The Piltdown Man

The Piltdown Man was discovered in 1912 by a workman while he was digging in a gravel pit in a village near Piltdown, in Southern England. This workman gave the piece of the skull he found to Charles Dawson, an amateur archeologist. Charles Dawson then contacted Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, the keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum, as well as a Frenchman. The three of them formed a digging team with the hope to find more fossils within this area. In September 1912, they found more fragments of the skull and a jawbone. In December 1912, a meeting was held to make the announcement of this recomposed skull. It was also thought that that this skull was “the evidence that England had ancient human fossils. This England’s human ancestor might be the oldest of all: the Piltdowm Man.” Many people believed in this finding; others, had doubts.For one, they thought that the jawbone did not look human, but more like an ape. Furthermore, other ancient human fossils had been discovered, and the Piltdown Man did not match any of them. It comes out that in 1953, this Piltdown Man was proved to be an hoax.    

Humans have faults. In this scenario, jealousy and self-interest were human’s faults. For one, when it comes to Charles Dawson, his findings made him famous. For two, many ancient fossils had been found in Spain, France, Germany, and Africa, but nothing had been found in England. Not only would this Piltdown Man reveal the existence of an early man in England, but this Piltdown Man would also be the “missing link between apes and humans”. 

The dating method is what revealed the Piltdown man as a hoax. In 1949, a fluorine test has been performed on this skull. “By measuring the fluorine content of fossils, scientists could date them”. The results were 100,000 years, which was too modern. The skull had been stained on purpose. Furthermore, they found out that the jaw was the one of an orangutan. With a microscope, scientists found out that “the teeth had simply been flied flat to disguise them. The fossils had been boiled and carefully stained with chemicals. The canine tooth was crudely filed and colored with paint”. The teeth were the ones of a 500 years old chimpanzee This Piltdown Man was nothing but an hoax.

I would not want to remove the human factor from science. Sure, the Piltdown Man was an hoax, and affected the overall image of scientists, but what is more important is the fact that the truth about the Piltdown Man has been revealed because of scientists. Errors are made in science. Theories for example can be revised or adjusted because of other scientists. It took 40 years for scientists for example to prove the forgery of the Piltdown’s Man fossils, but scientists still reached the truth. This is also what makes science challenging and so interesting.

The life lesson is that humans need to seriously examine situations, findings, or theories before they can take things for given. It is not enough to assume that something is true. It needs to be proven. Everything needs to be tested or analyzed.