Piltdown Man's ‘Treasure Map’

The ‘Maresfield Map’ is a map that purports to show features pertinent to the old iron industry in the Sussex Weald of southern England in 1724. It first appeared in a journal published by the Sussex Archaeological Society in early 1913, at roughly the same time as the formal publication by the Geological Society of London of papers introducing the discovery of the ‘remains’ of what became known as ‘Piltdown Man’ to the world. Piltdown Man was eventually revealed as fraudulent in 1953, followed by the Maresfield Map in 1974. Experiments in replication now show that the Maresfield Map is a sort of ‘treasure map’ (in a negative sense), which points fairly accurately to the supposed find‐spot of Piltdown Man, along with a coded accusation against Charles Dawson. The map's compiler is thought to have been L.F. Salzmann, the editor of the journal in which the map appeared. As such, the map represents the only such denunciation to have been published in the open literature in Dawson's lifetime, albeit a cryptic one. Mr Salzmann's possible motives are explored.