteries in anthropology, the Piltdown hoax. The evidence,
the careless documentary 鈥榝ingerprint鈥�, was there all along, if anyone had
the wit to see it, and Frank Spencer did. So did Ian Langham, the late Australian
researcher who had uncovered a trail that Spencer was able to follow. Spencer鈥檚
cogent, fairminded, thorough and perceptive review of the evidence is presented
in two companion volumes, Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery and The Piltdown
Papers 1908-1955, just published by the Natural History Museum in London
and Oxford University Press.
The Piltdown fossils, whose discovery was first announced in 1912, fooled
many of the greatest minds in palaeoanthropology until 1953, when the remains
were revealed as planted, altered 鈥� a forgery. For years, many anthropologists
and anatomists had looked at their colleagues, living and dead, with more
than a glint of suspicion in their eyes. Though sharp questions were asked
and accusing fingers were pointed, no hard proof has been forthcoming.
Now evidence has come to light that the hoax was a plot carried out
by Sir Arthur Keith, one of the most eminent anatomists of the early 20th
century, and Charles Dawson, the amateur antiquarian who found the remains.
The conclusion is 鈥榮urprising鈥� and 鈥榮hocking鈥� says Phillip V Tobias, of
Witwatersrand University in South Africa, himself among the most eminent
anatomists of the latter part of this century.
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How has this puzzle, whose solution has escaped so many others in the
past, now seemingly been solved? Spencer is, above all, a man with an eclectic,
restless mind 鈥� the sort of mind that remembers details, that worries at
inconsistencies, that applies knowledge and training from at least three
different fields to the problems he tackles. His has been an unusual career
鈥� checkered would be too strong a word 鈥� that has flirted more than once
with the bounds of respectable, 鈥榦rdinary鈥� science. But Spencer has made
a name for himself in anthropology, a field that sometimes treats mavericks
unkindly, and he has legitimised a whole new style of inquiry in the process.
Born in Chatham, Kent, Spencer originally trained as a medical microbiologist.
But after 10 years of working, first in Britain and then in Canada, he found
himself at a stalemate. The work no longer seemed as challenging as it once
had: he was, perhaps, a little bored. 鈥業 was sort of a middle manager,鈥�
he says. 鈥楳y job was turning more into 鈥榟ow many test tubes are in the lab?鈥�
than 鈥榞ee, isn鈥檛 this fascinating organism?鈥� The only way to progress was
to take on even more managerial responsibilities, which had little attraction
for Spencer.
He took to writing books and one, a textbook for laboratory techicians
entitled Aspects of Human Biology, led him into new areas that sparked his
interest again. While working on the book, he found himself reviewing the
sort of material a physical anthropologist encounters in an introductory
course: the interrelationships of biology, genetics and evolution. Still
thinking to advance his career in microbiology, he started a master鈥檚 degree
in biochemistry at the University of Windsor, in Ontario, Canada. When his
experiments did not go very well, he started chatting with some of the researchers
on the floor below in the anthropology department to let off steam; slowly,
he became more and more intrigued by their subject. So, at an age when many
are beginning to enjoy the feeling of being knowledgeable and comfortable,
of having arrived in their field, Spencer left medical microbiology to enter
graduate school at the University of Michigan in anthropology.
鈥業 felt like Methuselah compared to the other students,鈥� Spencer says
with a laugh, 鈥榖ut I thought I was going to get through quickly. I had some
data together on dermatoglyphics and blood groups and thought I could do
my thesis in just a few years.鈥� It took six years, a long time for a man
already in his 30s, and in the end it had nothing to do with dermatoglyphics
(the study of the inheritance of fingerprint patterns).
Fortunately for palaeoanthropology, Spencer was dissuaded from following
this track by his professors, who felt that what he proposed would not be
sufficiently new and original work. The next topic to capture his interest
was more than new, it was perceived as downright risky in the sense that
it stretched the traditional boundaries of the field. Spencer proposed to
study the life and work of Ales Hrdlicka, the Bohemian (Czech) refugee who
emigrated to America as a child (in the early 1880s) and at the turn of
the century became the first ever curator of physical anthropology in America,
at the Smithsonian Institution. In that capacity, Hrdlicka carried out important
work on race and the Neanderthals. He also founded the American Association
of Physical Anthropology and its primary publication, American Journal of
Physical Anthropology. Despite these contributions, Hrdlicka had been largely
overlooked by the modern generation of anthropologists.
Spencer鈥檚 interest in the topic arose in an ordinary way: he was taking
a reading course on anthropological ideas about race with C Loring Brace.
What an ordinary student, or less mature one, might have dimissed became
an obsession with Spencer: wny didn鈥檛 Hrdlicka鈥檚 work figure more predominently
in the field? Rather than focusing on the seminal works that shaped the
prevailing paradigm in physical anthropology, Spencer turned to what was
left out and ignored. It was Spencer鈥檚 preoccupation with why assessments
are made, and with how theories are incorporated into the body of accepted
knowledge or dismissed as irrelevant, that led him on.
