The Piltdown Hoax

                The Piltdown Man was a fossil discovery that fooled scientist for decades. The fossils were found in the small village of Piltdown in England by a man names Charles Dawson in the early 1900’s. He was an amateur archeologist that specialized in fish fossils, not human evolution. Though there is not a definitive hoaxer he is the person most people blame for the deception. He also worked with a geologist named Sir Arthur Smith Woodward. These two sent their finds to the Britain Natural History Museum and it became a well-known and famous find. They claimed the fossils they found were a perfect connection between humans and apes. The jaw bone was more like an ape but the teeth had a very human like wear to them. This supported some scientists’ views that we evolved a bigger brain before we started to walk upright. This was a huge discovery for Britain as well given that they had not had any early human fossils in their country. The fossils gave them a sense of pride that they found the earliest human in their own homeland. The fossils were kept in the museum and were not available to many people for research. Later there was a chemical test developed to test the age of fossils more accurately. This test showed that the Piltdown Man was in fact much younger than advertised. This called for more research to be done on the fossils which revealed more and more inconsistences. The bones had been dyed to look older and the teeth had been filed down to look like human teeth. The jaw bone was in fact just a female orangutan that was less than 100 years old and the skull bones did not match at all. They were pieced together to make a perfect puzzle.  All of this came to light due to better dating and aging tests.

                The fraud had been brought to light so many years after the public and scientific community had accepted the fossils as truth that the aftermath was devastating. The country as a whole felt duped and embarrassed. There had been many scientists that studied the bones for their career and never knew they were faked. The discovery of the lies caused many to question the authenticity of scientist. People started to think that it was incredibly easy to trick them and therefore any finds they make must be fake somehow. This deception caused many to doubt the scientific method and its results. People tend to forget that it was science that proved it to be a fake as well. Yes the scientists were fooled but the technology advanced and they were able to see the lies.

                Scientist are curious by nature but they do make human mistakes as well. In this scenario people were so excited to finally find such a significant evolutionary discovery that they might have overlooked some key information. People had started to doubt the Piltdown Man before the discovery was made public but some scientists never wanted to believe it. In many situations the fossils gave the scientists exactly what they wanted. The finds supported their hypothesis and they did not want it to change. It is human of us to make mistakes but that does not make it wrong. As a species humans have a thirst for knowledge. We are curious about who we are and where we come from. It is this motivation that drives science. If you take away the “humanness” then you potentially take away the drive to learn more.

                The scientific technology had advanced enough to allow them to identify the fraud. The use of chemicals was able to show that the bones were much younger than the half a million years old they had originally thought. They also used microscopes to see the scratches made when filling down the teeth and canine. They were able to see the bones in better detail and see that they had been broken or shaped to fit together.

                We can all learn from this situation. When we are given information that seems too good to be true we might need to consider the source and do some additional research. Even if the information given to us perfectly supports our own endeavors, we need to make sure they are true. Science is ever changing and technologies are growing. This can help us or hurt us, we just need to be sure of the information we are given.