1 00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:03,040 Speaker 1: Hey, history fans, if you want a double dose of history, 2 00:00:03,080 --> 00:00:06,320 Speaker 1: here's a rerun for today, brought to you by Tracy V. Wilson. 3 00:00:06,760 --> 00:00:09,440 Speaker 1: We hope it makes previous episodes for this date easier 4 00:00:09,440 --> 00:00:12,920 Speaker 1: to find in the feed. Welcome to this day in 5 00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:15,800 Speaker 1: History Class from how Stuff Works dot com and from 6 00:00:15,840 --> 00:00:18,079 Speaker 1: the desk of Stuff you missed in History Class. It's 7 00:00:18,079 --> 00:00:20,319 Speaker 1: the show where we explore the past one day at 8 00:00:20,320 --> 00:00:22,560 Speaker 1: a time with a quick look at what happened today 9 00:00:22,560 --> 00:00:30,600 Speaker 1: in history. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson, 10 00:00:30,640 --> 00:00:34,920 Speaker 1: and it's December. The discovery of the pilt Down Man 11 00:00:35,000 --> 00:00:38,840 Speaker 1: was announced at the Geological Society of London on this day. 12 00:00:38,880 --> 00:00:43,840 Speaker 1: In the word discovery should probably go in quotation marks 13 00:00:43,920 --> 00:00:47,440 Speaker 1: because the pilt Down Man was a hoax or a fraud, 14 00:00:48,400 --> 00:00:53,239 Speaker 1: depending on exactly what happened, which isn't totally clear. In 15 00:00:53,360 --> 00:00:57,120 Speaker 1: February of nineteen twelve, Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, who was 16 00:00:57,160 --> 00:00:59,640 Speaker 1: the Keeper of Geology at the British Museum which is 17 00:00:59,680 --> 00:01:02,160 Speaker 1: now called the Natural History Museum, he got a letter 18 00:01:02,480 --> 00:01:05,760 Speaker 1: from his friend Charles Dawson, and in addition to being 19 00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:10,039 Speaker 1: a solicitor, Dawson was an amateur archaeologist, and he told 20 00:01:10,080 --> 00:01:14,160 Speaker 1: Woodward he had found something really exciting in some gravel 21 00:01:14,200 --> 00:01:19,080 Speaker 1: beds and pilt down Sussex. He said that some workers 22 00:01:19,120 --> 00:01:21,199 Speaker 1: had been digging in this pit and they had dug 23 00:01:21,280 --> 00:01:23,560 Speaker 1: up something that they described as being kind of like 24 00:01:23,600 --> 00:01:26,080 Speaker 1: a coconut, along with some other fragments, and they had 25 00:01:26,080 --> 00:01:29,680 Speaker 1: thrown them away. Dawson had gone and retrieved all of 26 00:01:29,680 --> 00:01:31,840 Speaker 1: this stuff and dug up some of the things, and 27 00:01:31,920 --> 00:01:35,440 Speaker 1: had several pieces of skull and jaw bone before writing 28 00:01:35,480 --> 00:01:40,080 Speaker 1: this letter to Woodward. This set of remains looked kind 29 00:01:40,120 --> 00:01:44,680 Speaker 1: of human, but not exactly. He compared it to another 30 00:01:44,880 --> 00:01:48,320 Speaker 1: find that had been dug up in Germany five years 31 00:01:48,400 --> 00:01:53,200 Speaker 1: or so before. So the two men, Dawson and Smith 32 00:01:53,240 --> 00:01:55,800 Speaker 1: Woodward went back to the pit. They did a lot 33 00:01:55,840 --> 00:01:59,960 Speaker 1: more excavating before having that Geological Society of London meeting, 34 00:02:00,720 --> 00:02:02,680 Speaker 1: and when they got to the meeting they had an 35 00:02:02,680 --> 00:02:06,960 Speaker 1: ape like mandible or job bone. Two of its molars 36 00:02:07,040 --> 00:02:10,000 Speaker 1: were there and had significant wear on them. There were 37 00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:13,080 Speaker 1: also the pieces of the brain case of a skull, 38 00:02:13,360 --> 00:02:16,799 Speaker 1: which seemed a lot more human than the mandible part did. 39 00:02:17,639 --> 00:02:21,120 Speaker 1: They also found some stone tools and fragments of other 40 00:02:21,320 --> 00:02:24,760 Speaker 1: non human mammal fossils. The coloring of all of this 41 00:02:24,880 --> 00:02:26,959 Speaker 1: was very similar to what was in the gravel bed. 42 00:02:27,480 --> 00:02:30,600 Speaker 1: Their conclusion was that these fossils were at least five 43 00:02:30,760 --> 00:02:36,960 Speaker 1: hundred thousand years old. Everyone was really excited about this. 44 00:02:37,480 --> 00:02:40,639 Speaker 1: People considered it to be a very major find, not 45 00:02:40,760 --> 00:02:43,800 Speaker 1: just because it seemed to be evidence of a transitional 46 00:02:43,840 --> 00:02:46,560 Speaker 1: fossil in the human family tree, but also because it 47 00:02:46,600 --> 00:02:50,240 Speaker 1: meant that England was a very important place when it 48 00:02:50,320 --> 00:02:54,960 Speaker 1: came to human evolution. A lot of papers were written 49 00:02:55,040 --> 00:02:58,959 Speaker 1: about this fine, basically a huge chunk of scientific literature. 