483. The Mysterious Case of the Ape Man

The Rest Is History

Goalhanger

History

4.6 • 18.6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2024

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Sussex, in 1912, men quarrying in a gravel pit near Piltdown village turned up a human skull. According to Charles Dawson, a lawyer and amateur archeologist with a remarkable track record for finding ancient treasures, it belonged to a palaeolithic man, possibly millions of years old, and was therefore the earliest trace of mankind ever found in England. Greater still, Piltdown man as he came to be known, seemed to be the ‘missing link’ between apes and men. The discovery inflamed and delighted British society, confirming and buttressing dearly held beliefs about the evolution of modern Europeans, and radically transforming understandings of the origins of humanity. In the wake of the find and the widespread corroboration of its authenticity by some of the best academics of the age, further digs were conducted in the area, which unearthed even more wondrous discoveries - a jawbone, primitive tools, and strangest of all, a cricket bat; perhaps the first hint that all was not as it seemed…was the greatest discovery of all time nothing more than an audacious and extraordinarily skilful hoax? And if so, who was the culprit in this grand mystery? Join Tom and Dominic, as they describe the most mystifying archaeological discovery in English history, and one of the most unscrupulous tricks of all time, revealing as they do the truth behind the history of mankind. _______ *The Rest Is History LIVE in the U.S.A.* If you live in the States, we've got some great news: Tom and Dominic will be performing throughout America in November, with shows in San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Boston and New York. *The Rest Is History LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall* Tom and Dominic, accompanied by a live orchestra, take a deep dive into the lives and times of two of history’s greatest composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Tickets on sale now at TheRestIsHistory.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for listening to the rest is history.
0:02.2	For weekly bonus episodes, add free listening, early access to series and membership
0:07.3	of our much-love chat community, go to the rest is history.com and join the club. That is, the rest is History. is History.
0:15.0	The Rest is History.
0:16.0	. . . . . . . . The earliest man, man, a skull, a skull millions of years old. One of the most important prehistoric finds of
0:36.8	our time has been made in Sussex. In spite of the extreme secrecy of the authorities
0:42.2	who are in possession of the relic,
0:44.0	their news is leaking out and is causing great excitement among scientists,
0:49.0	although there are very few even among geologists and anthropologists who have any first-hand information.
0:55.6	The facts are that a few weeks ago men quarrying in a deep gravel pit turned up a human
1:01.8	skull. It was in fragments, but there was enough of it for the
1:05.5	experts to form a conclusive judgment. It turns out to be the skull of a
1:10.1	Paleolithic man and is by far the earliest trace of mankind that has yet been found in England.
1:18.0	It was found in association with the bones of one of the most ancient types of elephant, The stratum in which it lay was the beach of a very old riverbed.
1:26.3	There is no doubt at all of its authenticity. The skull resembles the Neanderthal specimen
1:32.3	that belongs to a much lower and more primitive type of mankind even than that.
1:37.6	The experts have been able to come to a definite judgment as to the kind of brain once housed in these amazing bones. It was certainly a very
1:46.8	different brain to that possessed by any living race. The experts will not venture an opinion
1:52.3	as to the date of the Sussex man, but most probably he lived millions of years ago.
1:59.0	So that was a newspaper that is never wrong, the Manchester Guardian, on the 21st of November
2:05.4	1912, Tom, we are a couple of years before the outbreak of the First World War,
2:10.9	the scene memorably painted in poems and novels and film retrospectives the
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