In 1912,parts of a Skull and Jawbone Were Found in a Gravel

Essay

In 1912,parts of a skull and jawbone were found in a gravel pit near the English town of Piltdown,about 40 miles south of London.These were claimed to belong to a human ancestor with a brain about two-thirds the size of a modern human brain,and a large,protruding jaw."Piltdown Man," or Eoanthropus dawsoni as it was named,was conclusively shown to be a hoax in 1953―pieces of a human skull braincase and an orangutan jaw,stained to look old and to have the same color.(The perpetrator's identity is still not certain.)However,almost from the start,a growing number of scientists were skeptical of Piltdown Man.Discuss two facts about Piltdown Man that would have been increasingly difficult to reconcile with the emerging picture of human evolution in the first half of the twentieth century.