THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, JUNE 5, 1990Masternind UnmaskedIn Piltdown Man Hoax?Continued From Page Althe Geological Society of London onDec. 18, 1912.Mr. Dawson, the argument goes, hada motive, which was his desire for acollecting coup that would assure en-trance in the Royal Society. He had theopportunity, for he lived near the siteand could have salted it with bogusbones he might have obtained from hiscontacts at museums. In his analysis ofthe hoax in 1955, Dr. Joseph S. Weiner,a South African paleontologist at Ox-ford, who was instrumental in expos-ing the fraud, decided that Mr. Daw-son must have acted alone, though herecognized that Mr. Dawson couldhave been the agent of a ''shadow fig-ure'? who masterminded the caper.The general assumption is thatthere was a second man, someonewith the knowledge of paleontology,access to fossils and an even strongerprofessional motive than Mr. Dawson's. His identity is the deeper Pilt-down mystery.In the book by Dr. Spencer, the al-leged second man is none of the dozenor so suspects who had been roundedup by scientists and historians overthe years. He was a prominent manknown to be associated with the Pilt-down inquiry, but who never seems tohave attracted the least suspicion -until now.Among the usual suspects, Dr.Woodward is generally judged inno-cent. He rendered the judgment thatthe skull and jaw were genuineprehistoric relics. It is unlikely, ex-perts say, that if he knew the facts hewould have exposed himself as theduped party in the affair.Some scholars have even suspectedthat Dr. Woodward was the intendedvictim of the hoax. Before his death in1978, Dr. James A. Douglas, a profes-sor of geology at Oxford, let it beknown that he believed his famouspredecessor at Oxford, William J. Sol-las, had been the perpetrator as away of making Dr. Woodward, hispretentious academic rival, lookridiculous. If he was the instigator,why did Dr. Sollas never spring thetrap?Dr. Grafton Elliot Smith, an Aus-tralian anatomist in England, hasalso been implicated. He had much togain. Piltdown served to underscorethe validity of his theoretical predic-tions regarding the pre-eminence ofthe brain in human evolution. But Dr.Spencer concluded that the circum-Stantial evidence against Dr. Smithwas "flimsy."Deflating the High and MightyLewis Abbott, a jeweler in Hastingsand collector of fossils, could havebeen involved. He knew Mr. Dawsonand lived nearby. A counterfeiter ofjewels, he was not above such ascheme and had the resources andskills. Dr. Charles Blinderman, anEnglish professor at Clark Universityand author of ''The Piltdown In-quest"' in 1986, noted that Mr. Abbottwas on record before 1912 as sayingthat pompous paleontologists shouldbe punished by entrapping them withclever fakes. Given Mr. Abbott's per-sonality, Dr. Spencer said, '"'he wouldnot have sat idly by awaiting Mr.Dawson's inevitable ascent to fame,but would have seen to it that the mis-sion was aborted."Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, theFrench Jesuit priest and paleontolo-gist, could have been the second man.In the years immediately before the1912 announcement, he lived at a Jes-Desperate sleuthsattempted toimplicate Sir ArthurConan Doyle.uit seminary in Hastings and onmany occasions tramped the fieldshunting fossils with Mr. Dawson. OnMr. Dawson's first joint excavationsat Piltdown with Dr. Woodward, theonly other person to accompany themwas Dr. Teilhard.Priest as a SuspectIn casting a suspicious eye on theFrench priest, Dr. Stephen Jay Gould,the writer and paleontologist at Har-vard, has cited several slips Dr. Teil-hard made years later in correspond-ence reconstructing the facts andtiming of his relationship with Mr.Dawson and the Piltdown Man. LouisLeakey, the Kenyan paleontologist,also suspected Dr. Teilhard and re-ported a conversation in which thepriest is supposed to have said, 'Iknow who did the Piltdown hoax andit was not Charles Dawson.' He gavea little smile and said no more.Add to the cast of suspects thename of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,creator of Sherlock Holmes. In 1983,John H. Winslow, an American arche-ologist, pointed the finger, noting thatDoyle lived near Piltdown, knew Mr.Dawson and had a keen