Week 5: Piltdown Hoax Blog Post

In 1912, Charles Dawson, an amateur archaeologist, was digging in a pit of gravel when he supposedly discovered remains of an ancient human skull. Dawson showed his find to Arthur Smith Woodward, who ran the geological department at the British Museum and also lived in the area. Woodward went with Dawson to the original site and together they found some more skull fragments as well as a jaw bone. In 1915, Dawson found a second set of remains that exactly matched the first ones recovered at Piltdown. The fossils were quite unusual. They had nearly human skulls with a large brain but the jaws had teeth arranged in a way that would have prevented speech. Piltdown man was often referred to as “the Missing Link” between man and apes. However, the validity of the fossils had been suspect all along. It wasn’t until 1953, some 40 years after it was first announced to the public that the fossils were officially declared to be frauds. The fossils were actually modern human skulls along with orangutan jaws with filed-down teeth. 

Human faults that come into play here in this scenario are their emotions. The British were very frustrated because they had not found any human fossil while the rest of Europe and Africa have found some. Even though there is no evidence who started this but the investigation combines their feelings and forging something like this to prove their evolutionary theories and to gain acceptance in the world of science. 

Fluorine absorption test are scientific process that were responsible for revealing the skull to be a fraud. The bones absorb fluoride depending on how long they have been buried. The greater amount of fluorine present, the older the bone. Piltdown jaw and skull contained trace amounts of fluoride; therefore, the fragments had been buried in recent times. The teeth had been filed down to disguise them and the canine tooth seemed to have been filed and colored with paint.

It is impossible to remove the human factor from science because human are big part of discovering histories. Humans are responsible for finding fossils and remains of ancient primates. With the proper procedure and thorough analysis, there would be less mistakes and a forgery could be prevented.

Life lesson I can take from this historical event is that any type of information always need to be analyze and verified. If they would have gone through a more scientific process to verify their findings from the beginning, the hoax wouldn’t have gone as long as it did. It’s always a good thing to do back up research of your own just to verify that information you are receiving from someone else is correct and acceptable.