WEBVTT - Unearthed! Piltdown Man 0:00:01.160 --> 0:00:04.120 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:15.160 Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:19.200 I'm Tray, Steve Wilson, and I'm Holly Frying. So the 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:24.520 Piltdown Man one of the world's most infamous instances in 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:29.360 scientific fraud, and in August of which is this year, 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:34.199 researchers published a paper in Royal Society Open Science that 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:36.919 concluded that it was the work of a single hoaxer. 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:42.640 So rather than rolling that into our Unearthed episodes, which 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:45.400 are just around the corner, we are doing an entire 0:00:45.600 --> 0:00:50.000 Unearthed episode just on this. Uh. We're going to talk 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:54.520 about the pilt Down Man, how this hoax played out, 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:57.840 and what exactly was unearthed in this newly published paper 0:00:57.920 --> 0:01:01.360 that inspired us to do the episode. Yeah. So that 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:04.720 we've gotten lots of requests for over the years. Yeah, 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:06.360 And for me, I've sort of had it on the 0:01:06.720 --> 0:01:09.640 I'll get to that one day maybe list. And now 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:11.399 this is a time when I can be proud of 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:14.920 my procrastination because it enabled this cool thing to come out. 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:20.119 Well what what is? Uh? One of the things that's 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:22.520 intriguing to me is that I literally wrote this on 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:26.319 the list in August right that it has. I have 0:01:26.360 --> 0:01:29.479 been planning to do this episode right now as of August, 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:35.840 and now it seems particularly relevant because it is such 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:43.119 a cautionary tale about not just uncritically observing absorbing things 0:01:43.360 --> 0:01:47.680 that are announced as news. The whole time I was 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:49.680 working on this outline, I was like, this is this 0:01:49.800 --> 0:01:54.840 feels like we just need a reminder so it makes 0:01:54.840 --> 0:01:57.400 sense of why the pilt down hoax even happened in 0:01:57.440 --> 0:01:59.520 the first place. We actually need to go all the 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:03.160 way back to Charles Darwin's publication of On the Origin 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:06.960 of Species in eighteen fifty nine. The full title of 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:10.000 that particular writing is on the Origin of Species by 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:14.160 Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of favored races 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:18.280 in the Struggle for Life, and this details Darwin's theories 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:21.280 of evolution by natural selection, which are at the foundation 0:02:21.440 --> 0:02:26.720 of evolutionary biology. When he published this book, Darwin knew 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:29.280 that one type of evidence that would really support his 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:33.680 theories was in relatively short supply, and that is transitional fossils. 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:37.080 These are fossils that have some traits belonging to an 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:40.800 older species and some belonging to a more modern species. 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:46.200 And transitional fossils are physical evidence of an intermediary evolutionary 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:51.760 step that demonstrates how life is changing over time. One 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:56.200 famous example of a transitional fossil is archaeopterics. It's got 0:02:56.280 --> 0:02:59.240 some features that are more like a reptile and others 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:01.839 that are more like a bird, and today it's viewed 0:03:01.880 --> 0:03:06.160 as a transitional fossil between non avian dinosaurs and modern birds. 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:10.640 Darwin knew that people would try to discredit his work 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:14.640 because at that point in history, not that many transitional 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:18.959 fossils had been found. Archaeotrics, for example, would not even 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:22.079 be discovered until eighteen sixty, and a lot of people 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:26.040 at that point described it more as the first bird 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:29.880 rather than as a transitional fossil. Six of course, was 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:33.359 after his book had already been published, but Darwin actually 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:38.680 anticipated actually these exact source of discoveries. He explained in 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:41.960 the Origin of Species that this lack of evidence was 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:45.640 probably due to an incomplete geological record and not to 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:49.760 an actual absence of the fossils that would prove him Right. 