鈥榃hat fascinated me,鈥� says Spencer, 鈥榠s that here was this man who was
so influential in anthropology in this country, yet his works simply weren鈥檛
on the obligatory reading list for students. Why not? He was like the ghost
in the cupboard.鈥�
It was a good question. But was it a PhD thesis in anthropology? Spencer鈥檚
committee, led by C Loring Brace, decided that 鈥� given Spencer鈥檚 maturity
and strong, unimpeachable background in human biology 鈥� a thesis bordering
on the history of science was acceptable. While engaged in his research,
Spencer began crawling through the archives at the Smithsonian and elsewhere
on Hrdlicka, Franz Boas, Earnest Hooton, and the other founders of American
anthropology. He found that Hrdlicka has actually been misunderstood. 鈥業
started the project thinking I would do a hatchet job on Hrdlicka. He didn鈥檛
always fit in well; he had very little small talk. Maybe you could say he
had tunnel vision. But the more I read and submerged myself in the contemporary
documents, the more I found out how very interesting he was. And that, after
all, is what anthropology is about.鈥�
What Spencer realised was that he had been unduly influenced by a cohort
of scholars who, in their 30s (Spencer鈥檚 age at the time), had dismissed
Hrdlicka鈥檚 work. At a time when palaeoanthropology was changing rapidly,
Hrdlicka had been perceived as old-fashioned and reactionary because he
failed to adopt the new language, even though his ideas did change. As the
new generation rose to prominence, Hrdlicka鈥檚 contributions were overlooked
and lost, due to what Spencer calls a 鈥榖ad press鈥�. 鈥楾he oral histories were
all from young men,鈥� Spencer observes, 鈥榓nd they were all looking at Hrdlicka
through distorted lenses. I realised I had to go back to the letters and
documents of Hrdlicka鈥檚 time in order to understand.鈥� Spencer also feels
that, as an immigrant to America himself, he was perhaps more sensitive
to some of the 鈥榗ultural baggage鈥� that gave Hrdlicka difficulty gaining
acceptance.
Funnily enough, it was actually Hrdlicka who led Spencer into the Piltdown
question. Hrdlicka had been an outspoken critic of the Piltdown fossils,
maintaining steadfastly that the ape-like jaw had nothing to do with the
human-like cranium. Spencer wondered how these opinions were received by
his British colleagues, especially Sir Arthur Keith 鈥� one of the foremost
of the Piltdown experts 鈥� with whom Hrdlicka had a longstanding professional
relationship. Spencer went to England to track down the answer. In 1976,
looking through his Keith papers 鈥� disorganised, uncatalogued, and 鈥榟iggledy-piggledy鈥�
鈥� at the Royal College of Surgeons, Spencer stumbled upon a strange inconsistency.
A lie, in fact.
Guilty knowledge
Once again, it was a small point, one that would have escaped most scholars.
On 28 October 1912, Hrdlicka wrote to Keith asking about the new fossil
man (Piltdown) whose discovery was the subject of many rumours. Keith鈥檚
reply, not written until 23 December of that year, explained the delay,
saying that he had not been permitted to see the material until it was made
public on 18 December. But because Spencer has an unusually good memory
for dates, he knew this was untrue. Keith鈥檚 own diary showed he had been
to the British Museum (Natural History) twice to see the remains before
they were shown at the Geological Society on 18 December; why deny the fact
or deprive a colleague of information? Was it a social lie, a flimsy excuse
for the late response to a colleague鈥檚 inquiry? Or was Keith deliberately
denying inside knowledge, for fear of revealing too much?
The record showed that even Hrdlicka himself sensed that Keith was prevaricating;
Hrdlicka had been troubled by the matter and Spencer was haunted by it.
But he had no time to follow up on this and other peculiar entries in Keith鈥檚
diaries that he had noticed. He went home, finished his dissertation, and
took up a position at Queen鈥檚 College of the City University of New York,
where he still works. In 1983, he received a grant from the Wenner-Gren
Foundation to return to Britain to bring order to Keith鈥檚 papers and conserve
them for posterity. Ostensibly, Spencer was hoping to research the relationship
between Keith and Hrdlicka further. In the back of his mind was the hope
that he might also settle the niggling inconsistency: why had Keith lied
about Piltdown? There was simply something wrong there, something Spencer
did not understand.