50 00:03:00,080 --> 00:03:05,080 Speaker 1: This chunk of literature was generally credulous and uncritical of 51 00:03:05,120 --> 00:03:08,200 Speaker 1: the find itself. It wasn't really looking into whether the 52 00:03:08,240 --> 00:03:12,320 Speaker 1: find was legitimate, but into what the find meant. There 53 00:03:12,360 --> 00:03:15,400 Speaker 1: were some doubters though, right from the start, but things 54 00:03:15,440 --> 00:03:17,920 Speaker 1: didn't really start to fall apart for the pilt Down 55 00:03:17,919 --> 00:03:22,800 Speaker 1: Man for about ten years. First, in nine six, it 56 00:03:22,880 --> 00:03:25,520 Speaker 1: was discovered that those gravel beds where the fossils had 57 00:03:25,560 --> 00:03:28,440 Speaker 1: been found were not nearly old enough to have five 58 00:03:28,560 --> 00:03:33,280 Speaker 1: hundred thousand year old fossils in them. Then people started 59 00:03:33,280 --> 00:03:36,120 Speaker 1: finding fossils in other parts of the world that showed 60 00:03:36,160 --> 00:03:40,680 Speaker 1: a very different track of human evolution. And then in 61 00:03:40,720 --> 00:03:44,440 Speaker 1: the nineteen forties people started to develop isotopic testing, and 62 00:03:44,520 --> 00:03:49,040 Speaker 1: that quickly proved that these bones were nowhere near five 63 00:03:49,120 --> 00:03:52,840 Speaker 1: hundred thousand years old. It was more like maybe fifty 64 00:03:52,920 --> 00:03:56,040 Speaker 1: thousand years old at most, and that was from the 65 00:03:56,320 --> 00:04:01,320 Speaker 1: very earliest generation of these sorts of tests. Those tests 66 00:04:01,360 --> 00:04:04,360 Speaker 1: got better, and when they got better, the findings got 67 00:04:04,360 --> 00:04:08,040 Speaker 1: more precise, and when the findings got more precise, the 68 00:04:08,080 --> 00:04:11,600 Speaker 1: bones were even newer, more like about six hundred years old, 69 00:04:12,280 --> 00:04:15,800 Speaker 1: not anywhere in the vicinity of five thousand at all. 70 00:04:16,640 --> 00:04:21,440 Speaker 1: Further analysis showed that this jaw bone was not from 71 00:04:21,440 --> 00:04:26,039 Speaker 1: a human ancestry. It was from a young orangutan, and 72 00:04:26,080 --> 00:04:29,360 Speaker 1: all these various pieces had been meticulously altered to look 73 00:04:29,400 --> 00:04:32,159 Speaker 1: like they were genuine. They had been stained to match 74 00:04:32,200 --> 00:04:36,240 Speaker 1: the material and the gravel beds, the mohlers had been 75 00:04:36,360 --> 00:04:40,240 Speaker 1: artificially worn down, and the other mammal fossils that had 76 00:04:40,279 --> 00:04:44,120 Speaker 1: been found they were genuine, but they weren't actually mammals 77 00:04:44,160 --> 00:04:48,159 Speaker 1: that lived in that area. It became clear that someone 78 00:04:48,240 --> 00:04:51,000 Speaker 1: had done this on purpose, and a lot of people 79 00:04:51,080 --> 00:04:55,279 Speaker 1: were extremely embarrassed and very worried about what this said 80 00:04:55,960 --> 00:04:59,000 Speaker 1: about the state of science and what damage it might 81 00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:02,200 Speaker 1: have done to people's under standing of science. So we 82 00:05:02,240 --> 00:05:04,800 Speaker 1: know a lot more today about exactly how these hoax 83 00:05:04,920 --> 00:05:07,520 Speaker 1: remains were doctored to look real, but there are still 84 00:05:07,560 --> 00:05:11,640 Speaker 1: some doubts about exactly who the hoaxer was. It's generally 85 00:05:11,720 --> 00:05:15,120 Speaker 1: pinned on Charles Dawson, with the idea that he was 86 00:05:15,160 --> 00:05:19,400 Speaker 1: trying to bolster his own career, but it's possible that 87 00:05:19,560 --> 00:05:23,120 Speaker 1: he might have been the dupe of some other person's deception. 88 00:05:24,200 --> 00:05:26,440 Speaker 1: You can learn more about this in the December sixteen 89 00:05:27,320 --> 00:05:30,080 Speaker 1: episode of Stuffy Miss in History Class. Thanks to Ksep 90 00:05:30,200 --> 00:05:33,080 Speaker 1: Grimmant Chandler Mays for their audio work on the show. 91 00:05:33,520 --> 00:05:35,400 Speaker 1: You can subscribe to the Stay in History Class on 92 00:05:35,440 --> 00:05:38,640 Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, Google podcast, I Heart Radio app, and for 93 00:05:38,680 --> 00:05:40,760 Speaker 1: our reals, you get podcast and you can tune in 94 00:05:40,760 --> 00:05:50,119 Speaker 1: tomorrow for a very famous Christmas story.