The Piltdown Man :: essays research papers

1. A charadeA hoax n. 1. Practical jocundity 2. Deceptive trick 3. Play trick upon 4. Decieveexample Piltdown ManFor forty years they were considered unmatchable of the archaeological finds of the century A fragment of jaw and a discontinue of a skull that could prove man evolved from the apes. They were the grind away of Eoanthropus dawsoni found near Piltdown reciprocal in Sussex. The bones of the "Missing Link." Not since 1953 the name "Piltdown" hasnt been associated with great scientific discovery, but great scientific fraud. It was in that year that a assembly of scientists, lead by Kenneth Page Oakley, attempted to use the new order of farad testing to get a more exact go through on the bones. What the test showed surprised them The jaw was modern and the skull only hexad hundred years old. Additional analysis soon confirmed the fluorine tests. The jaw was really that of an orangutan. It had been filed down and parts that might have suggested its si mian origin were broken off. Both pieces had been treated to suggest great age. Piltdown was announced genuine by several of the most brilliant British scientists of the day Arthur Smith Woodward, Arthur Keith and Grafton Elliot Smith. How did these faked fragments of bone fool the best scientific minds of the time? perchance the desire to be part of a great discovery blind those charged with authenticating it. Many English scientists felt left out by discoveries on the continent.Neanderthal had been found in Germany in 1856, and Cro-Magnon in France in 1868. peradventure national pride had kept the researchers from noticing the scratch marks made by the filing of the jaw and teeth. Items that were apparent later on to investigators after Oakley subject the hoax. Even as early as 1914, though, there were those that doubted the fossils. William King Gregory wrote, "It has been hazard by some that geologically the specimens are not old at all that they may even represent a del iberate hoax..." Who perpetrated the hoax? Many historians lay their bets on Charles Dawson, the amateur geologist that supposedly discovered the bones in a gravel pit. Others, though, lay the blame at the feet of citizenry as diverse as a young Jesuit priest, named Teilhard de Chardin, who assist in the dig, to the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who lived in the area. Dawson was an English solicitor who sought and pile up fossils.