Piltdown Hoax

The Piltdown hoax was described to the key to finding the connection between humans and apes, until it was found that it evidence had been tampered with. It began in 1912 in a little town called Piltdown in southeast England. An amateur archaeologist named Charles Dawson, discovered what looked to be human but more primitive looking and an ape-like jawbone. The teeth that were found looked to be more human than ape because of their shape which led them to believe they found an important fossil. Before the hoax was proven, these findings were very significant because they would provide the correlation between this primitive and possibly find the first ancestor of mankind. This discovery was very big to the scientific community. When Arthur Smith Woodward made the announcement regarding their findings, scientist applauded them because they provided their country, England, the opportunity that they had fossils on their land. Other scientist began to back up the Piltdown claim to support their own evidence. As the years went on, they began to find more fossils and bones that they hoped would silence the community in which they did, but some scientist kept their opposing opinions to themselves. These findings of Piltdown man were an importance key to studies of human evolution.

The discovery of the hoax began to unravel after World War II when new technologies were being invented to be able to test the fossils and examine them closely. Scientists were now able to determine the age of the fossil with a fluorine test and they found that the Piltdown fossils happened to fairly younger than they predicted. Finally, scientists began a large study to examine the fossils with their new technology. They discovered that the fossils had been stained and that the teeth on the jawbone had been shaved down to appear more human than more orangutan. After this discovery shocked the community, scientist began an investigation to determine the person who forged the fossils to prove their claim. There were many theories as to who’s idea it was, whether it had been Dawson or Woodward and what their actual motives were.

In this case, the human faults that come into play is that Dawson and Woodward purposely tampered with evidence to support the theory of human evolution. This fault placed a negative title and impacted the scientific process in a very bad way. This meant that it is hard to take the claim of a scientist without proper evidence because they could be wrong or have done something to the experiment like the Piltdown fossils. The positive aspects of the process is that other scientist took the fossils and examined them again to determine more information with the new technology they had which previous scientist didn’t have access to. For example, the use of the fluorine test provided them the correct age of the fossils because of they were thought to be primate fossils they would have been much older than they were found to be. I don’t think that it is impossible to completely remove the chance of human error because everything somehow involves the human mind. For example, if we were to use some technology that does not involve humans it was still conducted and built by humans. I believe that we can reduce the amount of human error by performing the experiment multiple times but we can never be eliminated it. In a perfect world, I think human error was be perfect if it was removed, but realistically I don’t think it would be a good idea because we can learn for our human errors and mistakes and apply it to future studies. The life lesson I can learn from this is to don’t always believe what people say unless there is scientific evidence to back up their claim but to keep and open mind.