Necessity is the mother of invention and therefore if ape-men had not been found, it was necessary to invent them. A complex web of events, beginning in 1908, was set in motion: the preparation of the fake pieces filed down and stained, the planting of these pieces in two sites roughly 2 miles apart, and the discovery of the ‘finds’, were all accomplished in the following seven years to 1915. And so the embarrassing gap was filled, the missing link uncovered. But truth will out …