Piltdown Man
Piltdown Man -- Eanthropus dawsoni or "dawn man." Discovered in 1912 by Charles Dawson, a medical doctor and amateur paleontologist who discovered a mandible and a small piece of a skull in a gravel pit near Piltdown England. The jaw-bone was ape-like but the teeth had human characteristics. The skull piece was very human-like. These 2 specimens were combined to form dawn man, which was supposedly 500,000 years old. However, the whole thing turned out to be an elaborate hoax. The skull was indeed human (about 500 years old) but the jaw was that of a modern ape whose teeth had been filed to look like human wear. The success of this hoax for 50 years, despite the scrutiny of the best authorities in the world, led Solly Zuckerman to say, "It is doubtful if there is any science at all in the search for mans fossil ancestry." Had the original bones been available for study, then this hoax would not have continued for as long as it did. It was not until 38 years after the bones had been "found" that the hoax was exposed. In 1953 Kenneth Oakley, Joseph Weiner and Wilfred Le Gros Clark realized that Piltdown man was a hoax. Why is Piltdown Man not being taught as a fraud in our schools when it is a known hoax? ?
NEXT -- Nebraska Man
50 Reasons Home
