The Piltdown Hoax

The Piltdown Hoax was about the discovery of the Piltdown man who was thought to be the remaining fossilized fragments of an early unknown human. The skull seemed to be evidence of the common ancestor between ape and human. The skull had human like skull fragments with teeth that appeared to be human. This would have been significant to the scientific community because this discovery would of satisfied Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. This would have showed the early steps of apelike ancestors to humans. The remains were found in 1912 in the town of Piltdown, East Sussex England by Charles Dawson, and later worked on by both Dawson and Arthur Woodward. What this did for the scientific community was helped prove the theory that human’s large brains evolved before they could walk upright. Doubts of the Piltdown Man started to evolve in the late 1920’s and 30’s as the discovery of other earlier human remains were found. These remains were different than that of the Piltdown man in that none of the findings were consistent with the large brain and ape like jaw of the Piltdown Man. It wasn’t until the new dating methods of fluorine testing that revealed that the skull must have been no more than 50,000- 500,000 years old. After carbon dating came about the skull was revealed to be no more than 600 years old. Too much disappointment, the skull was discovered to be a modern human skull with an orangutan jaw with filed down teeth and the hoax became official by 1953. The hoax made people lose faith in the scientific community. Scientist hit a dead end and were discouraged because they had invested so much time and effort into something that was fraud.

I think that some of the faults that came into play in this incident is that people had so much faith in Dawson because he seemed to be a well-established and trusted member of the scientific community. When people have so much faith in someone they tend to believe them more without questioning. I think that Dawson was at fault in a way because he jumped to conclusions, and the other scientist and community were at fault because they jumped on the band wagon without questioning it. They believed with blind faith. These faults negatively impacted the scientific community because by them they took a step back about 40 years. They wasted years of effort into something that wasn’t even real.

Thanks to new technology, by 1939 fluorine testing helped reveal that the remains were actually a lot younger than what they claimed to be. Fluorine testing showed the amount of fluorine, nitrogen, and uranium in bones.  This new technology proved the remains to be no more than 50,000-500,000 years old, which wouldn’t have been old enough to be our ancestors. After that came carbon dating which was the process of measuring carbon dioxide from the air for photosynthesis, this process can only be done on objects that were once living. This method proved the Piltdown Man to be no more than 600 years old.

I don’t think it is possible to remove the human factor from science nor would I want to. To me the human factor means trying your hardest and putting in all your effort and sometimes still getting the wrong result. How I look at it is it takes a hundred no’s to get one yes. Take for instance Thomas Edison, he was fired from his jobs for being called nonproductive. It took him 1,000 attempts to get the invention of the light bulb. Without human error it would be impossible to reach our greatest triumphs and in the case of science, it is all trial and error. I think human error keeps us on our toes and because of it scientist can’t be lazy, and they have to put in more time and effort into supporting their theories and testing them. I think that these technological discoveries can help us move forward with fewer errors, but at some point down the road there might be a point where we need a new discovery to help us prevent these human like errors.

A life lesson I can learn from this is that just because everyone hops on the band wagon, doesn’t mean it is the correct wagon to be on. In this case people trusted Dawson and supported his findings with little evidence. In life it is important to do my own research to make sure I know what I am supporting, and not take it at face value. I need to be diligent in discovering what I think is true and find facts that support it.