In the meantime, an Australian historian of science, Ian Langham, had
noticed another fact that showed that Keith knew more about the Piltdown
fossils than any of his public actions would explain. On 21 December 1912
鈥� three days after the public announcement of the Piltdown fossils 鈥� an
anonymous article about Piltdown appeared in the British Medical Journal,
describing not only the information given at the Geological Society meeting
but also revealing some specific facts about the find and the site that
had been kept confidential and should have been known only to those intimately
involved. Arthur Smith Woodward, keeper of geology at the BM(NH) who had
announced the find, was deeply troubled by the content of this article and
tried to discover the author, to no avail. But Langham, going through the
archives, had noticed a diary entry by Keith on 16 December 鈥� two days before
the announcement of the fossils 鈥� that read:
鈥業 write for the BMJ (British Medical Journal) on the meeting Monday
night (16th); on Wednesday (18th) wrote acct for Morning Post (got home
at 12) dined with Reid Moir. On Thursday long interview with Manchester
Guardian: thus keeping things straight as I could during the week and thrusting
a quiet and fairly effective spoke in the Boyd Dawkins and Smith Woodward
wheel. I expect it will be war to the death between the RCS (Royal College
of Surgeons) and SK (South Kensington Museum).鈥� (Cited in Frank Spencer鈥檚
Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery)
Without a doubt, Keith wrote the newspaper story for the Morning Post
and knew much more about the Piltdown fossils and site than he admitted.
Langham had therefore embarked on a thorough study of the Piltdown affair.
Suspicions shared
In 1983, shortly before Spencer went to Britain, he and Langham met
and discovered that they shared the same suspicions: they had both noticed
鈥榦dd鈥� things about Keith鈥檚 actions and opinions concerning Piltdown. In
fact, when Langham found out Spencer was about to depart for the Royal College
to go through the Keith papers, he was distinctly nonplussed, thinking Spencer
might beat him to the punch. But he soon realised that Spencer was simply
focusing on understanding the Keith-Hrdlicka interactions, whereas Langham
was in search of a forger. They had arrived at the same point through different
paths.
As Langham was far more familiar with the totality of the Piltdown affair
than Spencer and seemed (but was not) about ready to go into print, Spencer
stood aside, rather than rushing to forestall another scholar. When Langham
died prematurely in 1984, his widow and colleagues at the University of
Sydney asked Spencer to pick up Langham鈥檚 work.
Spencer now walked twice in dead man鈥檚 shoes, using Langham鈥檚 notes
and records to trace his footsteps through the maze of Keith鈥檚 documents
as well as the extensive Piltdown archives at the National History Museum.
He pored through all the documents Langham had found significant, and many
others besides, puzzling out for himself the sequence and meaning of the
complicated series of events. The results are the two volumes just published.
Phillip Tobias writes in the introduction to the books: 鈥�(Spencer) has furnished
countless insights into aspects for the scientific process, as exemplified
by the activities of those who devoted a staggering amount of time in the
first half of this century to the forlorn attempt to place Piltdown into
the scheme of human evolution.鈥�
鈥榃hile recognising, as Langham did, that in pointing a finger at Keith,
we are desecrating a sacred cow, I think our case is a compelling one and
one that fits the historical facts as we know them,鈥� says Spencer, 鈥楢lthough
I admit that our hypothesis has its weaknesses, I very much hope that the
two books will bring forth some new supportive evidence.鈥� Indeed, he cherishes
a hope that someone, somewhere, will uncover some other documents that will
shed a still clearer light on the whole affair.
鈥業 think I鈥檝e been lucky all these years,鈥� he continues, 鈥榯hat my colleagues
at Queen鈥檚 and in the field have allowed me to wear two hats. I used to
feel somewhat schizophrenic about it, always trying to keep in touch with
the mainstream of physical anthropology and yet become a good student of
history. But I think now it has become more respectable 鈥� hasn鈥檛 it? 鈥� to
conduct this type of research, to ask these types of questions. It鈥檚 a sign
of maturity in the field, I think, to look at the mechanics of how we form
迟丑别辞谤颈别蝉.鈥�
Erik Trinkaus of the University of New Mexico agrees and believes Spencer鈥檚
work has changed physical anthropology in the US for the better. 鈥楳aybe
I鈥檓 just reflecting my own transformation,鈥� Trinkaus says, 鈥榖ut the joke
used to be that historians of science, were both bad scientists and bad
historians. By being a good anthropologist, Frank has given the history
of human evolution respectability; by doing good history of science, he
has also made us more aware of the changing contexts of ideas. Most people
have very little perspective of the history of ideas in their own field
and, as the saying goes, those who are ignorant of history are doomed to
repeat it.
Spencer has also shown that it is possible to have a significant impact
on the contentious field of human evolution without provoking violent controversy.
Quietly, mildly, slowly, Spencer鈥檚 historical papers and books have infiltrated
the field with the notion that it is as important to look at people鈥檚 theories
as a reaction to the intellectual currents of their time as it is to look
at the fossils which formed the basis for their ideas. To document such
processes successfully requires a prodigious memory for detail and a lot
of careful reading through papers, diaries, notebooks and letters. 鈥楨xcavating
in archives is in many ways just like excavating in the geological sediments,鈥�
says Spencer. 鈥榊ou never quite know what will surface, but you keep hoping
it鈥檒l be what you鈥檙e looking for. It鈥檚 always exciting and surprising.鈥�
Pat Shipman is a freelance science writer based in Washington DC.