Piltdown Hoax

Piltdown hoax

The story of the Piltdown man begins in East Sussex. An amateur Archeologist (Charles Dawson) at the gravel pit near the village of Piltdown discovered a skull. By 1912 popular press spread the news. Many scientists were skeptical of the findings; however, they didn’t want to challenge Charles Dawson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1953 Kenneth P. Oakley, who was a professor of Anthropology at Oxford University applied modern technology and found out that the Piltdown skulls were hoaxes. It was a combination of fragments of a medieval man’s skull, an orangutan’s jawbone and chimpanzee’s teeth. The skull was chemically treated to look older. Oakley and his researchers found out that the jaw was of a 500 year old Orangutan which was chemically aged. Microscopic studies showed that the teeth came from fossilized chimpanzee which were modified to look more human.

Prior to this finding, the hoax created distorted family tree for modern man and his ancestors.

We don’t know the person behind this act, however, Charles Dawson seems to be the prime suspect. There isn’t enough evidence that he was the perpetrator of the hoax and he died in 1916 without any confessions. Other suspects include Pierre Teillhard de Chardin (who was hired to do the digging) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (who was an Anatomist and the Piltdown man provided him with enough evidence for his theory on Human evolution). Martin Hinten is another suspect who was a workman at the natural museum (and became a Zoologist later).

The human fault that influenced this finding was the desire to find the earliest Englishman. This is a clear example for letting the personal interests influence the results. The hoax started because of national pride, jealousy and went on for such a long time because some people preferred to believe in it and ignore the reality.  

The positive aspect of scientific process that was responsible for revealing the skull to be fraud was Fluorine Test. By measuring the fluorine content of the fossil scientist could roughly date them. In 1949 scientists conducted a Fluorine test and found out that the remains were very young (about Hundred Thousand years old).

I don’t think removing “human factor” from science is necessary because humans are able to get educated and propose new theories. Although some theories might be rejected, the beauty of science is in its infinite opportunity to find another theory with better evidence to support a hypothesis (or reject it and look for another hypothesis).

This historical event reminded me of the importance of replication in science. In other words, science enables researchers to follow and repeat the measurements (findings) and in this case by following the measurements another scientist found the truth. I also learned not to take information in face value without any verification. This historical event is another reason why we should be critical thinkers and don’t believe in everything that we are being told.