The Piltdown Hoax

The Piltdown Hoax

In 1912, in southeast England, in the village of Piltdown, an amateur archeologist, Charles Dawson found an ancient human skull. This discovery was important because it was the first primitive remains found in England and they were possibly the oldest as well. After the discovery, Dawson invited a member of the National History Museum, a leading geologist, Arthur Smith Woodward and French paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to join in the discovery. These 3 men found multiple finds at the site. Dawson soon located a jaw, from the same skull that was found earlier. It was the missing link of apes and humans. The jaw bone was that of an ape and the teeth looked human, proving the evolution theory. This thrilled the science community, and set the new tone of the link between apes and humans. Future studies were even based off of this find.

Later however, fossils were found in Asia and Africa, but these were less human-like but lived after Piltdown Man. These findings questioned the advancement of the Piltdown Man and the evolutionary process. It wasn’t until 1949 that fluorine was introduced to measure the age of fossils. This test was performed and stated that Piltdown man was much younger than originally stated. Then, in 1953, a full analysis was completed proving that Piltdown Man was a modified female orangutan skull that was modified. Scientists were obviously stunned at these findings and realized that not all scientists are going to be honest about their findings.

Human faults are normally positive in science because accidents lead to discoveries, such as penicillin! However, the fault recognized in the Piltdown Man was greed. This type of self-centered act threw off scientists and their research. Had Piltdown Man never been “created” scientists may have been on a different research path that may have lead them down a more successful road; however, this also may have been one of the best things to happen to science as it taught a very valuable lesson on the importance of scientific tests and proving discoveries.

The processes that became available to science were extremely helpful in revealing the skull was fraudulent. The starting point to this realization was the fluorine test. The fluorine test was able to prove that Piltdown Man wasn’t nearly as old as what they had once thought. This opened the doors to many more tests revealing the filing marks on the teeth, cuts were made to the structure and the stains on the bones were falsified.

As previously stated, removing the “human” factor isn’t the way to go. Human mistakes and thoughts are a great asset to discovery. Piltdown Man wasn’t an error, it was a bad judgment in believing in a scientist. Fortunately, we have tests today that assist the science community in testing the validity of things. This allows us to keep the “human” factor that science/discovery depends on.

The life lesson here is that not everyone can be trusted, and those you think can be trusted might not be trustworthy. Some things can be taken at face value, but something important should be questioned or at the very least, verified.