For more than 40 years; 40 years, the Piltdown skull bones fooled the archaeological science establishment. Once, it had been the most spectacular discovery filling ‘the missing link’ between modern humans and our ape-like ancestors. An awaited solution to Darwin’s evolution of species. Oh dear fooleries, fascinating and bitter, whom shall your tales befriend but the curious humans? In 40 years, it would all be an utter lie, the fossils turning into a hoax, jolting scientists left and right. Piltdown man goes down as one of the most enigmatic, successful, and celebrated fraud cases that has seen light on this Earth.

A study in Piltdown

The first scene of this tale opens at Barkham Manor in Piltdown, a village near East Sussex in England. Digging deeper and deeper into the Wealden gravel around the manor grounds, the workers who were tasked with repairing roads, sparked the opportunity for discovery, that of parts of a skull and jawbone that oddly belonged together.

One Mr. Charles Dawson, amateur archaeologist, geologist, and lawyer, enters the scene. Like most archaeologists at the time who were enamoured by evolutionary theory, Dawson too naturally fell in line and was deep on the lookout for artifactual remains of prehistoric humans. He was influential in Sussex, having made several discoveries and contributions to both geology and archaeology. According to him, he had noticed the gravel looked unusual (the presence of brown flints gave it away). Soon enough, the workers found a fossil bone. Charles Dawson was now sure that he would uncover something remarkable in this gravel pit and spent years searching.

Some years go by. The scene remains in the gravel pits. In 1911, Dawson found a prehistoric human cranium with an ape-like jaw along with some more fossil pieces. Information surrounding the discovery is quite fuzzy as the Piltdown saga investigators are not agreed on a single thread of facts. What’s certain though is Dawson sent all these fossil pieces to the British Museum (now Natural History Museum) in London, claiming that he found it from the gravel pit. The experts at the museum were all over the moon at this novel discovery — a human-like and ape-like fossil. It was given the name — the Piltdown Man.

At the museum, enter Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of Geology. Dawson worked with him for his studies and further excavation of the site (tooth fossils of hippopotamus, elephant, and more were dug up!). In December 1912, the new fossil hominin: Eoanthropus dawsoni (Dawson’s dawn man), was officially announced to the world. It had been a field day for the media.

The Missing Link

When Darwin wrote his revolutionary On the Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection, Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (yes, yes, that’s the full title!) in 1859, he did not say that we evolved directly from apes. He had said that both humans and animals share a common ancestor, a fundamental understanding now. Our new ancestor stood between man and ape. Charles Dawson thought he had found the missing link, which if so, would have transformed palaeoanthropology. As the braincase of the Dawn man was modern in nature with a lower ape-like jawbone, it was unlike any other human or ape remains we had discovered over the years, falling between apes and humans. Dated to be more than three-million years old, scientists hence believed it was an ancestor between us and apes. Curiosity was in the air. How did this odd fellow look like? Perhaps an ape-like body but with full human-like consciousness? For two cents, what would Darwin have said?

Fake, foolery, prank!

This scene is set in a more modern Britain where more than 40 years have passed by. Technological progress and myriad later archaeological finds of prehistoric human fossils drew suspicion to the authenticity of the Piltdown man. It was starting to look uncanny. Don’t we double check when suspicion lingers around?

In 1953, the skull and all its associated fossils were proven to be fakes through fluorine absorption dating. It was found that someone had actually stained the parts of the skulls so it looked older than its actual age. The teeth in the jawbone (revealed to have belonged to a juvenile orangutan) were filed so it would fit the human part of the skull. The hoaxer was pretty clever with the execution, even placing the skull in the right place at the gravel pits beside other fossils.

Whodunnit

Well, well, well. The part we’ve been waiting for. Severe speculations were floating – Dawson, who may have done it for fame; Sir Grafton Elliot Smith or Professor William Sollas who may done it to one up their rival Sir Arthur Woodward; even Martin Hinton, the museum curator in 1912 who used to experiment with staining. To our dismay, no theory stands firm for lack of evidence and the hoaxer remains unidentified.

The lurking neighbour

The next scene begins in Crowborough, near Piltdown which was also a neighbouring area to Charles Dawson’s residence. Here lived Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (plot twist!), a neighbour of Dawson who had a keen interest in palaeontology.

Amidst the list of suspects was this surprising and awfully familiar name – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Both Dawson and Doyle were members of the same archaeological society and shared similar interests in evolution studies. The fossils were found near to Doyle’s home in Sussex. His physician background, fossil collecting hobby, and eccentric nature quickly turned him a Piltdown suspect. He also has a history of faking photographs. People began looking, not a single nook and corner was left unsearched. Parallels were found between the novel The Lost World (which was also published in 1912) and the Dawn man. Academic papers were even written claiming that Doyle was the mastermind behind the hoax.

Time makes one forget things and by the end of the millennium, the era of the puzzling Dawn man had faded. The scene fades to black as the anthropological establishment move from Darwin’s monkeys to new chapters. So how does one remember the past? By telling stories once again like this.