interest, infossils. But he had no apparent mo-tive. The case against Doyle, Dr.Spencer said, is ''grounded almost en-tirely on supposition.' It reveals howdesperate the sleuths had become tosettle blame on someone, anyone.No one seemed to give muchthought to Sir Arthur Keith. In 1912,he was a rising star in science as ananatomist and conservator of theHunterian Museum of the Royal Col-lege of Surgeons. He was prominentsocially, ambitious and willing to takeCollection of Dr. Frank Spencer'Arthur Smith Woodward, fore-ground, who announced the Pilt-down find, and Charles Dawson,who said he found the bones.risks. At a time of theoretical flux inpaleoanthropology, he was the cham-pion of the concept that modernhumans evolved earlier than hadbeen supposed and the first manifes-tation was the enlarged brain.In this way of thinking, there wasno room in the human lineage for theNeanderthals of Europe or the JavaMan, found just before the turn of thecentury-and later determined to beaspecimen of a direct human ancestor.There was room, however, for a"'missing link'? with a modern-sizedbrain combined with a simian jaw,something like the Piltdown Man.What scientist had the most to gainfrom the Piltdown discovery, and didsecure greater fame? The answer,Dr. Spencer said, is Dr. Keith.Research on the Piltdown papers atthe British Museum and Dr. Keith'spapers at the Royal College of Sur-geons led Dr. Langham, until hisdeath, and Dr. Spencer independentlyto suspicions about Dr. Keith's role inthe case. The most suggestive pieceof evidence was an entry Dr. Keithmade in his diary in December 1912.This revealed that an anonymous ar-ticle about the Piltdown discoverythat appeared in the Dec. 21, 1912,issue of The British Medical Journalhad been written by Dr. Keith. He hadwritten it two days before the Geolog-ical Society meeting, and the articleleft no doubt that the author had beenprivy to knowledge about the dig sitethat was not reported by Dr. Wood-ward at the meeting and was presum-ably a closely guarded secret.Other clues began to fall into place.It was established that Mr. Dawsonand Dr. Keith had met at least a yearbefore and that the scheme couldhave been hatched sometime be-tween July 1911 and the beginning of1912. Their alibi for meeting in Lon-don was presumably a collaborationon a minor scientific paper.As Dr. Spencer reconstructedevents, Dr. Keith provided technicalexpertise and possibly the bones, too.The fragments were stained to lookprehistoric, and the orangutan teethwere filed down to show the kind ofwear exhibited on human teeth. Mr.Dawson placed the bones in thegravel deposit where they would befound when Mr. Dawson, Dr. Wood-ward and occasionally Dr. Teilhardvisited the site in the summer of 1912.Dr. Teilhard was apparently an inno-cent bystander, brought along by Mr.Dawson to lend credibility to thefinds. Who would doubt the word of apriest?'Surprising, Nay, Shocking'Analysis of the new evidence, Dr.Spencer said, strengthed the viewthat the hoax "was not a practicaljoke that got out of hand, but ratherone that .had been tailored to. with-stand scientific scrutiny and therebypromote a particular interpretationof the human fossil record." Recogni-tion of the importance of fossil discov-eries: in Africa; beginning in the1920's, was impeded because theyseemed to contradict the reigningPiltdown ''evidence."'In a foreword to the book, Dr. Phil-lip V. Tobias, director of paleoanthro-pology at the University of Witwa-tersrand in Johannesburg, called thecase against Dr. Keith "the newest,the most surprising, nay, shocking,and the most seemingly logical con-clusion as to the identity of the scien-tist-member of the team of forgers."'Dr. Fred H. Smith, a paleontologistat the University of Tennessee atKnoxville who has examined the newevidence, said: 'I think Spencermakes a very good case. I don't thinkit's ironclad. But when you look atwhose career benefited most by Pilt- &down, Arthur Keith's name certainlyheads the list."Dr. William Ball, a former keeperof paleontology at the British Mu-seum, said: "Is this the end of thePiltdown affair? Until such time asan unequivocal, signed and detailedconfession comes to light (and onethat can be shown to fit the facts aswe now know them), I rather doubtit."