Lessons from Piltdown

   Between 1911 and 1912, an amateur archaeologist named Charles Dawson unearthed an apparent transitional fossil that seemed to fill in a gap in the fossil record. Dawson called upon Arthur Smith Woodward, of the British Museum, as well as Pierre Tielhard de Chardin and Arthur Keith, all respected scientists, to assist in validating his claim and further excavating the Piltdown site. What was found was a portion of the skull, along with a portion of the lower right jawbone with two teeth still attached. Initially, the fragments were determined to be from the same specimen, and claimed to date to between 500,000 and 1 million years old. The reconstruction and examination of the remains revealed the primitive hominid to have a big brain and the mandible structure of an ape. This was touted as a groundbreaking discovery, as this would be the earliest human-like ancestor that had been discovered.

The discovery of the Piltdown Man was met with jubilation from the British scientific community, as the specimen was found in British soil, which stoked national pride. One of the first scientists that Dawson called in to assist, Arthur Keith, was particularly interested in the discovery because it seemed to validate his long held theory that humans evolved to develop larger brains before they adapted to upright walking. The artifacts found at Piltdown were not, however, made available to the scientific community at large, and therefore, were not thoroughly examined and verified.

Doubt of the authenticity of the Piltdown Man initially arose in 1925, when Raymond Dart found a skull in South Africa that would have had a much smaller brain, but the jaw formation of a human. This was inconsistent with the discovery at Piltdown, and cast doubt on the discoveries of both Dawson and Dart. In roughly 1939, a new method was developed for testing and determining age, called flourine dating. The method measures the amount of flourine and other elements that have been absorbed by objects within a strata, and, when compared to other things found within the strata, the approximate age can be determined. In 1949, the Natural History Museum performed these tests on the artifacts from Piltdown, and determined that the skull fragment and jawbone were actually closer to 50,000 years old, not nearly old enough to be a hominid ancestor. Then, in 1953, the fossils underwent full analysis and inspection, revealing that the teeth had been ground down with a metal implement to make them resemble human teeth. Furthermore, using more advanced flourine dating, the skull was determined to be a different age than the jawbone and teeth, which were now believed to simply be old bones, not fossils at all. To top it off, the specimens had been treated with chemicals and paint to mimic the aging of fossils.

The fraud and hoax were revealed to the world in November of 1953, raising many questions about the identity of the perpetrators of the hoax as well as questions about the reliability of the scientific community. Initially, suspicion landed on Dawson and Keith. Dawson, because evidence came to light that he had aspirations of making a great discovery and gaining notoriety, leading him to falsify multiple scientific claims in his lifetime. Arthur Keith was suspected of involvement because the finding seemed to validate his theory of the evolutionary timeline and development process in regards to hominids. In the years since, carbon-14 dating and DNA analysis have revealed the bones to be from different modern species altogether, a human and a chimpanzee. In the mid-1990's, a trunk was found in the storage of the British Museum which contained bone fragments and pieces that had the same chemical treatment applied as had the items found at Piltdown. This trunk belonged to Martin Hinton, a volunteer who worked for Arthur Smith Woodward, and who was disgruntled at the time.

The fact that motive for creating this hoax can be provided for each of these three men, shows that despite the checks and balances and verification inherent in the scientific method, human nature and self-serving can not be overlooked as factors when weighing evidence. This flaw in humans cannot be eradicated, and therefore, must be considered in the course of verification and validation. Human knowledge and understanding is the driving force behind scientific exploration and the quest to fill in the blanks in our history, and the human elements of pride and greed will always be a factor. The lesson to be found in this unfortunate portion of history is that we must always examine information presented to us from a scientific perspective as well as from a human perspective. We must be vigilant in our insistence upon following the scientific method using the most up-to-date technology at our disposal, but perhaps more importantly, we must be willing to admit when we are wrong.