Piltdown Man

Piltdown man "skull"

Piltdown Man was a notorious hoax perpetrated early in 20th century Great Britain, in which a medieval human skull was combined with the lower jaw of an orangutan and subsequently "found" in a gravel pit in the near the village of Piltdown, England. Hailed as the "missing link" between man and ape-like species by promoters of evolution for decades, Piltdown man was exposed as a fraud only through later scientific testing and simple observation. The refusal of evolutionists to adhere to the scientific method and allow independent scrutiny of their claims enabled this fraud to persist for over forty years.

Creationists believe that the Piltdown man was not an isolated incident of bad judgment by evolutionists and that the examples of the Nebraska Man, Java Man, Ocre Man, Neanderthals, and Flores Man can be cited. However, many evolutionists were more than happy to see Piltdown man leave the pantheon of evolutionary ancestors, as they viewed it as an anomaly which did not fit in with the rest of their research.

History

In February 1912 Arthur Smith Woodward of the British Museum received a letter from a Sussex lawyer named Charles Dawson about a discovery he had made while excavating a gravel pit. What Dawson had described were fragments of a skull cap belonging to an ancient human; the skull was found in 1908 in the Piltdown region; other fragments were recovered in 1911, along with animal bones. Excitement over the findings resulted in a more comprehensive excavation in June, 1912, allowing the recovery of more skull fragments, part of the mandible, additional animal bones and stone tools.

Shortly afterward, Piltdown Man was declared the most important fossil find in Europe. The New York Times declared it to be the true missing link; a headline from that paper would read “Darwin Theory Is Proved True.” A leading British scientific journal chimed in:

The fossil human skull and mandible to be described by Mr. Charles Dawson and Dr. Arthur Smith Woodward at the Geological Society as we go to press is the most important discovery of its kind hitherto made in England. The specimen was found in circumstances which seem to leave no doubt of its geological age, and the characters it shows are themselves sufficient to denote its extreme antiquity.

Its "extreme antiquity" was thought to have been between 400,000-500,000 years ago, based on the animal teeth found with the remains. The result of their deductions wasn't just scientific excitement; it was national pride. Germany had Heidleberg Man, the Dutch East Indies had Java Man; in the announcing of Piltdown Man, the British Isles could lay claim to the first Englishman. In gratitude to its discoverer, evolutionary scientists give it a formal name: Eoanthropus dawsoni - "Dawson's dawn man".

Questions begin

A rendering of "Piltdown Man", already entrenched in scientific literature in 1922.

Doubts about the veracity of the Piltdown man remains began almost immediately. In contrast to the British, French and American scientists were more reserved, despite fragments of a second Piltdown man announced in 1917 which convinced many more of the fossil's authenticity. Dawson's death the previous year was an additional aid to Piltdown. But placing the fragments together in the shape of a skull created more problems than it solved. The upper portion was not just lacking the brow ridges they thought should be there, as in the Neanderthal; it was very-much modern human. The surviving portion of the mandible was missing its chin and the condyle - the portion of the jaw which directly attaches to the skull. It was further pointed out that the large size of the bone and two molars was too similar to that of an ape. Placing it with evolutionary lines was difficult, and as new discoveries were made in the next few decades, it became harder for evolutionary scientists to place Piltdown man anywhere on the family tree; most would just leave it out.

In 1922 evolutionist William King Gregory stated in a highly technical book that he published doubts, shared by colleagues, in 1914 about whether the jaw and teeth were associated with the braincase. Gregory stated in the article that someone at the British Museum had confided to him that "a negro skull and a broken ape jaw" had been "artificially fossilized" and "planted in the gravel bed to fool the scientists." Additionaly, a book published at the same time and aimed at the popular market was depicting elaborate speculation about the daily life of Piltdown Man, giving him the tools that were found in the gravel bed. Yet despite the early criticism, Piltdown Man continued to be taught children in school, such as in the textbook A Civic Biology, at issue in the Scopes trial of 1927. Dr. Woodward for his part believed in its authenticity so strongly that when he retired he purchased a home near the gravel pit and spent the remainder of his summers excavating.

Finding of fraud

The date first assigned to the bones was never based on the bones at all, but rather were based on testing of older material found nearby. This is partially due to the fact that modern dating techniques, like the Fluorine Absorption test, were not yet invented (and indeed, when they were, proved essential to Piltdown man's downfall). Like similar artifacts purporting to prove evolution today, there was no independent or public scrutiny of the actual materials.

In 1950 it was shown by the fluorine method of relative dating that the Piltdown mandible and cranial bones were considerably younger geologically than the Lower and Middle Pleistocene fossils said to have been found at the same site. Only then did evolutionists admit that they had been teaching a fraud.

External Links

• The Piltdown Man Fraud by Dr A J Monty White