Piltdown Hoax
The Piltdown Hoax was a well known mystery that took place in 1912. An Amateur Archaeologist by the name of Charles Dawson was digging in a gravel pit and found a fossil human-like skull that looked ancient. This was also near Piltdown village in East Sussex, England. There was also a set of teeth and a jawbone. The scientific significance would be that it would of taught us the connections between humans and apes. This was something scientist payed so much attention to because they though they have found a new species of the life of a human/ape. The Hoax was quiet for so many years, but came out that after scientists looks at other early human fossils, for example it didn’t have the same jaw shape as the one Dawson found. As the years went by, we had advance technology to take a closer look at the ancient artifacts. Mainly everyone who was working on this mystery felt super humiliated due to the fact that this whole thing wasn't what they thought it was.
Not just scientists, but human beings in general have faults all the time because its part of life and shows that its not always perfect. When people discover something something like this for example, they tell everyone and everyone right away believes it. Its easy to believe something when you see it but sometimes its not all true. There will always be agrees and disagrees, in fact I’m pretty sure there were people who didn’t believe in what Dawson found. I understand that this was something to be excited about because it was something nobody has seen before. I think that we should get all the facts first before telling anyone about the discovery because its to soon to confirm about and its not all 100% true.
Part of the scientific process was the use of fluorine testing, which helped scientists to date it. Results showed that the remains were a good deal younger then had previously been said to be closer to 50,000 than 500,000 years old. Another tool they used was the microscope. With that, it showed that the teeth had been filed down by someone to make it look believable as human teeth. Along with noticing that the other parts of the remains from the Piltdown location appeared to have stains on them to match each other and to match the gravel. At this point authorities came to an agreement that the Piltdown Man was indeed a fraud.
I believe it would be a bad idea to remove the human factor from science. I think that by removing it won’t be beneficial because we as humans are the ones discovering and looking into stuff like this. We humans are the ones in control of the world, not anything else. As the years go by and technology gets better, sure there will be devices that don’t require human support but theres a difference between a machine doing it and us as humans doing it. Think about it, who makes tech stuff? We do and without us, how else will discoveries like this be handled? Humans and today’s technology work together greatly. Human factor must stay no matter what because we humans were put on this planet for a reason.
The life lesson I can take from this is to always be 100% sure if that certain topic is true of false. Sure its something all of us have never seen before and its something new, but we all can’t believe it if theres no evidence to support it. You cant just look at it once and think its real, thats not how it work. The way how it work is if you do your research and make sure to have all the facts before showing it off to the world. Its always good to have a positive mind about everything in the science work field, but its better to be sure about something rather then thinking its real.
You raise a really good point on how, as science continued with new fossil finds, it was the recognition that the new finds contradicted Piltdown that led scientists to return to that fossil to re-examine it.
ReplyDeleteBeyond that, good detail in your synopsis but I need to offer correction on the issue of "significance".
The scientific significance would be that it would of taught us the connections between humans and apes."
This is the same thing as saying "missing link". It isn't the words that are a problem, it's the meaning.
Piltdown, had it been valid, would NOT have demonstrated a link between humans and aps. First of all, humans ARE apes, but beyond that, Piltdown would have been a branch on the hominid family tree. It would have had nothing to say about the connection between humans and non-human apes. It didn't go back that far in evolutionary time.
So the issue of significance remains. Yes, this was significant because it was the first hominid found on English soil, but there was also *scientific* significance. Had Piltdown been valid, it would have helped us better understand *how* humans (not *if*) evolved from that common ancestor with non-human apes. 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.
"When people discover something something like this for example, they tell everyone and everyone right away believes it."
Actually, not in the scientific community. Scientists can gain prestige by shooting down the claims of another scientist, so there is no incentive to accept a conclusion without question... in fact, it is the JOB of a scientist to question, so beyond incentive, scientists actually failed to do their job properly when they accepted Piltdown with so little skepticism. This needs to be explored. So why did the scientists fail to do their jobs? Remember that Germany and France had already found their own hominid fossils. This would have been England's first. Would you like to be the British scientist that killed England's chance to be on the hominid map? Could national pride have played a role here?
Beyond the scientific community, what about the perpetrators themselves? Why did they create the hoax in the first place? What human faults are involved there?
Good discussion on the technology involved in uncovering this hoax. I would have liked you to pull in your earlier point that drove scientist to return and re-test Piltdown because newer finds contradicted the conclusions of Piltdown. This is just as important as the technology.
I agree with your conclusion in the "human factor" section, but beyond humans being the ones creating the technology, is there anything else positive that humans bring to the scientific process? Could we even do science without the curiosity in humans that push them to ask those initial questions? Or their ingenuity to create tests of their hypotheses? Or the intuition that helps them draw connections and conclusions from disparate pieces of information? No machine can do that.
Good life lesson, but can we always be 100% sure? Is that realistic?