Piltdown Man

{{bronze}}[[File:Sterkfontein Piltdown man.jpg|right|thumb|165px|The skull in question.]]{{crenav}}
'''Piltdown Man''' (which the locals call "Piwtdown Man") was a [[hoax]] [[fossil]] of a [[hominid]] jaw and skull bone found in a gravel pit in 1912. At the time, it was embraced by some as [[evidence]] for the [[evolution]] of [[humans]] from other ape-like hominids. 

After it was revealed as a hoax in 1953, Piltdown Man came to represent something else entirely: concrete evidence ''against'' evolution. It is repeatedly cited as proof evolution is a hoax &mdash; despite the [[logic]]al flaws in such thinking.

It's also worth noting that Creationists have presented [[Crocoduck|a "Piltdown man" of their own]].

==History==
[[File:Piltdown gang (dark).jpg|thumb|left|165px|Portrait of the Piltdown Gang by John Cooke (1915). Charles Dawson is standing in front of the painting of [[Charles Darwin]].]]
The "Piltdown Man" is a famous hoax consisting of fragments of a skull and jawbone collected in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, a village near Uckfield, East Sussex, in [[England]]. The fragments were thought by many experts of the day to be the fossilised remains of a hitherto unknown form of early human. The significance of the specimen remained the subject of controversy until it was exposed in 1953 as a forgery, consisting of the lower jawbone of an orangutan combined with the skull of a fully developed modern man. Though the Piltdown Man was recognized as a fraud by 1953, it was not until 1996 that the hoaxer was "conclusively" identified as Martin A. C. Hinton, a curator of zoology at London's Natural History Museum.<ref>[https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/piltdown.htm Box of Bones 'Clinches' Identity of Piltdown Palaeontology Hoaxer] by Henry Gee (23 May 1996) ''Nature'' 381, pp. 262-262.</ref> Or was it Charles Dawson, the discoverer of the Piltdown Man? The endless argument of who was the hoaxer would seem to remain unsolved, as Dawson was exposed in 2003 as a serial faker of fossils.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3285163.stm Charles Dawson: 'The Piltdown faker': On the 50th anniversary of the unmasking of the Piltdown Man hoax, archaeologist Dr Miles Russell explains why he believes local solicitor Charles Dawson was the man behind it all] (Friday, 21 November, 2003, 02:01 GMT) ''[[BBC]]''.</ref> There was likely just one forger: Charles Dawson who had the means, motive and opportunity to carry out the hoax, and was present at all three digs.<ref>[https://www.sciencenews.org/article/notorious-%E2%80%98ape-man%E2%80%99-fossil-hoax-pinned-one-wrongdoer Notorious ‘ape-man’ fossil hoax pinned on one wrongdoer: New Piltdown Man probe rules out coconspirators in famous anthropological fraud] by Bruce Bower (7:05pm, August 9, 2016). ''Science News''.</ref><ref>Tim Radford, [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/10/forensic-examination-reveals-identity-of-piltdown-hoax-prime-suspect-charles-dawson "Forensic examination reveals identity of Piltdown hoax prime suspect"], ''[[The Guardian]]'', 10 August 2016</ref> ''Eoanthropus dawsoni'' &mdash; Dawson's dawn man &mdash; was more appropriately named than the victims of the hoax ever realised.

The Piltdown hoax is perhaps the most famous [[paleontology]] hoax in history. It has been prominent for two reasons: the attention paid to the issue of human evolution, and the length of time (more than 40 years) that elapsed from its "discovery" to its exposure as a forgery.

The main point overlooked by detractors of evolutionary theory is only early after its initial discovery did Piltdown Man play a significant part in the overall view of the "descent of man". By 1930, a large number of other finds showed that the earliest evolutionary steps from [[ape]]-like ancestors to humans were about gait and teeth, not [[brain]], and that those early pre-humans were found exclusively in [[Africa]]. Piltdown was young enough (claimed to be about 500,000 years old) to be outside Africa without being an anomaly, but the combination of apelike teeth, big brain and high forehead made it very suspect, until the hoax was finally revealed. In fact, as early as 1913, David Waterston of King's College London published in ''Nature'' his conclusion that the sample consisted of an ape mandible and human skull.<ref>Gould, Stephen J. (1980). The Panda's Thumb. W. W. Norton. pp. 108–124. ISBN 0-393-01380-4.</ref> Likewise, [[French]] paleontologist Marcellin Boule concluded the same thing in 1915. A third opinion from [[American]] zoologist Gerrit Smith Miller concluded that 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.<ref>{{cite book |last=MacRitchie|first=Finlay|year=2011|url=http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ja351EkKUDsC&pg=PA30 |title=Scientific Research as a Career|publisher=CRC Press|page=30|isbn=1439869650}}</ref>

===Nationalism's role (or, where are ''Britain'''s fossils?)===
{{main|Nationalism}}
It has been suggested<ref>http://bozosapiens.blogspot.com/2012/11/piltdown-man-lineage.html</ref> that a sense of hurt national pride played a role in the Piltdown Man hoax. By 1912, many hominid fossils had been discovered in mainland [[Europe]], most notably [[Homo neanderthalensis|Neanderthal Man]] in [[Germany]] and [[Cro-Magnon|Cro-Magnon Man]] in [[France]], and they were even cropping up in [[Africa]] and Java ([[Indonesia]]), yet [[Britain]] had none. Today, we know that this is because the [[British Isles]] were [[Ice age|glaciated]] when early hominids first arrived in Europe, yet for the British people at that time (at the height of the Empire), it was unacceptable that their homeland, the cradle of civilization and industry, the center of all that is right and proper in the world, played no role in the evolution of humanity and was only settled relatively late. In other words, they were nothing more than [[United States|colonials]] compared to the mainland, something that no respectable Brit found appealing whatsoever. The fact that an elephant-bone tool that was conspicuously shaped like a cricket bat<ref>[http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-20729787 The infamous Piltdown 'cricket bat'] 16 December 2012 ''[[BBC]]''.</ref> accompanied the Piltdown "discovery" lends further credence to this [[hypothesis]].

