The Piltdown Hoax occurred in 1912, in a small town named Piltdown. When an amateur Archaeologist named Charles Dawson, was digging in a gravel pit, he discovered a portion of an ancient human skull. When Dawson found this piece, he invited prestigious scientists and archaeologists to come and dig with him to see for themselves. He then saw he got more recognized and more respect, they started finding more and more ancient bone fragments including a jaw bone piece with two teeth. This hoax would have taught us that humans evolved from England, not just Asia or Africa. The effects it had on the scientific community were amazement and dedication. They gathered together in search for more clues and artifacts that could bring this discovery to life. When Dawson passed away, the group of scientists and archaeologists stopped finding evidence in the gravel pits. People began to have suspicions now about the "findings" that were found with Dawson. When technology made that first advancement to test bone age, it was a fluoride test. The fluoride test came back and concluded that the bone age was only 100,000 years old, not as old as they once thought. They also tested that jaw as well and it came back around the same. Further down the road through the years, more advancements came and they were able to conclude that the teeth had been scraped down and the bones were stained and the indents were made with tools.
The human faults that came into play in this situation was from the scientists. The scientists didn't question Dawson's findings at all. they believed him wholeheartedly without running any further tests. I think when the scientists began finding artifacts on their own in the gravel pit, with the help of Dawson , they kind of threw out tests and doubts out the window, and had the mindset of ""well why would this be fake?".
The findings that proved that the skull was fake, were purposely staining of the skull, the teeth were shaved down with scrapers, the jaw was broken. The jaw was broken at the tip, bottom of chin area, revealing that the skull came from a female orangutan. If that piece was there when the found it, they would have instantly known it was not human. But since that piece was missing, the scientists had no choice in to trust Dawson and their guts, saying it was real.
I personally don't think it is possible to remove that "human" factor from science, so that mistakes like this won't happen in the future. Because unless we turn science into strictly being run by only machines, then that is when i think you will HAVE to take the human factor out. But because the human brain is behind science, there is no way to tell that mistakes like this won't happen in the future. Science and technology is always advancing, giving that even if mistakes like Piltdown Hoax DO happen in the future, we will catch it when technology then advances again because there will always be something new to back up your findings, and when that happens, you most always find things that you couldn't see before.
The life lesson i can take from this is that, you should always do research on your own when you find things, especially when you find important things like that in a group. It is foolish to fully trust another person with such important evidence. You need to act like an educated adult and do the research and tests for yourself as well to make sure, especially when it is a discovery that is in regards to our human race.
In general, good synopsis with great detail for your reader.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to significance, is it's location the only thing that was significant about this find? Didn't it tell us anything about how humans evolved? 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.
"I think when the scientists began finding artifacts on their own in the gravel pit"
I'm a little confused by this section. Are you talking about all those in the scientific community in general or just those scientists who worked with Dawson? Because not all scientists went out and found more fossils in more gravel pits.
That said, I agree that scientists did indeed bear some of the fault here because they didn't question the discovery as they should. But what about the culprits who created this hoax in the first place? What faults can you attribute to them? Why did they do this?
Good explanation for some of the technology used to uncover the hoax, but what about the fluorine test use by Oakley to confirm that this was a hoax? But aside from the technology, why were scientists still studying this find some 40 years after it was uncovered? What aspect of science does that represent?
"...because the human brain is behind science..."
That is precisely what I was looking for. Human error aside, humans are the force behind science. They generate the questions, develop the hypothesis, create the tests and interpret the results to draw conclusions. Machines can't do any of that.
Good life lesson.
Hello Alicia, I liked reading your post, especially the part how you said that humans faults were responsible for hoax and misinformation that they had at the time. Do you think that we still have the same kind of problems in today's time? I think that we still do have these problems. Even though with all the new technology, we still make mistakes in the scientific community or in human life in general. Because people don't really believe that they are never wrong, and everything leads to them in being correct. Also, do you think that people at the time were to focused on themselves being famous for discovering the skull, which lead them to not to investigate more? I think this was something that they might have considered but ended up not doing anything. This was so the world would see them as great scientist.
ReplyDelete