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:54.760 After Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species, there 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:59.360 was a big focus on finding more transitional fossils. In particular, 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:02.760 people were hoping to find the missing link, that single 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:06.800 fossil that would conclusively demonstrate a connection between ancient apes 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:11.920 and modern humans. Today, we know about lots of transitional 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:15.760 fossils that detailed the progression of all kinds of life. 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:19.200 We have transitional fossils and the evolutionary family trees of 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:22.200 birds and fish and whales and horses and elephants and 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:27.800 on and on. I literally could just randomly name animals. 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:31.239 That's the thirty minute podcast episode is just Tracy saying 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:34.560 animal words. It starts to sound like the list of 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:37.360 what they were eating in Monty Python in the Holy Grail. 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:41.359 So in terms of human life, the idea of a 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:46.040 single missing link between ancient hominids and modern humans has 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:49.480 really vanished under the weight of a lot of individual 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:52.720 transitional fossils that add up to a human family tree 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:55.880 that's full of forks and branches. It is not a 0:04:56.040 --> 0:05:00.320 single linear, one lane road that starts on a and 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:05.600 ends on human connected with one magical quote missing link fossil. 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:09.080 It's a lot more complicated than that. Yeah. Uh. In 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:11.840 nineteen twelves, though, the missing link would have been an 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:16.599 earth shattering, groundbreaking and career making discovery, and that is 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:20.159 what brings us to pilt Down Man. In February of 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:24.080 nineteen twelve, Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, keeper of geology at 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:27.120 the British Museum now called the Natural History Museum, got 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:31.040 a letter from Charles Dawson. In addition to being a solicitor, 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:34.160 Dawson was an amateur archaeologist, and he said he had 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:38.520 found something very exciting in some gravel beds and pilt Down, Sussex. 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:42.680 According to Dawson's account, he had noticed that a road 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:45.480 where he lived had been repaired with some odd flints, 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:48.599 and he traced the flints to their source, which turned 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:51.960 out to be a shallow gravel bed. While talking the 0:05:51.960 --> 0:05:54.080 workers there, he learned that they dug up something they 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:57.719 described as quote like a coconut, and that they'd thrown 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:01.599 the pieces away. Dawson dug these fragments out of the 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:04.039 trash and found that they were part of a skull, 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:06.960 and over the next couple of years he'd gone back 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:09.640 to the pit and found several other pieces of skull 0:06:09.720 --> 0:06:13.599 and jaw bone before finally writing his letter to Smith Woodward. 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:17.760 Uh these skull fragments and jaw bone, he described, looked 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:22.040 somewhat human, but not exactly, and his letter he compared 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:24.760 his discovery to a jaw bone that had been discovered 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:27.360 by a workman in a sand pit near Heidelberg, Germany, 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:31.800 in nineteen oh seven, which had been named Homo heidelberg insis. 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:36.920 In Homo heidelberg insis had some features in common with 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:40.039 Homo erectus and others in common with modern humans or 0:06:40.040 --> 0:06:44.640 Homo sapiens. Dawson said his discovery quote would quote rival 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:50.520 h heidelberg Insis in solidity. Dawson and Smith Woodward kept 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:53.240 quiet about this find at first as they did some 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:56.400 more digging at the pit, and then they presented their 0:06:56.400 --> 0:06:59.599 findings to a packed meeting of the Geological Society of 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:03.760 London on December eighteenth of nineteen twelve. They had an 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:07.680 ape like mandible or jawbone. Two of its molars were 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:11.080 