Piltdown Hoax

The Piltdown Man Hoax

            In the early 20^th century, scientists were determined to find the “missing link” that could connect humans and apes. Many human like fossils were found in France, Germany, and Asia. England was feeling left out, so Charles Dawson decided to fix that. Dawson was an amateur paleontologist who lived in Southern England. Dawson wanted to become a member of the Royal Geological Society, and was willing to do whatever it took to become a member. In 1912, Dawson enlisted the help of Arthur Woodward, who worked in the Department of Geology at the British Museum. Woodward specialized in fish fossils. In the small village of Piltdown they discovered a couple of skull fragments and piece of jaw bone. They concluded that the skull fragments and jaw bone must go together. The skull bone looked ape like and the jaw bone had a human like wear pattern on the teeth. Arthur Keith and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin also supported Dawson’s Piltdown man. As a result the scientists believed that out big brain evolved first and then out ability to walk up- right evolved. Other scientists did not want to challenge the Piltdown man findings because they did not want to be shunned by their peers. A few more fossils were found in the Piltdown man site until Dawson died in 1916. Over the next 40 years many other human like fossils were found but did not look anything like the Piltdown man skull and jaw bone. Other experts were not able to properly study the fossils because the Natural History Museum kept a close watch on the remains.

            After WWII, new technology became available to test the age of fossils. Scientists used a fluorine based test to determine the age of the fossils. They expected the Piltdown man to be over a million years old, but they discovered that it was less than 100,000 years old. They discovered that the fossils had been stained to make them look older and the teeth had been filed down to make them look like human teeth. Scientists realized that the fossils came from a female orangutan and the canine tooth was filed down. It is hard to name every individual involved in the hoax, but the main suspect is Charles Dawson. It is plausible that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Arthur Keith were in on the hoax. In 1975 a man named Martin Hinton was implicated in the hoax because they found stained bones that matched the fake skull and jaw bone in the trunk of his car.

            There were many faults that caused the Piltdown man hoax. This hoax really affected the study of early humans because scientists were so focused on the Piltdown man that they ignored human fossils found in Africa and Asia. Europeans really wanted to believe that England was were early man came from. This hoax taught scientists many important lessons, like fossils can be altered to look older. What Charles Dawson did was very wrong. All he cared about was becoming a member of various scientific societies and not about scientific integrity. Science is about understanding natural phenomena, not becoming famous.  His actions really set back the study of human and ape evolution.  This fraud really his showed them that they needed to do more testing before proving something genuine. It put scientists on their guard and to be more critical of their work.  

            This Hoax taught scientists many lessons, the most valuable being that people can alter and fake evidence to back up their scientific claims. There were positive changes to the scientific community after the hoax. Now scientist scrutinize fossils even more to make sure they are real. Now they can use technology to date fossils instead of relying on what the paleontologists thinks. We now use radiometric dating to determine the age of fossils. Radiometric dating measures the decay of radioactive elements. They can use elements like potassium-40 which decays into argon-40. Potassium-40 has a half- life of 1.25 billion years. A half-life is the amount of time it takes for half of the radioactive atoms to undergo radioactive decay. Scientists were able to use fluorine to date the Piltdown man. Fluorine has a half-life of 110 hours. They used DNA testing to test the jaw bone and it came from an orangutan.

            I do not think it is possible to remove the human factors from science. Science involves thinking outside the box and asking questions. We all have different values and beliefs and it can be hard to separate them from science. There is always a chance for scientists to fake data. It is important that people question other scientists’ data if they think that something is wrong. I would not want to remove the human factor from science. The human factor is what makes us want to find the answers. Great scientist like Tesla and Edison would not have achieved all the great things they did in electricity if they were not competing with each other to be the best. It is the human factor that pushes us to want to be the best and do whatever it takes to achieve our goals.

            There are many important life lessons to be learned from the Piltdown man hoax. Scientists have learned that if the evidence does not match, they should keep investigating and asking questions until they find the answer. This taught us that not all scientists care about finding the correct answer, for some it is about fame and fortune. It is important for scientists to challenge ideas when the data is not adding up.