Piltdown Man

1.      The Piltdown hoax occurred in1912 in the village of Piltdown where Charles Dawson claimed to have found a piece of an ancient human skull while digging in a gravel pit. He then invited England’s leading geologist Arthur Smith Woodward and French paleontologist Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and they spent a summer discovering fossils that put together the skull of the later named Piltdown man, but the biggest finding was the jawbone that looked like the jaw of an ape but had the teeth of a human. This was significant because it showed a common ancestor shared by humans and apes that was possibly, what they both had evolved from, an addition to the evolution tree. It also showed that theory of England’s leading anatomist Arthur Keith that humans developed big brains before they walked upright was correct, which is the contrary of what scientist have discovered up to this day that upright walking was developed before big brains. In the1920s new remains were discovered around the world that did not match up with that of Piltdown, the new finds were from thousands of years after Piltdown man but the skulls were less human like. In 1949 scientist performed a fluorine test on the skull and discovered that it was only a few hundred thousand years old instead of millions. Then in 1953, there was a full-scale analysis and it was uncovered that the skull was fake. In the jaw, they found that the teeth had been filed down and the jawbone was only a few hundred years old, the jawbone was from a female orangutan.  It become obvious that the fossil had been manmade, scientists were stunned on why someone would do this. It has since been found that Dawson forged this and other founding’s.

2.      There are a few human faults that came into play in this hoax. One fault is that of all the English scientist wanted to have a fossil found in their home England that they didn’t seem to care to investigate the person who had found this fossil and took complete faith in this amateur jus to get what they wanted. Another fault was that of scientist like Keith who benefited from the finding that supported just because it proved his theory.  Also another fault that many were guilty of was the fear to challenge the hierarchy of scientist, nobody came forward to challenge the finding.

3.      After World War 2 scientist found that by measuring the fluorine content in fossils they could roughly tell how old they are. In 1949 as previously stated they performed this fluorine test and found that the skull was not as old as had previously thought. In 1953 they found that the staining on the bones had been superficial and artifacts had been stained, material that had been cut was cut when it was already fossil using a steel knife. When under the microscope the found scratch marks that showed that the teeth had been filed down. Pieces had been removed from the jawbone so that it would not show that the bones did not match.

4.      I don’t think it would be possible to remove the human factor of science, I think that this factor is not completely bad although it did allow for this hoax to happen it was also the reason the hoax was uncovered. The human factor contributes a lot to scientific discoveries good and bad but I would not remove this factor from science because I think that is needed to keep scientist improving in order to prove which theories really are correct and find further information or create new methods to disprove other theories or hoax.

5.      The lesson to be learned is to always double check your resources and make sure they are reliable before crediting their work or you might end up being falsely informed like Woodward.