in place and had significant wear, and then there were 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:13.960 pieces of the brain case of a skull, which seemed 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:17.080 a lot more human than the mandible did. They had 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:20.280 also found some stone tools and fragments of other non 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:24.520 human mammal fossils. Their coloring was comparable to that of 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:27.480 the gravel bed, and the conclusion was that these fossils 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:33.560 were at least five hundred thousand years old. Regarding their presentation, A. C. Hadn't, 0:07:33.600 --> 0:07:36.680 writing in the journal Science, said quote Mr Dawson gave 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:39.200 an account of the finding of the specimens, the nature 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:43.080 and geographical and geological position of the gravel bed, and 0:07:43.240 --> 0:07:47.360 Dr Smith Woodward described the remains in a most excellent manner. 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:50.840 Hadn't went on to write, quote, there could be no 0:07:50.960 --> 0:07:53.760 doubt that this is a discovery of the greatest importance 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:56.760 and will give rise to much discussion. It is the 0:07:56.800 --> 0:07:59.480 nearest approach we have yet reached to a missing link. 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:04.040 Probably few will deny that EU Anthropist Dawson I is almost, 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:07.640 if not quite, as much human as Simian. I'm just 0:08:07.640 --> 0:08:09.680 gonna say we are guessing on how that is pronounced, 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:15.640 because it seems like no one knows. So your Anthropist 0:08:15.720 --> 0:08:18.720 Dawson I is what they've named their find, and that 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:25.000 means Dawson's dawn Man, which is not self congratulatory at all. 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:27.720 I mean, I know, often scientific names of things are 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:32.200 named after the person who found or discovered or put 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:35.040 them in a taxonomy or whatever, but like Dawson's dawn Man, 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:40.800 it just seems particularly back Patty Yeah uh in nineteen 0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:44.560 thirteen and nineteen fourteen, excavations continued at the gravel pit 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:48.760 where these first fossils had reportedly been recovered, and these 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:53.120 excavations unearthed some other evidence as well. There was a 0:08:53.240 --> 0:08:56.160 canine tooth which had some features in common with ape 0:08:56.160 --> 0:08:59.679 teeth and others in common with modern human teeth. They 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:02.760 also found a carved slab of bone that became known 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:05.480 as the cricket bat because it was roughly shaped like one. 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:09.880 Although Dawson did keep excavating, or at least saying he 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:12.480 was excavating, the start of World War One meant that 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:15.600 it took place on a much smaller scale. He sent 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:18.040 a couple of postcards to Smith Woodward saying that he 0:09:18.080 --> 0:09:20.880 had found some other fossils and other sites not far 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:23.960 away from that first find, but otherwise this was really 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:26.559 the end of the discoveries that pilt Down, and then 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:31.120 Dawson died in nineteen sixteen. A lot of scientists were 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:36.280 very excited about the pilt Down discoveries. Understandably, not only 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:38.480 were they put forth as the missing link that was 0:09:38.559 --> 0:09:41.800 so important to evolutionary science at the time, but they 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:44.439 had also been found in Britain, which meant that the 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:47.400 British Isles had played an important part in the evolution 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:51.080 of all of humanity. The British Empire was at this 0:09:51.160 --> 0:09:54.960 point the largest empire and human history, controlling almost one 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:57.800 quarter of all of the land on Earth. So the 0:09:57.840 --> 0:10:00.319 idea that Britain had also been a key stone and 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:04.680 human evolution carried this mix of pride and of wealth. Obviously, 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:08.280 these people were quite ready to believe that Britain was 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:11.800 actually the birthplace of the human at the human species. 