The
Piltdown Hoax
In 1912 there was a piece of a skull found in Southeast
England, specifically in the village of Piltdown. The local archaeologist,
Charles Dawson, claimed that the skull appeared to be primitive and this skull seemed to be the “missing link” that people were trying to find. The “missing
link” was supposed to be something that linked humans to apes, but it really did not
exist. After the discovery, geologist Sir Arthur Smith Woodward joined in with
Charles Dawson to keep on digging to look for more bones that summer. They
ended up finding an ape-like jawbone that had human teeth which could have also
been the “missing link.” Although the jawbone was a big find, it missed a crucial
piece being the canine tooth. Dawson and Woodward then invited another amateur archaeologist, Priest Teilhard de Chardin, to help them find more bones. A year
later, a canine tooth was found in Piltdown that matched both Woodward and
Dawson’s prediction of size. Now that this canine was found, it made the
Piltdown man seem like the perfect “missing link” and it silenced the doubters.
Then in 1953 the Piltdown man was declared a hoax. A chemical test was done on
the Piltdown man by Kenneth Oakley revealing that the Piltdown man was younger
than everyone else had expected. The skull had also been stained to look older
than it was along with teeth that had been filed down to size. And lastly the
jaw was less than 100 years old and happened to be the jaw of a female
orangutan.
After finding the bones in Piltdown, it led people on a
crazy hunt for the “missing link” between humans and apes. Everyone was so
inclined to find it, they never thought of the possibility that the “missing
link” did not exist. Scientists had their careers set to finding more about the
Piltdown man and trying to link the Piltdown man to previous ancestors or
humans and apes. This is where human faults negatively came into play. Humans
can be so curious to find out more and so persistent to do so that they got
lost in reality. These scientist got caught up in trying to find the “missing
link” and when the Piltdown man came out as a hoax it then revealed that there
really was no “missing link” between humans and apes.
In 1953 science was developed enough to reveal that the
Piltdown man was a hoax. The way scientists found this out was by chemically
testing the Piltdown bones. The fluorine tests done on the bones could estimate
age of the bones. The bones turned out to be significantly younger than expected
and the skull had a different age than the jaw. The jaw happened to be less
than 100 years old and was the jaw of a female orangutan. After looking at the
teeth under a microscope it was revealed that the teeth had been filed down to
a size that looked like human teeth. The fossils had also been boiled and
stained to look older than they actually were, while the canine was filed down
and painted.
It is not possible to remove the “human” factor in
science because humans have the ability to reason. Not everything in science
can be 100% proved based mainly on the fact that we do not have evidence for
every single thing. Some things in science need to be reasoned with in order to
make sense. Things like the big bang theory cannot be scientifically proven but
the theory is scientifically accepted because humans have the ability to reason
with the little evidence we have.
With science and everything else, things need to be taken
from credible sources or proven otherwise. It is crazy to think that most of
the world seemed to believe that this Piltdown man was the “missing link”
especially since it was found by an unknown amateur archaeologist. For 40 years
the world believed him until someone tested Dawson. Scientists proved Dawson
wrong changing so much that people claimed to believe. So when accepting information
now, we should be skeptical rather than going along with everything. If
scientists back in the 1900’s challenged Dawson’s findings, those 40 years of believing in the "missing link" could have been avoided.
Hi Steven,
ReplyDeleteI thought that was a very good point you made in your analysis on why you can't take humans out of science. I didn't think to bring up the fact that some things in science need to be reasoned to make sense. That was a very interesting point. This was a very good post, but I'm pretty sure the guidelines said to not use the term "missing link."
I really enjoyed your post and especially when you pointed out how you can't remove human error because our power of reasoning is needed. I also think it's incredibly important to be skeptical of all information that you receive; that's the life lesson I took from this Piltdown Hoax.
ReplyDeleteIf the guidelines specifically state that you weren't supposed to use the term "missing link" in your assignment, why did you repeatedly use the term throughout your post? Do you understand the problem with the term and why it doesn't accurately describe the significance of Piltdown, had it been a valid fossil find? If you haven't had the chance to do so, please review the background information on this term in the assignment folder.
ReplyDeleteBriefly, the significance of this find was not that this represented the "missing link" between humans and apes. That implies that there is a direct line of ancestry from humans and modern day apes and that isn't how evolution works. Humans and non-human apes have a common ancestor and multiple branches formed a tree from that common ancestor producing multiple evolutionary lines of descent. Some of those lines were dead-ends with the lines going extinct, but some persisted and formed the modern apes (including humans) that live today. Piltdown, had it been valid, would have represented one of those many branches on that evolutionary tree. A branch. Not a link.
So what was the significance of the Piltdown fossil had it been valid? What would it have taught us about how (not "if") humans evolved from that common ancestor? How did this support Arthur Keith's pet theory? And why was this find particularly important to British scientists?
" After finding the bones in Piltdown, it led people on a crazy hunt for the “missing link” between humans and apes."
Let's keep this as factual as possible and avoid hyperbole. No, the regular work of paleoanthropology persisted and other fossil finds were discovered that didn't match the predictions made by Piltdown. In fact, they contradicted them. What did these new finds tell us about Piltdown?
The question about human faults asks you what faults were involved that *caused* the hoax itself, not the faults that were involved after the fact. So what human faults likely led the perpetrators to create the hoax? And what faults led the scientific community to accept this find and it's conclusions with so little scrutiny expected and required by the process of science?
Great explanation of the technology that uncovered the hoax, but what about the process of science itself helped to reveal it? Why were scientists still analyzing this find so many years later? What does that say about how science works to weed out false information?
"Reason" doesn't always have positive results. I'm sure whomever created this Piltdown forgery in the first place reasoned out the strategy for perpetrating this hoax and I'm sure scientists reasoned out why they should not scrutinize this find too closely. Reason can be used for good and bad purposes and doesn't necessarily counter the negative aspects of human nature. Sometimes it amplifies it. So back to the original question: Would you want to get rid of the "human factor" from science in order to avoid situations like this? Or are their aspects of human nature that you would not want to lose from the process of science, traits like curiosity, intuition and ingenuity? Could you even do science without these human traits?
I'm a little concerned with your use of the term "belief" in the last paragraph. Science is not about beliefs. It is about evidence. The problem with the Piltdown is that scientists accepted the presented evidence too easily (again, why?) and didn't require additional, independent support. This isn't "belief" per se but acceptance of unverified, untested claims as "factual". That was wrong because the "facts" were wrong, but that doesn't make it a "belief". It just makes it wrong. So yes, more skepticism in life is a good thing, but you can be skeptical about factual claims, not just about beliefs.