Published – October 25, 2025 05:00 pm IST

TNSDA archaeologists and a four-member team of trained divers from the Indian Maritime University took part in the survey, which was carried out off the coast between Thirumullaivasal and Neithavasal.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

You can imagine that popping maize kernels was first discovered by accident. Some maize probably fell into a cooking fire, and whoever was nearby figured out that this was a handy new way of preparing the food. 
| Photo Credit: pexels.com

You have to wonder how people originally figured out how to eat some foods that are beloved today. The cassava plant is toxic if not carefully processed through multiple steps. Yogurt is basically old milk that’s been around for a while and contaminated with bacteria. And who discovered that popcorn could be a toasty, tasty treat?

These kinds of food mysteries are pretty hard to solve. Archaeology depends on solid remains to figure out what happened in the past, especially for people who didn’t use any sort of writing. Unfortunately, most stuff people traditionally used made from wood, animal materials or cloth decays pretty quickly, and archaeologists like me never find it.

We have lots of evidence of hard stuff, such as pottery and stone tools, but softer things – such as leftovers from a meal – are much harder to find. Sometimes we get lucky, if softer stuff is found in very dry places that preserve it. Also, if stuff gets burned, it can last a very long time.

Corn’s ancestors

Luckily, corn – also called maize – has some hard parts, such as the kernel shell. They’re the bits at the bottom of the popcorn bowl that get caught in your teeth. And since you have to heat maize to make it edible, sometimes it got burned, and archaeologists find evidence that way. Most interesting of all, some plants, including maize, contain tiny, rock-like fragments called phytoliths that can last for thousands of years.

Scientists are pretty sure they know how old maize is. We know maize was probably first farmed by Native Americans in what is now Mexico. Early farmers there domesticated maize from a kind of grass called teosinte.

Before farming, people would gather wild teosinte and eat the seeds, which contained a lot of starch, a carbohydrate like you’d find in bread or pasta. They would pick teosinte with the largest seeds and eventually started weeding and planting it. Over time, the wild plant developed into something like what we call maize today. You can tell maize from teosinte by its larger kernels.

There’s evidence of maize farming from dry caves in Mexico as early as 9,000 years ago. From there, maize farming spread throughout North and South America.

Popped corn, preserved food

Figuring out when people started making popcorn is harder. There are several types of maize, most of which will pop if heated, but one variety, actually called “popcorn,” makes the best popcorn. Scientists have discovered phytoliths from Peru, as well as burned kernels, of this type of “poppable” maize from as early as 6,700 years ago.

You can imagine that popping maize kernels was first discovered by accident. Some maize probably fell into a cooking fire, and whoever was nearby figured out that this was a handy new way of preparing the food. Popped maize would last a long time and was easy to make.

Ancient popcorn was probably not much like the snack you might munch at the movie theater today. There was probably no salt and definitely no butter, since there were no cows to milk in the Americas yet. It probably wasn’t served hot and was likely pretty chewy compared with the version you’re used to today.

It’s impossible to know exactly why or how popcorn was invented, but I would guess it was a clever way to preserve the edible starch in corn by getting rid of the little bit of water inside each kernel that would make it more susceptible to spoiling. It’s the heated water in the kernel escaping as steam that makes popcorn pop. The popped corn could then last a long time. What you may consider a tasty snack today probably started as a useful way of preserving and storing food.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park. File
| Photo Credit: AFP

Archaeologists in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii near the city of Naples have uncovered charcoal sketches drawn by children as young as six years old, depicting possibly violent fights they may have witnessed.

The sketches of gladiator stick figures were discovered during excavations in recent months in Pompeii, a once-thriving city that was destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted nearly 2,000 years ago.

Archaeologists also found the outlines of three small hands, two figures playing with a ball, a hunting scene possibly featuring a boar, and two fighters, one of whom is lying flat on the ground.

The director of the site, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, said the naive line drawings, found on the wall of a house known as the “Colonnaded Cenacle”, were probably done by children aged six or seven.

Psychologists from the Federico II University in Naples believed the sketches depicted events the children had witnessed, rather than imagined, he said.

“In Pompeii, even young children were exposed to extreme violence between humans and between humans and animals in the sands of the ancient city’s amphitheatre,” Mr. Zuchtriegel said.

Other discoveries this week included a unique portrait of a hooded child with a small dog at his feet, found in the so-called “House of the Painters at Work”.

At the entrance of that house, the skeletons of a man and a woman were discovered, an elderly couple that had probably sought refuge in vain from the pumice and ash that rapidly overwhelmed the city during the volcanic eruption.

Last month, authorities in Pompeii revealed a black-walled dining hall with paintings inspired by the Trojan War, while in March, a building site was unearthed that shed light on ancient construction techniques.

Researchers uncover wooden artefacts on the banks of the Kalambo River in Zambia, near where the oldest-known use of wood in construction was found, in this handout image taken in July 2019.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Along the banks of the Kalambo River in Zambia near Africa’s second-highest waterfall, archaeologists have excavated two logs of the large-fruited bushwillow tree that were notched, shaped and joined nearly half a million years ago.

