Piltdown Hoax

In 1912, an amateur archaeologist by the name of Charles Dawson claimed to have found an ancient piece of a human skull digging in a gravel pit in the small town of Piltdown. He started working with Arthur Smith Woodward, England's leading geologist of the Natural History Museum. Up to this point scientists had found remains of primitive humans in France, Germany and Asia, but none in England. Charles Dawson dug up a jawbone thought to have been part of the same skull, it was a major surprise because it looked more like an ape, but the teeth were worn flat much like a human. With this discovery, they thought they had found a common ancestor of a human and an ape. In December of 1912 at a meeting for the Royal Geological Society, scientists could now see that England had found fossil remains and their ancestors could actually be the oldest of them all. They called the discovery "Piltdown Man." After finding  more fossil remains, it had silenced those who were critics. However, there were still those who had their reservations in private. The problem here is that in order to challenge, the person had to be strong, because they would face a lot of backlash in the public eye. For nearly a decade later Piltdown Man had dominated research on human evolution, even though no remaining fossils were found after Charles Dawson's death in 1916. By the 1920's scientists had begun finding other fossil remains in Asia and Africa and they did not match with the Piltdown fossils. These came from human ancestors that came hundreds of thousands of years after Piltdown Man and their skulls were actually less human rather than more human. After World War II, new technology led to the turning point of this discovery. After conducting a flourine test, scientists found the fossils only dated less than 100 years. Charles Dawson was found to have tricked Arthur Woodward by tampering with the fossils to make them look like something they were not. The hoax had taught scientists that not all people of science were scholars and gentleman like they had thought at the beginning of the century. They are aware that crookedness can happen. Good science depends on objectivity, when pride or self interest get in the way, scientists are vulnerable to lies and deception like the rest of us.

Charles Dawson had wanted to be a part of the royal society, He thought that the Piltdown findings would gain him royal prestige. This led to his fault of being selfish and cheating to get his way. Also at fault are the scientists who did not question these findings because they thought that scientists were men who were scholars and gentleman and could never do something of this nature. This led to many being duped over something that should have been questioned much earlier.

Technological advances after World War II led to the discovery of the fossils date with the flourine test. By measuring the flourine content of fossils, scientists could date them. They had also found superficial staining of the bones and the teeth had been filed down because of scratches on them. After more research, scientists had found that pieces of the skull had been missing or filed down on purpose to hide the obvious telltale signs of what the remains actually were; a female orangutan less than one hundred years old.

I do not think it is possible to remove the human factor of science. While there are great technological advances in science that can lead us to a lot of discoveries, human interest is what starts us off. Human opinion and interaction with each other has helped us with a lot of breakthroughs in science. While there have also been forgeries, something like the Piltdown Hoax is not the norm.

I think the lesson learned here is not taking everything we see at face value; especially from unverified sources. We must use critical thinking to decipher what is true or not and know that even if the majority agree, it is healthy to question things. Sometimes, especially in this case, the majority who turn a blind eye can be wrong.