From R. L. STRATFORD
In view of the continuing interest in the Piltdown imposture, it may
be worth drawing the attention of your readers to a piece of literary evidence
that may shed some light on the matter. This evidence is to be found in
the book The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
As your readers will be aware, this book was published in 1912, the
same year that the discoveries at Piltdown were announced, and among the
inhabitants of the lost world that Doyle created were a tribe of apemen.
If the book was written in ignorance of the discoveries at Piltdown, this
would be a remarkable coincidence, but perhaps nothing more.
However, there is the internal evidence of The Lost World itself. In
chapter 5, Doyle makes Tarp Henry say of Professor Challenger’s specimens:
‘First one out of an Irish stew. Second one vamped up for the occasion.
If you are clever and you know your business you can fake a bone as easily
as you can a photograph.’ Perhaps Doyle knew of some of the discoveries
at Piltdown, in advance of the official announcement, and, suspecting that
they were not authentic, used this method of publishing his suspicions?
It would be appropriate for the creator of Sherlock Holmes.
R. L. Stratford Hitchin, Hertfordshire
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