These artifacts, researchers said on Wednesday, represent the oldest-known example of humans – in this case a species that preceded our own – building wooden structures, a milestone in technological achievement that indicates that our forerunners displayed more ingenuity than previously thought.

The logs, modified using stone tools, appear to have been part of a framework for a structure, a conclusion that contradicts the notion humans at that time simply roamed the landscape hunting and gathering resources.

“The framework could have supported a walkway or platform raised above the seasonally wet surroundings. A platform could have multiple purposes including storage of firewood, tools, food and as a foundation on which to place a hut,” said archaeologist Larry Barham of the University of Liverpool in England, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.

Also Read | Newly discovered stone tools drag dawn of Greek archaeology back by a quarter-million years

“Not only did the working of trees require considerable skill, the right tools and planning, the effort involved suggests that the makers were staying in the location for extended periods whereas we have always had a model of Stone Age people as nomadic,” Barham added.

The rarity of wood preservation at early archaeological sites – it is perishable over time – means scientists have little understanding of how early humans used it.

“While the vast majority of archaeological sites of this age preserve only the stone tools, Kalambo Falls provides us a unique insight into the wooden objects that these tools were being used to create, allowing us a much richer and more complete picture of the lives of these people,” said geographer and study co-author Geoff Duller of Aberystwyth University in Wales.

“Wood can be shaped into a variety of forms making it an excellent construction material that is strong and durable,” Barham added.

The earliest-known Homo sapiens fossils date from roughly 300,000 years ago in Morocco. The Kalambo Falls logs were determined to be from about 476,000 years ago.

No human remains were found there, but Barham suspects the artifacts were fashioned by a species called Homo heidelbergensis known from about 700,000 to 200,000 years ago. Homo heidelbergensis possessed a large browridge and a bigger braincase and flatter face than earlier hominins – species on the human evolutionary lineage.

Also Read | A golden civilisation beckons from underground at Adichanallur

The overlying log at Kalambo Falls is about 4-1/2 feet (1.4 meters) long, with tapering ends. About 5 feet (1.5 meters) of the underlying log was excavated.

“The structure involves the intentional shaping of two trees to create a framework of two interlocking supports. A notch was cut into the overlying log and the underlying tree was shaped to fit through the notch. This arrangement prevents the overlying log from moving side to side, giving stability to the structure,” Barham said.

The wood, found in a waterlogged condition, was preserved by a permanent high-water table at the site. Clay sediments surrounding it provided an oxygen-free environment preventing decay.

The earliest-known wood artifact is a plank fragment from Israel, about 780,000 years old. Wooden tools for foraging and hunting are known from about 400,000 years ago. A wedge-shaped wooden tool about as old as the logs was found at Kalambo Falls.

The site, about a quarter mile (400 meters) upriver from a spectacular 770-foot (235-meter) high waterfall, was discovered in 1953, but its age remained unclear. The new study used a method called luminescence dating, measuring the amount of energy an object has trapped since it was buried.

“The finds from Kalambo Falls indicate that these hominins, like Homo sapiens, had the capacity to alter their surroundings, creating a built environment,” Barham said. “Use of wood in this way suggests the cognitive ability to these early humans was greater than we have believed based on stone tools alone.”

Archaeologists of the Pacopampa Archaeological Venture stock items of pottery of a three,000-year-old tomb which they consider may have honoured an elite spiritual chief within the Andean nation some 3 millennia in the past, in Pacopampa, Peru August 26, 2023.
| Photograph Credit score: Reuters

Archaeologists in northern Peru have unearthed a three,000-year-old tomb which they consider may have honoured an elite spiritual chief within the Andean nation some 3 millennia in the past.

Dubbed the “Priest of Pacopampa,” regarding the highland archaeological zone the place the tomb used to be discovered, the priest used to be buried below six layers of ash combined with dark earth, with embellished ceramic bowls and seals indicating historic ritual frame paint worn for public of elite status, Peru’s Tradition Ministry stated in a observation on Saturday.

Two seals have been additionally discovered alongside the higher edges of the tomb, one with an anthropomorphic face having a look east and every other with a jaguar design dealing with west.

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Venture chief Yuji Seki stated the immense dimension of the tomb, just about two meters (2.2 yards) in diameter and one meter deep, used to be “very peculiar,” as used to be the placement of the frame mendacity face indisposed with one part of his frame prolonged and ft crossed.

The frame used to be additionally discovered with a bone formed right into a tupu, a immense pin worn by means of Andean Amerindians to stock cloaks and ponchos, which might had been worn to stock a lady’s blanket, he added.

“Though this person is a man, the associations are very peculiar,” stated Seki. “I think this was a leader in his time.”

Also Read | Newly discovered stone tools drag dawn of Greek archaeology back by a quarter-million years

The Pacopampa Archaeological Venture has been running within the branch since 2005, the ministry stated, including that rock layers point out the priest, who would had been buried round 1,200 B.C., used to be some 5 centuries used than the tombs of the “Lady of Pacopampa” and the “Priests of the Serpent Jaguar of Pacopampa,” found out in 2009 and 2015 respectively.

Terminating 12 months’s in finding of the “Priest of the Pututos,” then again, is assumed to be used.