==Problems with creationist interpretation==
The fact that Piltdown Man was a deliberate fraud has repeatedly been used by [[creationist]]s and [[intelligent design]] advocates as evidence that ''the entirety of evolution'' is a fraud. The problem with this should be self-evident, but let's go through it anyway.

It is true that Piltdown Man was a deliberate fraud, which did confuse paleontologists for many years. Some [[scientist]]s accepted it, while others were [[skeptical]] right from the start. Since ''nature doesn't lie'', most scientists take field discoveries at face value, trying to explain the discovery within the current understanding of the particular field. However, anything that falls too far outside of the expected is received with a highly skeptical eye. The case of Piltdown is no exception, and it is worth noting that experts in the field almost immediately began to question the find, as they should have.

As pointed out In James Burke's "Worlds Without End" (''Day the Universe Changed'' series), one of the reasons the Piltdown hoax lasted as long at it did was it fitted the then prevalent structure of finding a human like skull with an ape-like face.  In fact, in 1913, David Waterston of King's College London stated in ''[[Nature (journal)|Nature]]'' that the find was an ape mandible and human skull<ref>Gould, Stephen J. (1980). ''The Panda's Thumb''. W. W. Norton and Co., pp. 108–124, ISBN 0-393-01380-4</ref> and [[French]] paleontologist Marcellin Boule said the same thing in 1915. In 1923, Franz Weidenreich stated, after careful examination, that the Piltdown find was a modern human cranium and an orangutan jaw with filed-down teeth<ref>MacRitchie, Finlay (2011). ''Scientific Research as a Career''. CRC Press. p. 30. ISBN 1439869650.</ref> but because Piltdown fit the structure so well, other scientists let the model drive their thinking rather than the evidence itself.

Piltdown Man was created with the objective of fooling scientists, not laypeople, so it only succeeded for a short time. The very fact that 1) it was eventually revealed to be a fake, and 2) that it was exposed as such ''by scientists'' is evidence that science is inherently capable of seeing through [[Bullshit|illusion]], acknowledging errors, and refining its ideas by use of the [[scientific method]].  It shows that [[theories]] like evolution are based on solid and consistent evidence<ref>Dare we say, [[fact]]s?</ref> that behaves in expected ways. It is also worth noting that, though the creationists like to chirp about evolution's errors, frauds, or simple mistakes, not one of those errors or frauds has been exposed by so-called "creation science". Every single one of them, from Piltdown to [[Racialism|Haeckel]], were found by experts in evolution, doing the work of [[evolutionist]]s.

Conversely, [[religious]]ly-derived creationist beliefs do not change in light of new evidence, are not capable of evaluating the quality of a specimen, cannot distinguish a hoax from a real specimen, and cannot adapt to new [[information]] about the world from [[genetics]] to the size of our [[universe]]. Most importantly, they fail to provide any new understanding of the world.

The fallacy of those using Piltdown Man to disprove evolution can be summed up thusly:

*A single forgery does not overturn the actual evidence that does exist and ''isn't'' a forgery. If you're inclined to think otherwise, consider that the Paluxy River tracks incident doesn't (by itself) disprove human-dinosaur coexistence.
*A single forgery does not prove that all evidence is forged (this would be [[confirmation bias]] at its very worst, a [[non sequitur]] at the very least).
*Science actually spotted the fraud and corrected the mistake. Meanwhile, [[Christians]] still insist that the [[Shroud of Turin]] was [[Jesus]]' burial cloth, even though it's been proven to be a forgery made in [[medieval]] Europe, based on [[radiocarbon dating]] (plus other lines of evidence indicating it was a hoax).
*Piltdown Man was never universally accepted by the scientific establishment in the first place, due to its conflict with other pieces of evidence &mdash; it takes a ''lot more than that'' to fool practicing scientists.
* The techniques that were used to definitively prove that Piltdown Man was fake are the exact same techniques as those used to date real fossils.

==See also==
*[[Scientific evidence of evolution being a hoax]]
*[[Climategate]]
*[[Arthur Conan Doyle]] — was alleged to be the perpetrator in the 1974 book ''Naked is the Best Disguise''
*[[Nebraska Man]]

==External links==
*[http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/piltdown.html Talk origins faq]
*[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/feb/05/piltdown-man-archaeologys-greatest-hoax Piltdown Man: British Archaeology's Greatest Hoax], ''[[The Guardian]]'', 5 February 2012
*[http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2009/05/27/nebraska-man-nothing-but-the-t/ The “Million-Dollar Pig’s-Tooth Mystery”]

==References==
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[[ru:Пилтдаунский человек был подделан]]
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[[Category:Creationism]]
[[Category:Pseudoscience]]
[[Category:Hoaxes]]

Categories: Creationism, Pseudoscience, Hoaxes