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Piltdown Man
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The Piltdown Man has been proven to be a fake and a hoax. The bone fragments, flint tools and the bone implements were found at two other sites. The skull parts that turned out to be those of a modern man were found at one site. The jaw was from an ape skeleton found at a nearby site. Charles Dawson found the first cranial fragments of the Piltdown Man at the fossil dig site in 1908. He was only an amateur archaeologist.
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[T]his view was dealt a severe blow when the remains of a second Piltdown Man were reported in 1915 as coming from a place about two miles away from the first site. Here again there were pieces of thick brain-case like those found at the original site, and with them a molar tooth, again similar to those in the jaw of the first Piltdown Man. From now on Woodward's ideas held the field and most scientists agreed with. him. In those days the climate of scientific opinion was extremely favour-able to the view that the human ancestor would show such a combination of features of ape and man. It seemed quite feasible, therefore, that a human ancestor should have pronounced chimpanzee characters such as large projecting eye-teeth. Darwin had even sketched such a type hypothetically. And what made it all the more acceptable was that there was nothing to contradict it in the few other human fossils known at the time.
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The history of the discovery of the earliest Englishman (as Piltdown Man was so often called) is fairly common knowledge. A laborer was supposedly digging in a gravel pit near the village of Piltdown in Sussex in southern England when he found a piece of bone. He passed it to the local amateur archaeologist of the district, Charles Dawson, who verified its antiquity and pronounced that it was part of a skull which was possibly human. Dawson began to search for the rest of the skull and, in 1912, a jawbone was discovered. Sir Arthur Smith Woodward of the British Museum verified that the skull had human features and the jaw was ape-like. The fossils became known as Piltdown Man and were called Eoanthropus dawsoni which means ‘Dawson’s Dawn Man’.
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Piltdown Man was obviously a deliberate hoax. Upon critical investigation, the hoax was exposed very quickly. However, the "find" was not investigated properly until forty-years after the initial "discovery". This was due primarily to the excellent credentials held by the men who made the "discovery." Very few experts ever suspected fraud. It wasn't until 1949, when the fossils were dated using the fluorine absorption technique, that the authenticity of the "discovery" was called into question.
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Almost forty years later, in 1953, Piltdown Man was exposed as a forgery, mainly through the work of Dr Kenneth Oakley. He showed that the skull was from a modern human and that the jawbone and teeth were from an orangutan. The teeth had been filed down to make them look human. The bones and teeth had been chemically treated (and sometimes even painted) to give them the appearance of being ancient. In addition, it was ... shown that none of the finds associated with Piltdown Man had been originally buried in the gravel that had been deposited at Piltdown. The Piltdown Man fraud was a great embarrassment to the UK scientific community and questions about it were even asked in the House of Parliament.
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In 1953, Piltdown Man was declared a hoax. The skull fragments, upon close examination, were obviously those of a modern man. The fragments were carved and stained. The teeth in the ape jaw had been filed down to more closely match the teeth of a man. Everyone had been duped and the search was on for the perpetrator, but none could be solidly proven. Perhaps two or more people collaborated in the scheme. Multiple witnesses and testimonies led others to be less suspecting and more easily duped. People simply tend to drop their guard and go with the prevailing opinion.
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Piltdown Man