The Piltdown hoax was the discovery of fossils that
resembled both human and ape bones. This was believed to be evidence that
humans evolved from apes. A jawbone found resembled that of a primate, but the
teeth still fully intact in the jawbone was like human teeth. This discovery
was made by three men, archeologist Charles Dawson, paleontologist Arthur Smith
Woodward, and paleontologist Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. They made their
discovery in a town called Piltdown, in England in 1912. This was a proud
discovery for England, as primitive human remains were found in France,
Germany, and in Asia, but not England. This discovery not only included England
in this group, it also gave them the oldest found primitive human fossil. Since
this find was of such great importance the fossils were kept under lock and key
preventing scientist from examining the remains. Those that might have been
skeptical did not vocalize their ideas because of Woodward’s high reputation
which was associated with this find. In 1920 more remains were found in Asia
and Africa with younger remains of human ancestors, but these remains had more
ape like features than that of the Piltdown Man. This raised suspicions that
the Piltdown man might not actually be real.
A
scientist is first and foremost a human, with human traits, and human
qualities. Just like every other human, they can fall victim to a lie. The
brain’s first reaction to learning new information is to accept it as true,
then it goes through its knowledge relating to the topic presented, deciding if
in fact it is true. If there is a doubt or if there are emotional ties, a human
can be swayed to a side without verifying. This is what happened to the
scientist of the Piltdown Hoax. England, not finding any remains of early
humans, was discouraged and jealous of the other countries that had such
discoveries. The moment Dawson announced his discovery England was elated so
much so, they didn’t take the time to verify if the facts were true. At this
time, scientist were gentlemen and scholars meaning they were trust worthy and
out to discover the truth, not make lies. The idea of a scientist creating a
scientific hoax was just not plausible to people at that time. Their innocent
naïve nature as well as the hope for this to be true obscured the scientific
process that should have been at the forefront of this discovery.
Even though the scientist of
1912 got caught up in the hoax of a man evolving from an ape, it was science
that was able to call this a hoax. In the early 1900s there was not a valid
system in place to properly date fossils. However, by 1953 there was great
improvement on this front as well as many other improvements for fossil
discoveries. Scientists were finally able to conduct a full scale analysis of
the actual jaw bone discovered by Dawson at the Piltdown site. Fluorine
analysis was done which dated the jaw to be only 100 thousand years old, not a
million years as was claimed by Dawson. They further investigated and found
that the staining on the bone was artificial. In fact, what was discovered was
the jawbone belonged to a 100 year old female orangutan. This jawbone was
already fossilized when it was cut by a steal knife to fit the appearance of a
human ape hybrid. Any and all ape like traits where either broken off or cut
off by the steal knife making it difficult at first glance to tell it was the
jawbone of an orangutan. They discovered scratches on the teeth which showed
that the teeth were actually filed down to look like early primitive human
teeth. This filing was done on the cusps and the canine tooth.
It
is absolutely impossible to remove the human aspect from science. It is like
asking if humans could be removed from scientist. This is not possible as they
are one in the same. Until science can create artificial life to do the jobs of
scientist, human and science will always be a pair. Even if it is possible to
create an artificial scientist either by robotic mean, or by de-humanizing a
scientist, I do not think it is a good idea. I think that mishaps like the
Piltdown hoax will happen with human scientists, but I believe that this is all
a part of life, growing, learning, and developing. There will always be
unforeseen obstacles in the way and hindsight is always 20/20, but there will
be a learning curve and valuable lessons will be learned from each hurdle.
The
life lesson learned here by scientist is not to be so naïve and trusting of
people’s word, no matter how enticing it sounds. Keep a skeptical mind, ask
question, and evaluate the proof first hand. If the facts are not made
available, then this should be a warning sign that this could be a hoax. Dawson
did a great job with this con, by filling this void England had for not having
primitive human fossils. Whether Dawson acted alone, or if he had brought in
help from Martin Hinton, or Arthur Keith, or Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,
or even Arthur Smith Woodward, he accomplished his goal. The likely hood that
Woodward was in on the hoax is highly unlikely as he kept on digging after
Dawson’s death hoping to find more fossils, but he never did find any more. Dawson
was using Woodward for his reputation to solidify his hoax. Having a priest as
a party to your discovery adds trust worthiness. When the discovery of Piltdown
man was a hoax the Father was quiet on the subject, not sure if he was in on
the scam or if he was embarrassed to be fooled by Dawson. Arthur Keith was a
leading anatomist who had the most to gain from this discovery as it validated
his theory on human evolution. Martin Hinton became a zoologist and discoveries
of similar cute bones were stained in the same fashion as the Piltdown man was
found on the trunk of his old car. All signs point to a con-artist, but now
scientist know to not take truth on a bias whim, or by someone claiming it to
be true.
