Piltdown Hoax 101: Everything You Need to Know About Science's Worst Scam

What you should know about the Piltdown Hoax:

It all started in 1912 when Charles Dawson, an amateur archaeologist, was working in gravel pits near Piltdown Village in Sussex, England. Dawson came across what he referred to as a human-like skull of which he thought might connect the ancestry of humans and apes. He decided to reach out to the Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum of the time, Arthur Smith Woodward. Dawson and Smith Woodward joined forces with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French priest/paleontologist and discovered more findings of artifacts relating to the human-like skull Dawson previously found on his own. Among these artifacts were teeth, a jawbone, more skull fragments, and even primitive tools. Smith Woodward reconstructed the skull fragments and Dawson joined him in attending a Geological Society meeting in which they proposed to other scientists that they had found evidence of a 500,000 year old human ancestor. This was a major proposition as it would have confirmed that there was indeed evidence of a common ancestor amongst apes and humans. It gets to be even more of a major proposition though, as these findings would have placed that ancestor in England- a place such evidence had never been found before. Their claims were pretty openly accepted and scientists from all over began using the findings of the “Piltdown Man” to compare to their own. Within time, scientists realized there were discrepancies in the dating of the Piltdown Man as they had discovered fossils of human ancestors in other places that lived hundreds of thousands of years after the Piltdown Man, but that had less humanlike skulls. The suspicion that something was not right was not confirmed until after World War II, when fluorine measurements in bones began being used as a means to age fossils. In 1949, scientists measured the fluorine levels in the Piltdown Man, only to find that instead of being over 500,000 years old, the Piltdown Man was perhaps only 100,000 years old or younger. In 1953, scientists did a full examination of the Piltdown Man using better dating techniques and found that there should have been more suspicion all along: The Piltdown Man was a hoax.

The artifacts themselves had been stained artificially, and the various pieces of the skull were most likely whole at one point but cut using a knife to give the appearance of natural wear and tear on the supposed 500,000 year old specimen. The set of teeth in the lower jaw of the skull were significant before because they showed evidence of humanlike teeth, however, scientists found that those teeth had in fact been filed down to give them a more human appearance. They discovered that the jawbone itself was less than 100 years old- completely contradictory to the claims previously made by Dawson and Smith Woodward. But wait, it gets better! The jawbone was not only extremely young, but also that of a female chimpanzee. By this point, scientists knew they had been duped and shared with the rest of the world what they had discovered. Scientists and scholars across the world were stunned, confused, and probably a bit angry. They never would have thought someone would falsely claim something so magnificently crucial to the understanding of human evolution. And the fact that everyone believed them with such certainty was astonishing and left people questioning if they could really trust the scientific community’s findings once it was all dubbed a hoax. 

What human faults were at play in this scenario?: 

Well for one, there’s greed. Although it is still unknown who was responsible for the Piltdown Hoax as a whole, it’s safe to say that whoever it was, was interested in their own personal gain. Think about it: if you were a scientist in the early 1900s and you were trying to better your appearance or standing in the community, you’d have to discover or prove something that was absolutely phenomenal. The Piltdown Hoax was just that thing. In addition to greed, there were several other faults at play that had nothing to do with the person or people behind the hoax. The scientific community as a whole did little to try and prove or rather disprove the claims of Dawson and Smith Woodward. Their ignorance played a major role in allowing the hoax to go down. We know that the attempt to disprove something is just as important as proving it. Since no one questioned their claims or their findings, they were accepted as truth and adopted into many future findings of human evolution. Another human fault at play here could have been timidness. If someone did indeed think there was something questionable about Dawson’s and Smith Woodward’s findings, they certainly didn’t say anything most likely due to the fear of speaking out against individuals regarded with such prestige. Each of these faults led to the complete scientific process being ignored. There was no immediate further research, there was no action taken to confirm the original findings, they were just accepted and thus, the Piltdown Hoax was allowed to happen. 

Positive Aspects of the scientific process:

As new developments in technology advance in the scientific field, scientists will often apply those developments to significant past findings to see if any more can be said about that particular artifact. In 1949 when fluoride measurement began being used to help date bones, scientists decided to use it on the Piltdown Man, only to find that he was indeed much younger than they previously thought. If these scientists had never carried out this testing, they may have never questioned the validity of the Piltdown Man at all. Then again, in 1953 when more developments had been made, scientists decided to take a closer look at the Piltdown Man once more. Upon closer examination, they realized the pieces of the jaw and skull had been artificially dyed and that structural pieces had been forcefully cut as opposed to just worn down over time. The teeth were filed down to look more humanlike and the jaw as a whole belonged to a female chimpanzee, disproving the claims made by Dawson and Smith Woodward years earlier. Without these progressive findings, the truth of the Piltdown Man would have never been discovered and would have continued to mislead the scientific community and its findings on human evolution. 

Why not just remove the “human” factor to make science more reliable?:

It really isn’t possible to remove the “human” factor out of science. Think about it: humans are complex organisms that have self-awareness and are able to ask questions about the world around them. Can robots do this? The fact is, without humans, science as we know it wouldn’t exist. Yes because we are human, there is always going to be a margin for error, but it is also because we are human that we are able to address such complex topics and ideas. The scientific community has taken huge strides to ensure that all findings are backed with concrete evidence and that scenarios like the Piltdown Hoax don’t happen again. That hoax occurred during a time when science was still largely being shaped and technological advances had not yet happened. There was a much higher chance of something like the Piltdown Hoax happening when it did than there is of something similar happening now. You certainly wouldn’t want to remove the human factor from science even if you could because that takes away the creative, curious nature of it all. Humans are essential to science!

What did we learn?:

The Piltdown Hoax taught us that we should never just assume something is as it appears. We know that so much goes into proving something to be true in the scientific community. We need to be sure we take the proper steps in the future to ensure that our findings are concrete and that they are observed and tested by multiple people, not just a select few. This applies to all scientific ideas! If a Catholic priest announced to everyone that evolution didn’t exist and couldn’t exist because it was against God’s will, and everyone just accepted that as truth, we wouldn’t ever know anything about how our world formed and developed over time. It’s important to challenge ideas and to keep testing those ideas until you’re absolutely certain they are facts.