Speaker 1: You're listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: Folks, it's a hugo. No, I haven't.
Speaker 1: Seen when us see the Welcome to Hoax, a podcast
Speaker 1: about the lies we wish were true.
Speaker 2: And truths that sound like lies. I'm the ghost of
Speaker 2: Danish Sports and I'm the evil twin of Lizzie Logan.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Lizzie. Are you a biology person? Did you like biology
Speaker 1: in school? I liked it? Okay.
Speaker 2: The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.
Speaker 1: Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: really all we need for this episode. I'll get you
Speaker 1: to college. I love biology. I was a big I
Speaker 1: was pre met in college. This is in fact I
Speaker 1: remember from your memoir. This is a fact we know.
Speaker 1: I worked at the Adler Planetarium when I was in
Speaker 1: high school.
Speaker 2: Not just the shock Chicago's Planitarium. Is that biology that's
Speaker 2: planning it's planets.
Speaker 1: But I did also almost get a summer internship at
Speaker 1: the Field Museum back in my pre mid day.
Speaker 2: I'm almost proud of you.
Speaker 1: I thank you. I instead made the decision to get
Speaker 1: take an internship at Conan and move out to Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and do an entirely different career path. So that
Speaker 1: was really a moment that could have been. But I'm
Speaker 1: much happier now.
Speaker 2: And now you know me.
Speaker 1: That's true. But I am someone who really likes biology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and so this is a story I
Speaker 1: have known about for a very long time, and I'm
Speaker 1: excited to sort of dive into it.
Speaker 2: Wait is this Am I about to find out that
Speaker 2: the hoax is evolution?
Speaker 1: Ohzy?
Speaker 2: Because God created the world in six days and then
Speaker 2: on the seventh thing he rested.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he made men perfectly exactly as we are, We've
Speaker 1: never changed.
Speaker 2: And then he made woman out of a rib.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh okay, No, but it is a hoax. That
Speaker 1: is a pretty popular hoax. But I was very excited
Speaker 1: as I dove into it to find layers about why
Speaker 1: it maintained for so long and sort of understand the
Speaker 1: historical context around it. So with that, Lizzie, do you
Speaker 1: know the phrase missing link?
Speaker 2: Yes, So it's the proverbial or like mythical step between
Speaker 2: like not apes, but like the prehistoric ancestor that we
Speaker 2: share in common with apes and cavemen.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think there's a joke about this in the
Speaker 2: TV show like The Wild Thornberry's maybe where like they
Speaker 2: maybe adopt a kid who's the missing link and he's
Speaker 2: like very wild.
Speaker 1: Donny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's a joke about that, but I
Speaker 2: might feel like confusing different things from my childhood, but
Speaker 2: like that that's what I know it.
Speaker 1: You're exactly right. Oh, but what I mean say is
Speaker 1: the term missing link isn't actually really useful, and it's
Speaker 1: considered in biology an outdated term because there's a very
Speaker 1: sort of primitive view of evolution that's like can you
Speaker 1: picture in your mind's eye that like diagram of like
Speaker 1: a fish and then it like starts walking on it's
Speaker 1: a man. So that's sort of a view of evolution
Speaker 1: that's known as orthogenesis, which is like a very linear
Speaker 1: model of evolution, which is just like one, two, three,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, that like march. That image is called
Speaker 1: the march of progress, and it sort of is a
Speaker 1: version of evolution that kind of has like religious overtones
Speaker 1: because it's like we're being perfected, We're going from simple
Speaker 1: organisms to complex organisms.
Speaker 2: Intelligent design vibes.
Speaker 1: A little bit like even though it is still evolution,
Speaker 1: it's a very basic understanding of evolution, and it's just
Speaker 1: not right, Like we don't go from worse to better species.
Speaker 1: That's just not how works. Orthogenesis is like one after another.
Speaker 1: And then the idea was something called phylogeny, which is
Speaker 1: like a evolution that's like a branching tree. That's like
Speaker 1: we and apes have a common ancest yes, And so
Speaker 1: you're like, okay, that's pretty complicated, but you know apes
Speaker 1: seven anywhere from seven to thirteen million years ago, we
Speaker 1: diverged from apes and then became different species. But now
Speaker 1: evolutionary historians refer to evolution as a braided stream because
Speaker 1: it turns out there are like a ton of early
Speaker 1: human versions that then interacted and bred together and intermingled,
Speaker 1: like there's Neanderthal DNA in Homo sapiens and vice versa.
Speaker 2: Like you're using a lot of euphemisms for like early man,
Speaker 2: fucking apes, early like fucking ape type people.
Speaker 1: So we're back and forth. Like if you actually look
Speaker 1: at a diagram of like all the different subversions of
Speaker 1: humans that exist, did you know millions of years ago,
Speaker 1: it's like a very dense tree or like a bush
Speaker 1: with branches going back and forth. So missing link doesn't
Speaker 1: really make sense because there would be like so many
Speaker 1: missing links because you can just be like, Okay, well
Speaker 1: where on this point does that fossil go, And it
Speaker 1: could be anywhere on that map. That's not just like
Speaker 1: one linear progression where we're actually missing anything because we
Speaker 1: do have all those fossil records, but we don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of fossils. When you know, people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: do you have every single fossil? Like no, and they
Speaker 1: did not have a lot of fossils, you know, one
Speaker 1: hundred years ago they had even fewer because finding fossils
Speaker 1: is hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean when you were like that, do we
Speaker 2: have every fossil, I'm like, I would say, we probably
Speaker 2: have almost none of the fossils.