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:17.440 So although it was not universally accepted, the pilt Down 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:20.960 Man played a major role in scientific thought about human 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:25.400 evolution for about the next forty years. More than two 0:10:25.600 --> 0:10:28.280 d and fifty papers and monographs were published about it, 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:30.840 and it was cited in more than seventy publications. So 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:32.640 it was a pretty big deal. And it was also 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:35.960 completely made up. We're going to talk about after a 0:10:35.960 --> 0:10:45.239 sponsor break. So after this announcement, many in the scientific 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:48.000 community just took Dawson and Smith Woodward's report to the 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:52.000 Geological Society of London at face value. The original pieces 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:55.120 of these specimens were locked away in storage for safekeeping, 0:10:55.160 --> 0:10:58.520 but casts of them were made to share with researchers 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:01.960 who wanted to do further stuff. A A lot of 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:05.800 the early scientific debate about these specimens didn't even consider 0:11:05.880 --> 0:11:09.680 the basic question of whether they were authentic at all. Instead, 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:12.720 it was about things like whether smith Wouldwards interpretation of 0:11:12.720 --> 0:11:15.920 the skull was correct. He had made a reconstruction of 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:19.240 the skull based on nine fragments that had initially been found. 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:23.160 The resulting skull had a capacity of about one thousand 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:28.120 and seventy six cubic centimeters to other anatomists and anthropologists 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:33.280 disagreed about whether Smith Wouldwards reconstruction was accurate. Sir Arthur 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:35.640 Keith of Scotland was on one side of this debate, 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:38.560 and Sir Grafton Elliott Smith of Australia was on the other. 0:11:39.120 --> 0:11:42.079 Keith made his own reconstruction, which had a capacity of 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:45.240 about fifteen hundred cubic centimeters, or about the same as 0:11:45.240 --> 0:11:48.880 a modern human skull, which prompted Smith Woodward to revise 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:52.679 his original reconstruction. Smith, on the other hand, came to 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:56.880 different conclusions, insisting that the original one thousand, seventy six 0:11:56.920 --> 0:11:59.600 cubic centimeters was a lot more correct. These all had 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:02.319 to do with basically how the skull pieces were lined up. 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:07.079 And what parts of the skull bones people thought they 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:10.480 were from. Like you think of your skull as one 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:14.040 solid piece, but it's actually several pieces connected by sutures. 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:18.520 So the question was whether these nine fragments of skull 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:22.559 were being correctly used to make a reconstruction, not whether 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:26.280 they were actually from a prehistoric human. There was also 0:12:26.320 --> 0:12:28.439 a lot of talk about whether the canine tooth that 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:30.960 was found later was really part of the same mandible 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:34.480 or not, but there was no talk about whether any 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:39.000 of these pieces were actually genuine. Basically, a big chunk 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:42.800 of the scientific literature surrounding this fine just was credulous 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:46.280 and uncritical from the start. And to be fair, many 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:49.080 of the technologies that we used to authenticate the age 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:52.000 of fossils today were not invented yet and they would 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:54.680 not be for more than twenty years. And also a 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:57.680 lot of the other fossil evidence today that we know 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:02.280 about that shows that hominids developed more humanlike jaws before 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:06.160 they developed developed bigger brain cases, those had not been 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:08.960 discovered yet either, so they didn't really have things to 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:12.320 compare them to you. But even so, a lot of 0:13:12.320 --> 0:13:15.160 people studying this fine simply took for granted from the 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:18.040 beginning that it was legitimate, and they framed their study 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:22.560 from there, Like the quote popularized by Carl Sagan, Extraordinary 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:25.079 claims like I found the missing link in a gravel 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:29.400 pit and pilt down require extraordinary evidence, and that just 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:34.200 was not present here. This uncritical acceptance that the piltd 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:38.320 Down Man was real was certainly not completely universal, especially 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:41.640 as time passed and people had more opportunities to study it. 