The Piltdown Hoax



           In December of 1912, Charles Dawson presented a skull to the Geological Society of London.  This skull was quite unusual, as although it had many human features, its brain size was 2/3 of the average human brain, and its teeth were similar to a chimpanzee's.  Dawson claimed that the skull was found by a worker in a gravel pit in Piltdown, England, and after conferring with Arthur Smith Woodward, the two had gone down to the pit and retrieved the other remaining pieces of the skull and jaw.  This skull caused an unbelievable fervor within the scientific community, as the structural makeup of the skull had led many scientists to believe that this was definitive evidence of human evolution, with the Piltdown skull providing proof as the "missing link" between apes and human beings.  The find was highly controversial at the time, and a fellow scientist named Arthur Keith recreated the skull without many of the ape-like features.  Keith began to challenge the fact that the teeth of the skull did not correspond to the normal eating motions of a human being, and thus more and more scientists made accusations that the Piltdown skull was constructed of a human skull and chimpanzee teeth, making the find a forgery.  Eventually several scientists including David Waterson, Gerrit Miller, and Marcellin Boule published journals stating that they believed the skull to be a forgery, and that the teeth had been taken from another ape.  However, this evidence was overlooked for decades, and many in the scientific community took the Piltdown skull as fact, and thus many writings related to evolution were shaped by this finding.  Many people used the fact of the smaller brain size of the skull as evidence that the human brain evolved before our teeth and jaw, a theory that is seen as totally inaccurate by the modern scientific community.  The Piltdown skull was finally accepted in 1953 when Time magazine published findings from Joseph Weiner, Kenneth Page Oakley, and Sir Wilfrid Edward Le Gros Clark that the skull was in fact forged from a human skull, an orangutan jaw, and chimpanzee teeth, with the "fossil" being treated with iron solution and chromic acid to look hundreds of thousands of years older than it really was.
        There were many human faults that impacted this entire fiasco.  For one, the whole excitement over the theory of human evolution contributed towards many scientists overlooking many of the obvious signs that this was a hoax, such as the fact that a skull like the Piltdown skull had never been discovered before, and that the teeth were overwhelmingly similar to that of an ape's.  Also, the personal rivalry between Arthur Keith and Arthur Woodward may have contributed towards Woodward's conclusions, as Woodward may have been motivated by his personal pride and a goal to avoid professional embarrassment by Keith's accusations.  Also, because the theory that brain evolution preceded teeth evolution may have contributed to the fact that it took over forty years for the skull to be accepted as a hoax, despite a dearth of evidence that had already existed proving it to be a hoax.
        The positive aspect that proved the skull to be a hoax was the constant review and study of the claims by the rest of the scientific community.  As mentioned earlier, scientists like Arthur Keith had made reconstructions of the skull proving that the teeth were that of an ape's, and not of a human's.  The scientists involved in the Time article came to their conclusion through using microscopes to carefully examine the dental structure of the teeth and jaw bone and comparing them to those of other primates, as well as using chemical analyses to deduce that there was iron and chromic acid used to create the forgery.
         In order to remove the "human factor" from science so that this hoax is never repeated again, the scientific community would have to continue its practice of constant reviewing and testing of findings and other evidence.  It is so easy for people to find some "evidence" proving a theory and to become so excited that they take it as fact.  However, the best part of the scientific community is its skepticism, as things need to be proved tens, if not hundreds, of times in order to sort fact from fiction.  I would like to remove the human factor from science, as science should be totally objective and not subjective, and I want to know that the facts and evidence are what they really are, and not influenced by petty pride or greed.  As a life lesson, this whole episode just makes me realize that I should always be questioning things, and to never take anything at face value.  This is helpful when buying a used car, as one should always test and make sure they're not being duped by an offer that's too good to be true, or when applying to jobs, as some jobs that I've applied to in the past turned out to be scams, and I came close to have been duped by some impostor.