The Piltdown Man

The Piltdown hoax deals with a discovery and a mysterious person. It sounds like a mystery you might hear on a television show, but this real life mystery is real and happened in England in the early 1900s.

Discovered in southern England near the town of Piltdown, a man working outside discovered an odd piece of a skull. After the discovery the man gave the piece to a local amateur archaeologist, Charles Dawson. Dawson realized that this skull was very primitive looking and might be something important. He took the skull to London’s Natural History Museum where he brought the bone to Sir Arthur Smith Woodward. Now, it is important to remember that no early man had ever been discovered in England before this time.

A few years later and after a few more discoveries of bones, Dawson and Woodward presented “the earliest Englishman” in 1912. These human remains were said to be the clue in human evolution everyone was waiting for. They seemed to show the evolution from apes to humans and it proved Charles Darwin’s theory. This find though did cause some controversy among scientists. Not everyone could agree on how human or how ape-like the remains were. And, not everyone agreed that the skull and jaw, found in two separate discoveries, belonged to each other. Not too long after, a tooth was discovered which seemed to better link the two previous finds together. And, in 1917, Dawson found Piltdown Man Two.

But, with two Piltdown Men, scientists were still not all on the same page. And in 1953 it was determined that Piltdown man was a hoax. It seems that the fake bones came from London’s Natural History Museum. The skull bone was stained to look older than it was. A file was used on the teeth to change their appearance, and the skull and jawbones were from two different time periods. Even with the discovery, the scientific community was unsure, and still is unsure, who planted these bones.

Scientists are always looking out for new evidence and want to prove their own theories. When these bones were discovered, scientists in England wanted there to be early man from England. At the time, discoveries had been made in other parts of Europe, except England. After these bones were brought to the museum, scientists were eager to prove that primitive life had existed there. This want and need might have played into the oversight of these bones. Lack of technologies at the time is also another reason why these bones might have been believed to be real for a while. However, when discoveries are made and believed to be real and then proven wrong, it impacts the scientific community and puts doubt in people’s minds. It puts a sense of mistrust into science. A lot of time, theories are things that have to be proven over time. When scientists come out and have verified these fossils that are then proven to be fake, it makes their other contributions to science questionable. Another theory is that due to intense competition, scientists wanted to prove that early man existed there and each one of them wanted to be the one to prove it. This motivation might have been another cause for the “oversights”.

The fact that science was also used to prove the bones were faux is also a positive aspect of the scientific process. The same process that was used to say these bones were legitimate was used to prove they were not. Scientists, with further investigation, could see file marks on the teeth with a magnifying glass. If they had been examined closer in the beginning they would have been seen earlier. The markings on the bones and the coloration, which was caused from boiling the bones and then stained, would have also been determined by further examination.

I believe that without personal motivation and feuds, the human factor can be removed from science. Individuals at this time and many other times, want to prove their theories or make a big discovery to be remembered throughout time. If these wants and personal achievements were removed, I feel that less errors and frauds would exist. This is just one example of a situation were people should not take things at face value. Just like the internet, there are a lot of people who can make claims and have “evidence” to prove it, but without verified sources these claims can be just as faux as the Piltdown Man. It is everyone’s responsibility to investigate before believe everything they read.