How old is the Piltdown man?

Answer 1

The Piltdown man, as an archaeological discovery, didn't exist.

Piltdown Man was a hoax. Allegedly dug up from a gravel pit in Piltdown, Sussex, England in 1912, a large number of experts were hoaxed into believing the remains were fossils of a previously undiscovered early man.

It was more than forty years later that the remains were publicly revealed to be a modern human skull with the jawbone of an orangutan tacked on.

Nobody knows the identity of the hoaxer, or at least nobody has ever admitted publicly to knowing. There are many suspects, even Sherlock Holmes' creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, was under suspicion, but Charles Dawson or Martin Hinton remain the prime suspects. The odds are on Dawson, an amateur archaeologist, who was under suspicion from the time of the 'find', partly owing to his previous frauds.

Even though Dawson had a disgraceful history of many previous fake 'finds', most scientists at the time were afraid to speak out against him.

Some scientists who studied and reported on Piltdown Man received knighthoods and other honors, though Dawson didn't live long enough to collect any such recognition himself.

Forty years later, of course, some of those scientists still alive were telling the world they knew it all along, which didn't make them look any less silly.

But other scientists never stopped investigating the convenient evidence, and finally in 1953 several scientists had their evidence published in The Times and, the word of The Timesbeing the last word as far as many Englishmen were concerned, the whole hoax was finally laid bare.

Dawson was long dead by then, having died in 1916, aged 52.

We sometimes wonder how any sensible person could believe some of the internet and email hoaxes that we see; Piltdown Man reminds us we're all too easily fooled, especially if we really wantto believe. Piltdown Man made some popular theories about the development of mankind appear to be proven; this was one reason the 'find' was so eagerly accepted.

The link below has more information on Piltdown Man.