Piltdown Man

The Piltdown Hoax

In 1912 and archeologist named Charles Dawson made a very famous discovery in the town of Piltdown, England. Dawson found what appeared to be the skull and jaw of modern human and instantly became acclaimed by other scientists. Dawson invited other scientists to the site including archeologist Arthur Woodward. After the discovery many scientist depended on the fossil as evidence or support for their theories, one of these scientist was Arthur Keith, he claimed that the fossils prove his theory about humans developing big brains before being able to walk upright.  Sadly, in 1953 the fossils, better known as the Piltdown man was pronounced a hoax, jaw did not belong to a modern human but to an orangutan.

Many questions followed the discovery of the hoax, scientist, including Arthur Keith were appalled and even embarrassed, one theory is that England was the only country that had not found any fossils unlike Asia, France and Germany. I think the human fault that took place in that as human we all loved to be praised  whether it’s for being the best or for being the first or even Keith’s case for being “right”, that may have blinded some of the fellow scientist that were fooled by hoax.

The Piltdown was declared a hoax in 1953.  Paleontologist used fluorine dating which is a method that is used to determine if fossils that are found near each other have the same amount of fluorine and the fossils did not match.  This method is really interesting, when bones or teeth lie underground the absorb fluorine and they also lose nitrogen content, if a bone or a tooth is found scientists can see if they are from the same time period. This method only works if the fossils are found in the same area. They also discovered that the jaw was in fact an orangutan’s jaw and the teeth had been filed down.

I can just imagine how many scientist and followers must have felt, fooled, embarrassed and even angry. Yet, as humans they are bound to make mistakes. I think those human faults that we mentioned earlier had a big part in their reaction to Dawson’s discovery. Although now we may ask “How did you not know?” and many can even criticize these scientist, I would not take the “human” factor out of the scientific equation. I think we need that, and I also think that we can learn from that. We can learn from being wrong ourselves and we can learn from other’s being wrong, many times amazing discoveries have come to the surface because a scientist had an incorrect idea and ended up discovering something else.

However, although we are human and mistakes are allowed, as scientist or not just scientist but all professionals, we are responsible for the information that we provide to others. That includes the information that you come up with and information that you have heard from other and are now choosing to share with the world. It is always important to know you’re supporting facts especially if you are going to attach your name to a claim.  It is also important that  as spectators we question what others tell us, whether it’s out scientist, our president or even our doctors.