Piltdown Hoax
<p>Identity of the forger
 
<b>The identity of the Piltdown forger remains unknown, but suspects have included Dawson, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Arthur Keith, Martin A. C. Hinton, Horace de Vere Cole and Arthur Conan Doyle.[8]</b>
 
Teilhard had travelled to regions of Africa where one of the anomalous finds originated, and was residing in the Wealden area from the date of the earliest finds. Hinton left a trunk in storage at the Natural History Museum in London that in 1970 was found to contain animal bones and teeth carved and stained in a manner similar to the carving and staining on the Piltdown finds. Phillip Tobias implicated Arthur Keith by detailing the history of the investigation of the hoax, dismissing other theories, and listing inconsistencies in Keith's statements and actions.[9] Other investigations suggest the hoax involved accomplices rather than a single forger.[10]
 
The focus on Charles Dawson as the main forger is supported by the accumulation of evidence regarding other archaeological hoaxes he perpetrated in the decade or two prior to the Piltdown discovery. Archaeologist Miles Russell of Bournemouth University analyzed Dawson's antiquarian collection and determined at least 38 were fakes. Among these were the teeth of a reptile/mammal hybrid, Plagiaulax dawsoni, "found" in 1891 (and whose teeth had been filed down in the same way that the teeth of Piltdown man would be some 20 years later), the so-called "shadow figures" on the walls of Hastings Castle, a unique hafted stone axe, the Bexhill boat (a hybrid sea faring vessel), the Pevensey bricks (allegedly the latest datable "finds" from Roman Britain), the contents of the Lavant Caves (a fraudulent "flint mine"), the Beauport Park "Roman" statuette (a hybrid iron object), the Bulverhythe Hammer (shaped with an iron knife in the same way as the Piltdown elephant bone implement would later be), a fraudulent "Chinese" bronze vase, the Brighton "Toad in the Hole" (a toad entombed within a flint nodule), the English Channel sea serpent, the Uckfield Horseshoe (another hybrid iron object) and the Lewes Prick Spur. Of his antiquarian publications, most demonstrate evidence of plagiarism or at least naive referencing. Russell wrote: "Piltdown was not a 'one-off' hoax, more the culmination of a life's work."[11]
 
Dawson's work prior to Piltdown had also been suspect. On one occasion, a collection of flints he exchanged with another collector, Harry Morris, turned out to have been aged with chemicals, a fact Morris recorded at the time and which was later revealed. There were also numerous individuals in the Sussex area well-acquainted with Dawson who long had doubts about Piltdown and of Dawson's role in the matter, but given the sheer weight of scholarly affirmation regarding the find few if any were willing to publicly speak out for fear of being ridiculed for their trouble
 
 
 
 
 
Early humans
 
<b>During 1912, the Piltdown man was believed to be the “missing link” between apes and humans by the majority of the scientific community. However, over time the Piltdown man lost its validity, as other discoveries such as Taung Child and Peking Man were found. R.W. Ehrich and G.M. Henderson note, “To those who are not completely disillusioned by the work of their predecessors, the disqualification of the Piltdown skull changes little in the broad evolutionary pattern. The validity of the specimen has always been questioned.</b>”[12] Eventually, during the 1940s and 1950s, more advanced dating technologies, such as the fluorine absorption test, proved scientifically that this skull was actually a fraud.
[edit]
Influence
 
The Piltdown man fraud had a significant impact on early research on human evolution. Notably, it led scientists down a blind alley in the belief that the human brain expanded in size before the jaw adapted to new types of food. Discoveries of Australopithecine fossils found during the 1920s in South Africa were ignored owing to Piltdown man, and the reconstruction of human evolution was confused for decades. The examination and debate over Piltdown man caused a vast expenditure of time and effort on the fossil, with an estimated 250+ papers written on the topic.
 
The fossil was introduced as evidence by Clarence Darrow in defense of John Scopes during the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. Darrow died during 1938, more than ten years before Piltdown Man was exposed as a fraud.
 
The hoax is often cited (along with Nebraska Man) by creationists as an example of the dishonesty of paleontologists that study human evolution, despite the fact that scientists had exposed the hoax themselves.[13][14]
 
In November 2003, the Natural History Museum in London held an exhibition to mark the 50th anniversary of its exposure.[15]</p>