Piltdown Hoax Assignment
1. The Piltdown hoax was first established by the finding of "humanoid" remains in 1912 in the village of Piltdown in England. The amateur archeologist Charles Dawson made this discovery in a gravel pit by digging up a skull, and later on finding a piece of jaw bone that resembled an ape jaw with teeth in the weathered down pattern of a human. This finding lead scientists to believe that the remains predated the French, and German remains that were found in their respected countries. In the scientific community this shook things up as it showed a humanoid ancestor that resembled primates. People thought that there was a missing link when there wasn't, leading scientists to depict human evolution as a direct lineage to a primate one. This isn't the case as evolution is more of tree branches than a linked chain. The discovery was found to be a hoax 40 years later when science techniques had advanced and they had decided to find out how old the pieces of bone were. By measuring the fluorine content scientists came to a conclusion that the bones were approximately 100,000 years old, which is way lower than originally thought. This brought upon many questions to the Piltdown bones and how they could have been forged and been able to dupe scientists for years. This made scientists who had made themselves credible over the years by analyzing these bones lose credentials and English scientists who once were proud about the Piltdown findings were now ridiculed.
2. Humans have many faults and being of a prideful nature is one of them. Because the French, and German had early findings of were men came from the English also wanted to be considered as a birthing place to humans. So in order to establish themselves as a birthing place to humans this hoax was used as a way to make the English even more proud of where they are from. This absolutely hindered scientists and history for years. Wasted energy, money, research, and time went into more excavation sites around Piltdown when it could have been used elsewhere.
3. The fluorine tests that the scientists made on the bones are of significance. This proved that by using these newly found tests to find the age of a bone can also help bring to light those that were of false nature. This made science discoveries and testing significant as it paved way for scientific proof to show that it is in fact, fact. And is not something that is made up. Another aspect that was brought up was how they could see that the teeth were filed down to make it look humanoid with magnifying glasses.
4. The "Human" factor can absolutely be removed from science when you have ways to test findings and/or hypothesis. When we use things like carbon dating, fluorine tests, and radiometric dating one removes a lot of the human factor that can cause mess ups like this hoax. Human error can still be made with the input of wrong numbers but these sort of ways in which we test nowadays removes the "Human" factor quite a bit. With computers nowadays this helps us even more. Personally if we can remove the "Human" factor altogether I think it would send our science department way into the future and we would start seeing and understanding things that were once not made possible with human error.
5. The life lesson one can take is always question where the source is coming from and if its credible. This as shown with the Piltdown Hoax can cause quite a disastrous effect if it is overlooked. Credible sources and not taking things at face value can save you quite a lot of time and headaches.
2. Humans have many faults and being of a prideful nature is one of them. Because the French, and German had early findings of were men came from the English also wanted to be considered as a birthing place to humans. So in order to establish themselves as a birthing place to humans this hoax was used as a way to make the English even more proud of where they are from. This absolutely hindered scientists and history for years. Wasted energy, money, research, and time went into more excavation sites around Piltdown when it could have been used elsewhere.
3. The fluorine tests that the scientists made on the bones are of significance. This proved that by using these newly found tests to find the age of a bone can also help bring to light those that were of false nature. This made science discoveries and testing significant as it paved way for scientific proof to show that it is in fact, fact. And is not something that is made up. Another aspect that was brought up was how they could see that the teeth were filed down to make it look humanoid with magnifying glasses.
4. The "Human" factor can absolutely be removed from science when you have ways to test findings and/or hypothesis. When we use things like carbon dating, fluorine tests, and radiometric dating one removes a lot of the human factor that can cause mess ups like this hoax. Human error can still be made with the input of wrong numbers but these sort of ways in which we test nowadays removes the "Human" factor quite a bit. With computers nowadays this helps us even more. Personally if we can remove the "Human" factor altogether I think it would send our science department way into the future and we would start seeing and understanding things that were once not made possible with human error.
5. The life lesson one can take is always question where the source is coming from and if its credible. This as shown with the Piltdown Hoax can cause quite a disastrous effect if it is overlooked. Credible sources and not taking things at face value can save you quite a lot of time and headaches.
Great post! But I feel that you should have mentioned why the discovery of the hoax took so long because it relates to the scientific process.
ReplyDelete-Adriana Chaparro
You have good detail in your synopsis, but a few points to correct misconception:
ReplyDeleteDid you mean "hominid" instead of "humanoid"? The latter isn't really used anywhere but SciFi movies. Piltdown, had it been valid, was a hominid fossil.
"In the scientific community this shook things up as it showed a humanoid ancestor that resembled primates. "
Humans ARE primates, so I'm not sure what you meant to say here.
I understand what your meaning with the missing link section, but this wasn't even necessary to include. What was needed was the actual scientific significance of Piltdown, had it been valid. What would this fossil have taught us about how humans evolved? This was significant because it was the first hominid found on English soil, but there was also *scientific* significance. Piltdown was characterized by large cranium combined with other more primitive, non-human traits, suggesting that the larger brains evolved relatively early in hominid evolutionary process. We now know this to be incorrect, that bipedalism evolved much earlier with larger brains evolving later, but Piltdown suggested that the "larger brains" theory, supported by Arthur Keith (one of the Piltdown scientists) was accurate.
I agree that pride definitely came into play here, but who was at fault because of pride? Those who created the hoax? The scientific community for not being skeptical of the discovery? Or both?
Good job explaining the process that uncovered the hoax. But why were scientists still studying this find some 40 years after it was uncovered? What aspect of science does that represent?
You seem to be assuming all human factors are negative. Is that the case? Do humans bring nothing positive to the scientific process? How about curiosity, ingenuity and innovation? Could we even do science without these factors?
Good life lesson.