Sir, - Dr William Reville's article (June 17th) under the above heading suggests that Teiladd de Chardin, along with Charles Dawson and Arthur Smith Woodward, was party to the Piltdown hoax. Dr Reville states that Teilhard de Chardin bought a doctored tooth from France to plant in the hole in Piltdown. Teilhard de Chardin was duped by Dawson & Woodward Smith, as were a good many others.
With regard to the canine tooth, he picked it up, he did not plant it on the site. When Kenneth Oakley uncovered the Piltdown forgery he wrote that the famous Piltdown Man, in whose discovery Teilhard had innocently collaborated in 1913, had turned out to be a fraud.
"You were hoodwinked," Oakley wrote. Teilhard wrote to Dr K. P. Oakley as follows, "I congratulate you most sincerely on your solution of the Piltdown problem. Anatomicially speaking, Eoanthropus was a kind of monster. And from a palaeontological point of view, it was equally shocking that a dawn man could occur in England. Therefore I am fundamentally pleased by your conclusions, in spite of the fact that sentimentally speaking, it spoilt one of my brightest and earliest palaeontological memories."
Teilhard de Chardin was not a party to the notorious Piltdown hoax. He was duped by Dawson and Smith Woodward, both of whom he had every reason to trust. - Yours, etc.,
Dawn View,
Balscadden Road,
Howth,
Dublin.