Eoanthropus Dawsoni

In the early 20^th Century archaeologists were desperate to locate the “missing link” between humans and apes. At this time there were multiple theories on how human evolved to their present state. Some archaeologists believed that early man developed a large brain and started to walk upright and become bipedal after the expansion of the brain. Another theory stated that humans started to walk more upright and became bipedal and then the expansion of human brains occurred. This pursuit of knowledge regarding the theories of mans origins led to one of the greatest scientific hoaxes of all time, the Piltdown Man.

                In the year 1908 an amateur paleontologist by the name of Charles Dawson began to excavate a gravel pit in the British town of Piltdown. Dawson came upon this site after he was presented with curious bone fragments that were found by workers at the gravel pit. After some time working on the site, Dawson enlisted the help of Arthur Smith Woodward who was the keeper of the Department of Geology at the British Museum at the time. The two continued to excavate the site until in 1912 when they located jaw and skull fragments that they thought could be the link between man and ape. The bone fragments seemed to show a very human fragments and with an ape like jaw in close proximity to each other inside the gravel pit. Woodward used the bone fragments to reconstruct a full skull which he thought to be of an early human who had lived approximately 500,000 years ago. The skull constructed by Woodard backed up the theory that human brains enlarged before becoming bipedal, this theory was supported by a Scottish anthropologist by the mane of Arthur Keith.

                Some scientists of the day said that the skull fragments didn’t belong together, that they were too different to be a part of the same being. Others were simply excited to finally have a fossil of early man be found in Britain. Yet, eventually, the fossils found by Dawson were later discovered to be a fraudulent.

                For three decades the skull was generally believed to be real. Yet in 1953 advanced methods of fluorine based dating of fossils were used on Dawson’s Piltdown Man fragments. The fluorine based dating showed that the fragments were only 50,000 years old and that Piltdown Man had never existed. Dawson’s find had fooled the world for such a long period of time partly due to potassium dichromate being applied to the fossils to make them appear much older than they actually were. Dawson’s find had effectively delayed proper theories of human evolution for decades.

                Today it is believed that Dawson may have known that the fragments were fraudulent the whole time and merely wanted recognition. This brings in the human element of science. “To err is human” but this was more than a simple “err”. We now know that Martin Hinton possessed the chemicals necessary to apply potassium dichromate to the fragments. Perhaps Dawson asked Hinton to coat the fragments of Piltdown man to complete his hoax. Errors like this can never be completely taken out of science. People have in the past attempted similarly appalling hoaxes, yet scientific review eventually proved them wrong. Incidents like Piltdown Man tarnish the name of science, but eventually the truth is always found by inquisitive minds that use real science to locate the flaws in the pseudo-science that was used before them.

                A life lesson we can take away from the incident of Piltdown Man is don’t skip steps in science. By following the scientific method and leaving as many scientific findings open and available for peer review, incidents like Piltdown Man may not occur again.