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Churchill and the First Englishman

First transmitted in 1974, Magnus Magnusson talks to Sir Mortimer Wheeler about Winston Churchill's writing and how close his Nobel Prize-winning volumes 'The History of the English-Speaking Peoples' came to being founded on a forgery - Piltdown Man.

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14 minutes

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Thu 29 May 1975 19:55
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Archaeology at the 麻豆官网首页入口 Collection

Archaeology at the 麻豆官网首页入口 Collection

This programme is part of Archaeology at the 麻豆官网首页入口 - a collection of archaeology programmes from the 1950s to the 1970s. Available online to watch in full.


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Amateur archaeologist 鈥檚 discovery of a human-like skull in Pleistocene gravel beds at Piltdown, Sussex in 1912 was thought to show the evolutionary 鈥榤issing link鈥� between apes and humans, and as such caused a sensation.

In the years that followed increasing numbers of ancient human fossils were discovered, most notably from Africa, China and Indonesia, but also Asia and Europe. As none of these discoveries matched the large brain and ape-like jaw of Piltdown Man, doubts were cast on its authenticity. Piltdown Man was officially announced as a hoax in 1953 by and several of Dawson鈥檚 other fossil finds have also been revealed as fakes.

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