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:46.000 For example, American zoologist Garrett Smith Miller published quote the 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:49.679 Jaw of the Piltdown Man in Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections in 0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:53.559 nineteen fifteen, and which he concluded that the skull fragments 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:56.080 did come from a real human skull, but that the 0:13:56.200 --> 0:14:00.520 mandible came from an extinct species of chimpanzee. Writing an 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:05.120 American anthropologist, William K. Gregory later published an analysis the 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:08.679 molars which concluded quote, I believe that Mr. Miller is 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:11.960 fully justified in holding that the lower molars of the 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:15.480 pilt down jaw are those of a chimpanzee and not 0:14:15.760 --> 0:14:21.080 of an extinct genus of hominity. As more analysis emerged, 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:23.680 there were also people who not only questioned whether this 0:14:23.720 --> 0:14:28.280 work was quote scientifically justifiable, but also warned that all 0:14:28.320 --> 0:14:33.160 this buzz and heightened expectations were dangerous. George Grant mcgurdy 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:36.120 had published a fairly credulous overview of the pilt Down 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:39.840 findings in nineteen fourteen, but by nineteen sixteen he had 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:43.080 not only revised his own opinions, but was also alarmed 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:46.320 at the state of scientific inquiry around the pilt Down Man. 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:51.359 In the journal Science, mcgourty outlined a range of doubts, criticisms, 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:55.400 and skeptical inquiries that had come in from the United States, Britain, France, 0:14:55.440 --> 0:14:59.040 and Italy, among other places, and he included this warning quote. 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:04.600 Has not this dazzling combination blinded the discoverers and indirectly 0:15:04.720 --> 0:15:08.240 some of their colleagues, even at a distance, because of 0:15:08.280 --> 0:15:11.760 the high pitch of expectancy to which recent discoveries in 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:17.560 the prehistoric field have not, without reason contributed. Under the circumstances, 0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:22.880 such blindness, if only temporary, would be pardonable in comparatively harmless, 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:27.239 but serious danger lurks in the possibility of its persisting 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:30.640 long enough to become an obsession and a hindrance to 0:15:30.840 --> 0:15:35.240 future progress in this particular field, and that's exactly what 0:15:35.320 --> 0:15:38.840 was happening. In spite of the growing body of skepticism 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:42.600 and criticism, the pilt Down man became a widely accepted 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:46.560 part of a body of scientific literature. Things started to 0:15:46.680 --> 0:15:50.560 unravel a little about a decade after the pilt Down discovery. First, 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:54.080 in it was discovered that these gravel beds where the 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:57.840 fossils were found were not old enough to contain five 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:03.960 hundred thousand year old fossils. Whoops uh. Then, starting in 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:08.600 the nineteen thirties, paleontologists started finding other hominid fossils in 0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:11.440 other parts of the world, and they seemed to suggest 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:14.560 an evolution of human life that was taking place primarily 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:17.960 in Africa and Asia. And as we noted earlier that 0:16:18.040 --> 0:16:20.640 the jaws were becoming more human like before the brain 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:24.640 cases and not the other way around, it made less 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:27.600 and less sense that some critical moment in human evolution 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:30.600 had happened on some tiny islands off the northwest coast 0:16:30.600 --> 0:16:33.800 of Europe, following a totally different pattern from what was 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:38.200 being discovered elsewhere. But even so, a sizeable chunk of 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:41.320 the scientific community carried on believing that the pilt Down 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:46.320 specimens were genuine. A number of chemical and Isotopic dating 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:49.480 methods started to be developed in the nineteen forties, and 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:53.200 in nineteen fifty three, Kenneth Oakley, then head of anthropology 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:56.400 at the British Museum, analyze the pilt Down Man's skull 0:16:56.480 --> 0:17:01.280 fragments through fluorine dating, and the fragments were definitely much 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:04.160 newer than Dawson and Smith Woodward had said, and they 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:07.320 were way way too new to be the missing link. 