Piltdown Hoax

For almost 40 years scientist were fooled by the Piltdown Hoax. It all started when a laborer was digging in a gravel pit near the village of Piltdown in Sussex in southern England when he found a piece of bone. He then passed it to the local archaeologist, Charles Dawson, who verified it and pronounced that it was part of a skull which had the possibility of being human. Dawson began to search for the rest of the skull and, in 1912 a jawbone was discovered to have been as early as the human ancestor. Dawson invited Woodward and Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin also. The fossils became known as Piltdown Man in 1915, another Dawn Man was found a couple of miles away from the site of the first find. At last, here was proof that apes had evolved into humans in England. Charles Dawson said to have found the fossils while he was digging in a gravel pit which turns out to be not true. Almost forty years later, Piltdown Man was exposed as a forgery, mostly through the work of Dr Kenneth Oakley. He proved 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 like painted on to give them the appearance of being ancient. The Piltdown Man fraud was an embarrassment to the UK scientific community and questions about it were even asked in the House of Parliament. There were several suspects who could have been responsible for the hoax but no has been held responsible.

Scientist sometimes get influenced by fame, glory, praise and other things that causes them to lie just so they could be recognized by the science community or the world. They forget about the facts and just want their name out there. Evolutionists often express irritation when Piltdown Man and other fakes are raised by their opponents. No-one saw the hoax at the time, but afterward it was discovered it all seemed obvious and things like the file marks suddenly became obvious to them. If only they had spent more time analyzing it, or just holding it up to see the teeth, but instead they were so excited to have found one in England they assumed it was true.

 One of the positive aspects of revealing the skull was the fluoride technology, which was used to determine the age of the bones. The shape and fractures showed that they had come from multiple species, which was later proved with DNA. Scientists discovered that the first bones could only be about one hundred thousand years old. The teeth had been filed down and you could tell because of the groove marks were visible. They had discovered that the bones had been stained and shaped to appear much older then what they told to be.

Scientist are human, they each have their own beliefs just like us. They sometimes let that get to far into their work. Another thing is sometimes scientist forget more about their findings and what they want to find and just care more about people famous, getting their name out in the world, they tend to do hoax like this one. Scientist can become corrupted too. I do not believe you can remove the “human” factor out of the human because then they will be no emotion and that is impossible as a human. Being human is what drives scientist into finding the truth about things, even though that sometimes brings the bad in them too. They should always be a balance to everything. There’s a difference between being greedy and staying on the tight path.

This is a lesson and also a reminder that sometimes reality isn’t in the picture. We have to understand that the all scientific theories are subject to change, added too, or even proved to be false. Nothing is final when it comes to science because science is always changing, scientist are always discovering new and better things. They add and delete things all the time so we should never take heart everything they put out there. We are still discovering new things everyday so we should just keep an open mind to science changing.