The Piltdown Forgery

The Piltdown Forgery is the classic account of one of the greatest hoaxes of our times, written by one of the experts who first revealed it to the public. Discovered in the early 1900s, the 'Piltdown Man' was believed to be a 'missing link' between humans and apes, but Joseph Weiner and his colleagues proved that the evidence had been faked. In this fiftieth anniversary edition, Professor Chris Stringer of 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 engrossing tale 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.