The Piltdown Hoax

The Piltdown hoax began early in 1912 when Charles Dawson, an amateur archeologist, claimed a workman at the Piltdown gravel pits had found and given him a fragment of skull. He then wrote a letter to Arthur Smith Woodward who joined him in Sussex and over the summer they found more skull fragments, a jawbone with two teeth, animal fossils and and some primitive tools; all of which were taken as further evidence of that the Piltdown man was the proof of the evolutionary relationship between ape and man. Woodward believed all the fragments belonged to the same individual and created a reconstruction. This recreation suggested that early human relatives dating back 500,000 years had a large brain so its intelligence set it apart from other apes. It also suggested that humans developed large brains before they were bipedal. The jaw bone was very ape like but the two teeth were flat and human looking which linked them to earlier ancestors. Finally on December 8, 1912 at a meeting of the Geological Society of London Dawson and Woodward revealed their Piltdown Man, or Eoanthropus dawsoni. Many scientists accepted this Piltdown Man because Woodward and Dawson were respected in the community and it provided the best evidence for an ape like ancestor of humans. Further evidence like a canine tooth found in 1913, a tool that looked like a cricket bat in 1914, and then more skull pieces and a molar tooth in 1915 silenced anyone else who had been criticizing the find. However after Dawson’s death in 1916 no other evidence was ever found. Despite this the Piltdown Man, with the backing of the Natural History Museum, was believed to be a key ancestor for 40 years. 

Then in 1953 the Piltdown man was revealed to be a huge scientific hoax! In the years after the initial announcement many other ancient remains had been found in Africa, China, Indonesia, Asia, and Europe, however none of them resembled the jaw and cranium combination that the Piltdown Man had. These discrepancies were hard to ignore so in the late 1940s Kenneth Oakley used fluorine tests to investigate the Piltdown fossils. These testes used fluorine's tendency to accumulate in calcium-containing organic matter such as bones and teeth to date the fossils at around 50,000, not nearly old enough to be the ancestor that linked apes with humans. Together with Joseph Weiner and Wilfrid Le Gros Clark they further testes the fossils and found out that the jaw and skull fragments came from different sources; the skull was human, but the jaw belonged to an orangutan and the two “human” teeth had been filed down until they were flat. They also found that the majority of the fossils found in Piltdown had been artificially stained to match the gravel in the area. The facts were in — the Piltdown man was a complete fake and it brought a lot of embarrassment to the British scientific community. Not only had they vehemently defended Dawson’s findings, but some had developed entire careers around the belief that the Piltdown man was the ancestor that linked apes and humans. 

The human faults that came into play were greed, rivalry, pride, and deception. These faults negatively affected the scientific process by giving the community false evidence to base their theories and research around. For 40 years the scientific community was trying to progress while it was blocked by a wall of false evidence, because British scientists wanted to prove that they were a great country in every aspect. For some men the idea of fame and worldwide respect is too much to live without.

The fluorine absorption test was the most positive aspect of the scientific process that helped reveal the fraudulence of the Piltdown Man. Fluorine absorption dating is used to determine how long something’s been underground. It is used on bones that are found in the same area because groundwater containing fluorine will seep into the bone. It is only relative when multiple objects are found in the same place because it won’t determine an exact age, only an estimate so basically you can only determine if one object is older or younger than the other. By using this form of dating Oakley was able to determine that the jaw bone was much older than the skull fragment found in Piltdown. 

I think it could be possible to eliminate the human error, but that’s what makes science so amazing. Humans need their error along with their ingenuity and persistence to push past the  boundaries of what is already known. Without error everything would be too easy and science would lose the satisfaction and the competition that has fueled some of our greatest discoveries. 

The biggest life lesson I can take from this hoax is to always be skeptical about any information you hear. Never believe anything just because someone told you to; always do your own research until you’re satisfied that the information given to you is indeed true.