Piltdown Hoax

The Piltdown Hoax was an archeological find by Charles Dawson in 1912 who claimed to have found a piece of an ancient human skull in the southern English village of Piltdown.  He invited Arthur Smith Woodward of the Natural History Museum and paleontologist, Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to aide him in the dig and discovery.

Shortly after, Dawson dug up a jaw bone which looked more like the jaw bone of an ape, but was found in the same area.  It was thought to have been the jaw bone of the skull as the teeth were worn flat and did not reflect other ape teeth of the same era.  This find was thought to have been the missing link between ape and man and was dubbed “Piltdown Man”. 

Scientists cheered the news enthusiastically when the announcement came of the find.  The newspapers also came on board and due to the men’s reputations in the scientific community was readily and widely accepted without much question. 

Arthur Keith, who was a leading anatomist in London, also came on board.  He had a theory that big brains developed prior to upright walking.  This find emboldened his claims, so he was eager to accept the evidence of the bones to substantiate his own theories.

There was reluctance on the part of the public to challenge the find, as all the men bringing the fossils to light were highly respected.  Piltdown Man was accepted as the missing link between ape and human evolution, although no more fossils turned up after Charles Dawson’s death in 1916.  Current methods of dating fossils did not exist at that time, and the Natural History Museum did not allow outsiders to examine fossil remains.  So, contradicting them was very difficult.

But, finds in Africa and Asia in the 1920’s began to shed doubt on Piltdown Man.  The early human skulls found there were approximately 100,000 years old and much less human-like than Piltdown Man, which was supposedly an older find of more than 100 mya.  This began to cast doubt on Piltdown Man and motivated scientists to further study the fossils. 

After WWII scientists had more advanced methods of dating fossils using fluorine measurements.  As a fossil is exposed to ground seepage it collects fluorine from the ground as it fossilizes.  The longer the fossil has been in the ground, the more fluorine it accumulates.  Bones in the same area should contain the same amount of collected fluorine.  When the fluorine was measured in the skull and jawbone, there was a discrepancy that led scientists to investigate further.  It was exposed that the bones were much younger than originally thought.

This led scientists to inspect the bones more closely.  It was found that artifacts and bone fragments had been artificially stained to make them appear older.  Microscopic inspection also revealed that the teeth had been filed down to appear more human and the jaw bone had been cut in such a way that a vital connecting piece was missing so that one could manufacture a “fit” with the jaw bone to the skull, making it appear more human.

Eventually the jaw bone was accurately dated at less than 100 years old and came from a female orangutan and found that the specific pieces of the jaw bone which were missing would have definitely made it that of an ape and not a human.

Dawson’s motivation for the hoax was in his very ambitious nature.  He was a man who wanted to have a prominent place in the scientific community.  The discovery of Piltdown Man placed him there and clouded his judgment.  Since the exposure of Piltdown Man, Dawson is now known to have forged a half dozen other finds.  Woodward was clearly duped as he kept digging in Piltdown long after Dawson had died, but never found anything.  But he still seemed to blindly trust that Dawson had indeed found the missing link.  Arthur Kieth also had sufficient personal motives to perpetrate the hoax in that the find validated his own theory about the evolution of homo sapiens.  This theory then placed him in a very prominent place in the scientific community. 

At the beginning of the century scientists were revered and thought of as gentlemen who were above reproach.  This idea combined with the men’s own ambition made it possible for such a hoax to happen.  Also, the fact that the current fossil dating methods such as fluorine testing were not available yet made it difficult for anyone to challenge their findings.

Since the discovery of the fraud, the scientific community now understands that fraud is possible in their profession and takes greater care in their work to question and re-evaluate findings of colleagues through the scientific method.  This is a positive outcome of the hoax that has bettered the scientific community, the scientific method and the public's trust in science.

Good science must be based on objectivity.  When national pride or personal ulterior motives are involved, then science and the public are too vulnerable to those whose motives are only for themselves.  In order to be a good scientist and remove any human element, you must be willing to have other scientists and the public scrutinize your work.  This is the only way to be sure that whether it be personal motivations or simply human error, a hypothesis is thoroughly tested before it becomes a theory.