Piltdown Hoax

The Piltdown hoax was a scientific finding of an “Early Primate Fossil” that was thought to be the finding of the primates fossil that could be the ancestor of, or the earliest findings of the human species. England was last in the science of Paleontology in the fact of that there had never been a fossil finding of humans prior to this incident in England. The only thing is that the entirety of the information published about the finding was completely falsified by the founders, or the understanding is that the finders might have been “dooped” or otherwise fooled with and the findings may have been planted there or tampered with.  This whole forgery started in 1912 near the southern English town of Luesse in a little village named Piltdown at one particular gravel pit, and involved an amateur Archeologist named Charles Dawson , England’s leading Geologist of the Natural History Museum Arthur Smith Woodward, and  a French Paleontologist Father Pierre. These findings of supposed early human fossils began to be questioned by other scientist and the community, and although very few people ever even got to see the actual fossil findings, the three men made their claim so stern and certain that no one wanted to further question their abilities to correctly interpret their findings. These findings went on to affect the scientific community for the next 40 years from other scientist trying to make better sense of the findings and also trying to discover more of the fossil findings of similar specimens. After the exceeding time that the men’s finding were kept under lock and key, scientist finally got their hands on the fossils and began to study them closer and discovered that the findings information was falsified and that the fossils were much younger than the three men had claimed them to be (which was around 3 million years old), even as young as 100 years old. This was all discovered when better technologies had evolved and was helping paleontologist better date the bones/fossils. Scientist were appalled, and did not understand why the men would fake their findings.

            Some of the human faults that came into play in this scenario is the idea of conformity and the need to be a part of society, this is was affected the public and the men’s fellow scientist peers. All three of the men were of a prestigious class and society so no one questioned them or further criticized their findings because they didn’t want to be the specific one who question the findings and set the paleontology community back and the entire Country of England back. Another human fault is the sin of greed and envy on the part of the lying scientist or persons, the idea is that the men created this falsified finding because either they were so jealous of other countries and their findings, and they wanted to be able to say that England does posses fossils of early humans. Another idea is that the scientist wanted to have a higher prestige and respect amongst their colleagues so they forged the info.

            Some of the scientific processes that were responsible for revealing the skull to be a fraud was first that there were scientist that discovered fossil findings of early humans that were supposed to be younger than the Piltdown findings but they looked less human that the Piltdown findings not more human which is what raised the first questions and also the fact that no one could find any more of these findings after Charles Darwin’s death in 1916. In 1949 scientist conducted a fluorine test on the Piltdown fossils and in 1953 they conducted a full scale analysis with newer technologies and discovered that the staining on the bones were superficial, the staining on the artifacts was fake and the carvings were made when the bones were already fossilized and most likely carved with a steal knife and when the scientist looked at the fossil under the microscope they discovered that the teeth were carved down to look like human teeth instead of the orangutan teeth that they were. Bones were broken and put back together forcefully to make it look like they were some form of human bones.

            It is not really possible to eliminate the human factor out of science and I am not sure if I would want to. Science usually is a product of a passionate person who is looking for answers that have not been found yet. Yes many scientist still use technology but it is the actual scientist who does the countless hours, days and years and studying that makes these findings public. Without that human factor to science, it would no longer be science.

            This hoax like many others teaches a huge lesson about analyzing things just from a surface view without researching the facts and the history. It is better to be the one who questions everything than the one who falls for anything. This is why we have scientist around. We need them help us get the facts and history of certain things.