The Piltdown Hoax

Week 4
     The Piltdown Hoax started in 1912 in a southern English town where a small village was called Piltdown. An amateur archeologist named Charles Dawson was digging in a gravel pit and came across to what he believed to be an ancient human skull. He then invited a man named Arthur Smith Woodward England's  leading geologist at the natural history museum so they could discover more findings together. They then came a cross a skull jawbone what looks to be from human features. Arthur Smith Woodrow saw this as a major discovery. After the scientist community evaluating this had the same reaction as well and this would be the start of journey into evolution. In late 1912, Woodward announced the discovery publicly and immediately he and Dawson were credited for having found ancient human fossils in England. The discovery hit worldwide headlines as "The Piltdown Man", but doubt did come when Woodward only specialized in fish fossils not human ones. More doubts came along when scientist realized the canine features on the jawbone weren't human like and didn't date back that far in time. After a 40 year period on the Piltdown man fossil dominating the hoax was final revealed and led scientist all over the world in shock. Scientist dug deep into the case of the Piltdown men when other discoveries in Asia and Africa that the fossils they found didn't match the ones found in Piltdown. This was all happening before the reveal of the hoax. The reveal of the hoax came right after World War 2 when scientist had the technology to finally tell how old fossils really were. When tested by fluorine on the Piltdown fossils the results shocked scientists seeing as though the fossils were dated roughly 100,000 years ago, not that long at all. Scientist also noticed the teeth on the bone had been shaved down with scratch marks to give the look of human teeth, the same goes for the color on the jawbone, it had look liked it had been dyed to match the surrounding of the elements.  After the entire hoax was cleared up it gave scientist all over the world the impression that anybody can create a hoax and that now they must keep their guard up in case of another event like this.

     A fault that scientist have is the sign of pride, especially taken from English people. Sitings of human fossils have been found in other countries and when England felt they had a siting they felt to excited and prideful to investigate it a bit more, also to have denial that it might possibly be a fake.  Another fault would be the lack of scientific technology itself. Remember that the hoax was not revealed until 40 years later, enough time to finally realize that the fossils were fake so the fault lies in technology itself and in that period of time scientist would only go with what they believe and see in an artifact to see if it's real or fake. A lot of lies were told in the hoax and of course that has been a human fault that has been around for centuries. The hoax indeed set scientist back in their studies by almost a decade and was a complete waste of their time.

     An aspect in the scientific method that was positive in revealing the skull to be a fraud was the fluorine method used to examine how old the fossil could be. Another examination was looking at specific details on the canine of the fossil and the coloration to find anymore new information. The canine of the skull that were examined carefully showed markings that made scientist believed the teeth may have been shaved down using a sort of knife. The coloration on the skull itself seem to have been too recent in its age and to find that it was more to match the environment it was in, more like a camouflage. These methods weren't around back in the 1920's so many scientists had to observe closely only with their naked eye so not a lot of speculation occurred until the 1940's when scientific occurred and tools were used to help amplify what scientists were examining. 

     I think that having the human factor in science is greatly important not just because it sparks a lot of interest, but it hold so much information on how and what humans are linked to. Of course there is always going to be a chance of error dealing with humans, but that doesn't mean that's always going to be the problem. It may be confusing, but I think humans can see the key to all of this and humans aren't the only thing that has a chance for error. Machines are just as likely to have room for error because humans built machines and machines are only as smart as their creator.

     A lesson that I would take from this historic event is to not let pride get in the way of the truth, never let a skeptical source be the reason for your finding and always look closely to the details. Human mistakes will happen, but whats worse is when the same mistake happens again.