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:11.040 The first test suggested that it was only fifty thousand 0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:15.560 years old, not ten times that. Following Oakley's discovery, the 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:19.159 British Museum publicly announced that the pilt Down Man was 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:23.960 a fraud. And these flooring tests definitely were not perfect. 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:27.240 They showed that all the skull pieces were the same age, 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:30.640 whereas later analysis would show that in fact they were not, 0:17:31.400 --> 0:17:34.640 and later on more refined dating methods would also determine 0:17:34.680 --> 0:17:37.840 that the pieces were only about six hundred years old, 0:17:38.200 --> 0:17:42.240 certainly not fifty thousand. But in spite of those shortcomings, 0:17:42.280 --> 0:17:44.960 they were definite proof that the pilt Down Man was 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:49.040 not a real hominid fossil. Yeah. As our ability to 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:52.639 test things got better over time because we learned, so 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:55.200 did our ability to point out just how fake these 0:17:55.200 --> 0:18:00.639 things really were. Further analysis showed the mandible was really 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:05.040 from a juvenile orangutan, and that all these pieces that 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:10.960 had been purported to be a person's remains were actually 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:15.000 meticulously altered to look genuine. They had been stained to 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:17.600 match the material in the gravel beds, but the stains 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:20.399 were not made of substances that were local to the area. 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:24.600 The molars had also been artificially worn down to like 0:18:24.840 --> 0:18:28.159 natural and then other mammal fossils that were found in 0:18:28.200 --> 0:18:31.520 the same area were actual genuine fossils, but they were 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:35.680 not from species that actually lived in pilt Down. So 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:39.000 this was not a case of somebody accidentally finding some 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:42.399 human bones near on a rangutan bone for some reason 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:47.000 and then drawing of logical but incorrect conclusion. It was 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:51.720 a deliberate hoax. The good news was, with the pilt 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:53.720 Down man out of the way, all of the other 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:56.840 fossil evidence that had been discovered in Africa and Asia 0:18:56.880 --> 0:19:00.439 in the decades since then made a lot more sense. 0:19:00.720 --> 0:19:03.760 There was no longer any lingering question of, well, if 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:06.600 humanity's origins are in this part of the world and 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:09.679 evolving this way, traveling in this pattern, what is this 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:13.760 other fossil doing way over here following a completely different model. 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:18.600 This was incredibly important in terms of the study of 0:19:18.680 --> 0:19:21.800 human evolution. The pilt Down Man had become such a 0:19:21.840 --> 0:19:24.640 dominant presence in the field that people were using its 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:30.440 existence to totally disregard legitimate fossil findings that strongly suggested 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:35.440 human origins in Africa. One of the foundations of scientific 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:38.880 progress is the ability to reassess your conclusions when you're 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:41.760 faced with new, compelling evidence. But the pilt Down Man 0:19:41.880 --> 0:19:45.840 was such a juggernaut that people were disregarding that new 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:50.080 evidence instead. This was probably complicated by a conscious or 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:54.520 unconscious reluctance among at least some scientists to believe that 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:59.679 modern humanity rose in Africa, not in Britain. But the 0:19:59.680 --> 0:20:02.680 bad news was that a lot of the world had 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:06.879 fallen for this hoax. It had impeded progress and perpetuated 0:20:06.960 --> 0:20:11.440 inaccurate information for decades. On top of that, the revelation 0:20:11.520 --> 0:20:15.399 that it wasn't real eroded the general public's belief in science. 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:18.919 In the words of Ernest A. Houghton of Harvard, writing 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:23.320 an American Anthropologists in ninety four, quote, what really worries 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:26.040 me is the revelation to a lady that is often 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:30.359 hostile to biological science, of calculated dishonesty on the part 0:20:30.400 --> 0:20:34.480 of someone intimately concerned with a discovery of supposedly great 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:38.120 importance to the history of man. It is as shocking 0:20:38.240 --> 0:20:40.199 is the proof that men in high places of our 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:44.040 own government have betrayed their country. Already, the press is 0:20:44.040 --> 0:20:47.919 flooded with accusations by anti evolutionists that all of the 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:51.040 other evidence of man's origin from an