Piltdown, East Sussex, England 1912 is where Charles Dawson, a British amateur archaeologist, along with Arthur Smith Woodward, England's leading geologist at the time, and French paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin excavated an ancient human skull as well as a part of that same skulls jaw which was dubbed Piltdown Man. the significance of Piltdown man is that at the time of its discovery it led to the belief that the human brain developed to large sizes before humans could walk up right and that England's human ancestors may have been the oldest of all ancestors.
However the hoax was exposed after World War II in 1949 through the use of a Fluorine test which involved measuring the fluorine content within fossils, with bones buried underground build up fluorine and the longer a bone is under ground the more fluorine it builds up, in order to roughly date the fossils. the results revealed that the fossils were no where near 1 million years old. further research ensued which revealed that the jaw was actually the jaw of a female orangutan and that the teeth of the jaw were filed down. this of course sent a shock to scientist since nobody before hand would have thought that a hoax to this degree could happen.
when coming to human faults chances are the main faults are A. not bringing up many questions about the fossil finding due to the leading geologist in England, giving him high prestige, having identified the findings despite being an expert on fish fossils. and B. national pride because if this hoax wasn't a hoax at all then it would have meant that humans the oldest human ancestors originated from England which beforehand hadn't had much findings on ancient human fossils.
I don't think that its possible to remove the "human" factor from science because human error leads to revision of our mistakes and scientific theories are never set and stone and are always up to be revised in the event an error is found which in turn allows to gain greater understanding of the world around us. as such I wouldn't want to remove the "human" factor either for that same reason.
the lesson here is quite obvious, be cautious about taking information at face value. there may be times where things are exactly what they appear to be with no hidden secrets, but there will be times, more often than not, where information that's presented to you may be incorrect or have some type of error or may be the result of invalid information or research or falsified findings and at that point its best to question such information and try to find the truth to it or you could risk believing a lie for half your life.
Good concise synopsis and you included the key significances of this particular fossil find, had it been valid.
ReplyDeleteI agree that scientists did not ask enough questions of this discovery and that national pride may well have played a role in this. But how about on the other end of the hoax? What human faults may have come into play here that encouraged the perpetrators to create the fake fossil to begin with?
You don't have a section on the positive aspects of science that helped to uncover the hoax. You do a good job of explaining the new technology in an earlier section, but why were scientists still examining this fossil some 40 years after it was discovered? What positive aspects of the process of science does this represent?
With regard to human error, I agree that with error comes revision, but do humans only contribute negative aspects to science? Don't humans also bring positive aspects to science, such as curiosity, ingenuity, and intuition?
Good conclusion.
I really liked your title of your blog!! Your explanation of the Fluorine test and the longer a bone is under ground the more fluorine it builds up which helps date the fossils. You do have a few required sections missing for this blog like, positive aspects of science that helped to uncover the hoax and what human faults may have come into play. With that said, I totally agree your conclusion.
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