Part 1, Chapter 1 Digging Up Controversy Summary

In the decades leading up to the Scopes trial, Charles Dawson found part of a parietal bone and other skull pieces for what would come to be known as the Piltdown skull. Scientists believed the cranium was hominoid because of its size and shape. However, the jaw for the Piltdown skull appeared to be of an unknown ape. Arthur Smith Woodward, a paleontologist with the British Museum, labeled the find a new species of extinct hominoid called Eoanthropus dasoni. As word of the discovery leaked into popular society, newspapers proclaimed that the skull was a missing link between humans and apes and that Darwin's theory of evolution had been proved correct. This discovery was part of a larger accumulation of evidence on the Darwinian view of human origins. The larger public within the United States...