ape like ancestry 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:55.320 has been deliberately faked by unscrupulous scientists. The fact that 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:58.720 the pilt down fraud is possibly and even probably unique, 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:03.240 will be very difficult for the public to accept. Before 0:21:03.240 --> 0:21:06.200 you get too attached to the wise words of Ernest here, 0:21:07.920 --> 0:21:10.320 I mean they really touched me. I feel like they 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:14.199 are applicable even still today. Uh. He also did a 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:18.320 lot of work combining race in criminology that was influenced 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:21.560 by the eugenics movement, and the a lot of that 0:21:21.600 --> 0:21:25.280 work was pretty definitely racist. So as much as I 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:28.800 love these words that he has to say about how 0:21:28.880 --> 0:21:31.720 damaging it was for this to be revealed as a fraud, 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:35.600 there are other factors of his work. So this is 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:39.600 not a uh an endorsement of him as a scientist 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:45.400 by us as podcasters who are not scientists. Uh. Yeah, 0:21:45.480 --> 0:21:48.760 we can appreciate his insight in that moment without applauding 0:21:48.800 --> 0:21:51.400 the rest of his body of work, for sure. Uh. 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:54.879 And with this finding now unquestionably shown to be fraudulent, 0:21:55.400 --> 0:21:58.080 the focus then turned to piecing together who had done 0:21:58.080 --> 0:21:59.879 it and why, And we're going to talk about that 0:22:00.000 --> 0:22:01.919 after we first paused for a word from one of 0:22:01.960 --> 0:22:11.240 our sponsors. In the years after the Piltdown Man was 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:14.920 shown to be a hoax, many many theories were put 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:18.760 forth about the potential culprits. A lot of the attention 0:22:18.800 --> 0:22:21.720 has been on Dawson himself. After all, he was the 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:24.320 one who reported the findings of the first place, and 0:22:24.359 --> 0:22:27.800 he was instrumental in the announcement and the initial investigations. 0:22:28.400 --> 0:22:31.399 He may have hoped that such a profound discovery would 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:35.320 earn him admission into the Royal Society. A couple of 0:22:35.359 --> 0:22:38.639 people who either knew or worked with Dawson were siting 0:22:38.880 --> 0:22:43.399 side of his possibilities as well, including Samuel Woodhead and 0:22:43.640 --> 0:22:46.959 Pierre Taliard de Chardins. The latter was the one who 0:22:47.000 --> 0:22:51.880 actually found that canine tooth. Even though he played such 0:22:51.880 --> 0:22:54.920 a huge role, most people did not suspect Sir Arthur 0:22:54.920 --> 0:22:57.879 Smith Woodward, believing him to have been an unwilling dupe 0:22:58.320 --> 0:23:01.080 or one of the intended targets to His reputation would 0:23:01.080 --> 0:23:03.359 have been ruined if word had gotten out while he 0:23:03.400 --> 0:23:06.800 was still alive. Sir Arthur Keith, whose paper on the 0:23:06.840 --> 0:23:10.600 skull reconstruction we talked about earlier, was also suggested as 0:23:10.600 --> 0:23:14.400 a suspect. One of the most famous suspects, at least 0:23:14.400 --> 0:23:19.000 outside of the world of scientists, was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 0:23:19.320 --> 0:23:21.760 who knew Dawson had an interest in this type of 0:23:21.760 --> 0:23:26.080 thing and lived nearby. In nine weird set of criteria 0:23:26.240 --> 0:23:30.359 to say somebody is a suspect, I mean there were like, 0:23:30.400 --> 0:23:32.200 apparently there were people who were like, he just wants 0:23:32.240 --> 0:23:37.640 to destroy the evolutionists, right, that's some seriously circumstantial stuff 0:23:37.680 --> 0:23:42.440 that's getting piece together. Flimsy circumstantial stuff. Uh in n s. 0:23:42.680 --> 0:23:45.840 A trunk found in storage in the British Museum was 0:23:45.920 --> 0:23:49.240 discovered to contain a number of bones, including some that 0:23:49.320 --> 0:23:52.439 had been stained in a similar manner to the piltdown Man. 0:23:53.119 --> 0:23:56.960 This trunk marked with the initials M. A. C. H 0:23:57.040 --> 0:24:01.080 apparently belonged to Martin A. C. Hinton, who also amassed 0:24:01.160 --> 0:24:04.879 quite a collection of other bones, fossils, and specimens. He 0:24:04.920 --> 0:24:07.159 had been working as a volunteer at the museum in 0:24:07.280 --> 0:24:10.240 nineteen twelve, and he became its keeper of Zoology in 0:24:10.400 --> 0:24:15.000 nineteen thirty six. So naturally this brought up lots of 0:24:15.080 --> 0:24:17.159 theories about what was going on with what was in 0:24:17.160 --> 0:24:19.240 this trunk. One of the theories was that these bones 0:24:19.240 --> 0:24:21.919 were Hinton's trial run, and that he had done this 0:24:21.960 --> 0:24:25.280 and then planted the fossils in quotation marks to get 0:24:25.320 --> 0:24:29.280 revenge on Smith Woodward, who had turned him down when 0:24:29.280 --> 0:24:32.560 he tried to move his volunteer position back in nineteen 0:24:32.560 --> 0:24:36.520 twelve into a paid one. However, not all of this 0:24:36.680 --> 0:24:40.080 quite adds up. I had a hard time pending down 0:24:40.119 --> 0:24:44.919 exactly why this was later debunked as being who had 0:24:45.040 --> 0:24:48.800 orchestrated this, But his time at the museum started after 0:24:49.080 --> 0:24:53.119 the first discovery at pilt Down, and he also had 0:24:54.640 --> 0:24:59.200 expressed some skepticism at the fine being authentic. So another 0:24:59.320 --> 0:25:02.560 school of ought is that the way these stained bones 0:25:02.800 --> 0:25:05.520