Piltdown Man was a great fraud in anthropology. Fragments
of an early hominid skull and jawbone, said to have been collected in
1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, East Sussex, England, suggested the
possibility of an early "ape-man," the longed for "missing link."
Charles Dawson claimed he did not personally find it but that that a workman at the
Piltdown gravel pit had given him a fragment of the skull found before
his visit. Re-exploring the site on several occasions, Dawson found
further fragments of the skull and took them to Arthur Smith Woodward,
of the geological department at the British Museum. In August 1913,
Woodward, Dawson and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest and
trained paleontologist and geologist, began a systematic search of the
spoil heaps specifically to find missing canines. Teilhard de Chardin
found a tooth that, according to Woodward, fitted the jaw perfectly.
(His association with the effort ended then.)
Woodward proposed that Piltdown man represented an evolutionary missing link between apes and humans and supported the notion then prevailing in England that human evolution began with the brain. The Latin name Eoanthropus dawsoni ("Dawson's dawn-man", after the collector Charles Dawson) was given to the specimen. In 1915, Dawson claimed to have found three fragments of a second skull (Piltdown II) at a new site about two miles away from the original finds. So far as is known, the site was never identified and the finds appear undocumented.
Eventually the "find' was revealed to be the lower jawbone of an orangutan deliberately combined with the skull of a fully developed modern human. But suspicions had appeared early. In 1913, David Waterston of King's College London published in Nature his conclusion that the sample consisted of an ape mandible and human skull. French paleontologist Marcellin Boule concluded the same thing in 1915. A third opinion from American zoologist Gerrit Smith Miller concluded Piltdown's jaw came from a fossil ape. In 1923, Franz Weidenreich examined the remains and correctly reported that they consisted of a modern human cranium and an orangutan jaw with filed-down teeth. It is said the perpetrator "aged" the specimen by soaking it in tea.
There were a number of likely suspects because, surprisingly, it was assumed the site was "seeded" with the fakes and were innocently come upon. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, lived near the site and was said to have planted the material to discredit the science of evolution that he opposed as a spiritualist. Stephan Jay Gould long suspected Pierre Teilhard de Chardin himself. Subsequent research clearly points to Dawson. 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.) Axes, Chinese vases, cave drawings--Dawson's was a history of shameless and fearless fraud. Apparently he had hoped Piltdown would allow him to become a member of the Royal Society. One wonders how such an erudite community could be fooled so but much was at stake. The finds "confirmed" the unproven belief that the large modern brain preceded the modern omnivorous diet. And the large brain--and important ancestor--was welcome in England and Europe.
A common misunderstanding about science is that there is, strangely, something magical about it. It is seen as somehow more pure a discipline, less subject to human error and frailty. Thesis, inquiry and conclusion in science are, however, very human. And the possibility of honest mistakes is only the beginning. Ambition, as here, greed, ideology, madness--all of these factors can complicate the scientific world.
Hoyle supported a steady state universe for years. Paulson defended the triple helix. (When Watson and Crick solved the problem with the double helix, Paulson's wife scolded him, "Why didn't you work harder on it?") Lysenko locked a nation in a crazy ideological science heresy for decades.
But science is hard, a lot harder than prejudice, fanaticism, righteousness,
Woodward proposed that Piltdown man represented an evolutionary missing link between apes and humans and supported the notion then prevailing in England that human evolution began with the brain. The Latin name Eoanthropus dawsoni ("Dawson's dawn-man", after the collector Charles Dawson) was given to the specimen. In 1915, Dawson claimed to have found three fragments of a second skull (Piltdown II) at a new site about two miles away from the original finds. So far as is known, the site was never identified and the finds appear undocumented.
Eventually the "find' was revealed to be the lower jawbone of an orangutan deliberately combined with the skull of a fully developed modern human. But suspicions had appeared early. In 1913, David Waterston of King's College London published in Nature his conclusion that the sample consisted of an ape mandible and human skull. French paleontologist Marcellin Boule concluded the same thing in 1915. A third opinion from American zoologist Gerrit Smith Miller concluded Piltdown's jaw came from a fossil ape. In 1923, Franz Weidenreich examined the remains and correctly reported that they consisted of a modern human cranium and an orangutan jaw with filed-down teeth. It is said the perpetrator "aged" the specimen by soaking it in tea.
There were a number of likely suspects because, surprisingly, it was assumed the site was "seeded" with the fakes and were innocently come upon. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, lived near the site and was said to have planted the material to discredit the science of evolution that he opposed as a spiritualist. Stephan Jay Gould long suspected Pierre Teilhard de Chardin himself. Subsequent research clearly points to Dawson. 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.) Axes, Chinese vases, cave drawings--Dawson's was a history of shameless and fearless fraud. Apparently he had hoped Piltdown would allow him to become a member of the Royal Society. One wonders how such an erudite community could be fooled so but much was at stake. The finds "confirmed" the unproven belief that the large modern brain preceded the modern omnivorous diet. And the large brain--and important ancestor--was welcome in England and Europe.
A common misunderstanding about science is that there is, strangely, something magical about it. It is seen as somehow more pure a discipline, less subject to human error and frailty. Thesis, inquiry and conclusion in science are, however, very human. And the possibility of honest mistakes is only the beginning. Ambition, as here, greed, ideology, madness--all of these factors can complicate the scientific world.
Hoyle supported a steady state universe for years. Paulson defended the triple helix. (When Watson and Crick solved the problem with the double helix, Paulson's wife scolded him, "Why didn't you work harder on it?") Lysenko locked a nation in a crazy ideological science heresy for decades.
But science is hard, a lot harder than prejudice, fanaticism, righteousness,
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