, Teilhard presented the Piltdown skull, divorced from its jaw, in just that light-as proof that hominids evolved as a bundle of lineages moving in similar directions. He wrote:
Above all, it is henceforth proved that even at this time [of Piltdown] a race of men existed, already included in our present human line, and very different from those that would become Neanderthal. . . . Thanks to the discovery of Mr. Dawson, the human race appears to us even more distinctly, in these ancient times, as formed of strongly differentiated bundles, already quite far from their point of divergence. For anyone who has an idea of paleontological realities, this light, tenuous as it appears, illuminates great depths.
To what profundity, then, did Teilhard refer Piltdown as evidence? Teilhard believed that evolution moved in an intrinsic direction representing the increasing domination of spirit over matter. Under the thrall of matter, lineages would diverge to become more unlike, but all would move upward in the same general direction. With man, evolution reached its crux. Spirit had begun its domination over matter, adding a new layer of thought-the noosphere above the older biosphere. Divergence would be stemmed; indeed, convergence had already begun in the process of human socialization. Convergence will continue as spirit prevails. When the last vestiges of matter have been discarded, spirit will involute upon itself at a single point called Omega and identified with God-the mystical evolutionary apocalypse that secured Teilhard's fame. 8
But convergence is a thing of the future. Scientists seeking evidence for such a scheme must look to the past for  twin signs of divergence accompanied by similar upward direction-in other words, for multiple, parallel lineages within larger groups.
I have read all of Teilhard's papers from the early 1920s. No theme receives more emphasis than the search for multiple, parallel lineages. In an article on fossil tarsiers, written in 1921, he argues that three separate primate lineages extend back to the dawn of the age of mammals, each evolving in the same direction of larger brains and smaller faces. In a review published in 1922 of Marcellin Boule's Les hommes fossiles, Teilhard writes: "Evolution is no more to be represented in a few simple strokes for us than for other living things; but it resolves itself into innumerable lines which diverge at such length that they appear parallel." In a general essay on evolution, printed in 1921, he speaks continually of oriented evolution in multiple, parallel lines within mammals.
But where was Piltdown in this extended paean of praise for multiple, parallel lineages? Piltdown provided proof, the only available proof, of multiple, parallel lineages within human evolution itself-for its skull belonged to an advanced human older than primitive Neanderthal. Piltdown was the most sublime argument that Teilhard possessed, and he never breathed it again after the 1920 article.
These two arguments have been abstract. A third feature of the 1920 article is stunning in its directness. For 1 believe that Teilhard fleetingly tried to tell his colleagues, too subtly perhaps, that Piltdown was a phony. In discussing whether the Piltdown remains represent one or two animals, Teilhard laments that the direct and infallible test cannot be applied. One skull fragment contained a perfect glenoid fossa, the point of articulation for the upper jaw upon the lower. Yet the corresponding point of the lower jaw, the condyle, was missing on a specimen otherwise beautifully preserved at its posterior end. Teilhard writes: "Since the glenoid fossa exists in perfect state on the temporal bone, we could simply have tried to articulate the pieces, if the mandible had preserved its condyle: we could have learned, without possible doubt, if the two fit together." I read this statement in a drowsy state one morning at two o'clock, but the next line-set off by Teilhard as a paragraph in itself terminated by an exclamation point-destroyed any immediate thought of sleep:-"As if on purpose [c