Speaker 1: Yeah, only a tiny percentage of living organisms become fossils.
Speaker 1: Like if you die and you're buried, you don't become
Speaker 1: a fossil. There has to be like a very specific
Speaker 1: geo process like the Librea tarpits, you know, being buried
Speaker 1: under sediment or like specific weather conditions like a really
Speaker 1: dry desert. So like fossils are really rare. But after
Speaker 1: Darwin published on the Origin of Species in eighteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: people wanted fossils to go prove what he was talking about.
Speaker 1: Particularly at that time, they wanted the missing link, which
Speaker 1: would be ideal. But again, we now know there are
Speaker 1: millions of missing links. It doesn't actually matter, But back
Speaker 1: then it would be like the find of a lifetime.
Speaker 2: Cool. Can I ask a question that probably were going
Speaker 2: to cut, Yes, but I'm just curious, Yeah, is anyone
Speaker 2: looking for like a racial missing link?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is actually a really big and important question
Speaker 1: that we should not cut because we get to it
Speaker 1: in this.
Speaker 2: Episode, Okay, because like I don't know if that was
Speaker 2: like just like I just don't want to sound super ignorant,
Speaker 2: because I'm like, we all come from an ancestor. But
Speaker 2: I know that genotypically, which is what's on the inside,
Speaker 2: all of humankind is one race, the human race, But phenotypically,
Speaker 2: which is what's on the outside, there are clear categories
Speaker 2: of people based on where your ancestors are from. Like, Yeah,
Speaker 2: all the people from one part of the world look
Speaker 2: really alike in one certain way, and all the people
Speaker 2: from another part of the world look really alike in
Speaker 2: another certain way. And I'm like, clearly, somewhere in the
Speaker 2: family tree, there's gotta be someone who looks halfway between
Speaker 2: these people, right, And at some point one brother went
Speaker 2: to one part and one brother went to a different part,
Speaker 2: and then they ended up looking different. And I'm like,
Speaker 2: how did this happen?
Speaker 1: Well, Lizzie, I am gonna blow your mind and say,
Speaker 1: if you believe it. In the early twentieth century, people
Speaker 1: were really fixated on why different people look differently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe it, and I don't want to be
Speaker 2: I don't want to I don't want anyone to think
Speaker 2: that I am fixated on that.
Speaker 1: No, it's interesting. It's a question that side.
Speaker 2: Don't take that your race is the most important thing
Speaker 2: about you. I'm not fixated on race as a person,
Speaker 2: but I am fascinated by humans.
Speaker 1: The spoiler alert answer, which is not a spoiler alert
Speaker 1: because it's science, is it turns out we evolved separately
Speaker 1: much later than people think, like less than one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, and at the time, what was a
Speaker 1: theory called like the out of Africa theory is correct.
Speaker 1: We all evolved in Africa, and then more recently than
Speaker 1: they believed at the time, the different you know, racist
Speaker 1: and ethnicities formed, but they didn't know that.
Speaker 2: It's just like green eye people just kind of showed
Speaker 2: up in a couple spots.
Speaker 1: Okay, but we're in the early twentieth century right now.
Speaker 1: We're going to start our story in nineteen twelve when
Speaker 1: a man named Charles Dawson, not Charles Darwin, unrelated.
Speaker 2: And not Charles Dickens and not Charles Dickens are main character.
Speaker 1: Charles Dawson is a solicitor from Sussex. He's a lawyer, okay,
Speaker 1: but he's also an amateur geologist and archaeologist who just
Speaker 1: does it as a hobby. Loves it for the love
Speaker 1: of the game. He wants to get it, you know.
Speaker 1: He loves the geographical society and wants to rub elbows
Speaker 1: with them. But he's not a professional.
Speaker 2: He is paleontologist, like a job at this point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, well, he's friends with a man named
Speaker 1: Arthur Smith Woodward, who is the keeper of geology at
Speaker 1: the then the British Museum of Natural History. Now it's
Speaker 1: a separate museum known as the Natural History Museum. So
Speaker 1: that guy's a professional. Okay.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 1: Charles Dawson writes to this professional and says, I found
Speaker 1: something that might be kind of interesting. According to Charles Dawson.
Speaker 1: A few years back he had seen workmen digging in
Speaker 1: the pilt down gravel pit near where he lived, and
Speaker 1: one of them, one of the workmen had mentioned that
Speaker 1: he found something that he thought was a fossilized coconut,
Speaker 1: and Dawson went to investigate. And it turns out this coconut,
Speaker 1: what looked like a coconut, was just like a dark
Speaker 1: brown stained skull, and it was dark brown because it
Speaker 1: was incredibly incredibly old. So then Dawson goes back to
Speaker 1: like the scrap piles of this gravel pit and finds
Speaker 1: the rest of this skull, and he's writing to Arthur
Speaker 1: Smith Woodward and saying this might be interesting. Do you
Speaker 1: want to come take a look. Yeah, So a bit
Speaker 1: about Dawson before we introduce Smith Woodward. Even though Dawson
Speaker 1: is not a professional, he has made several pretty impressive fines.
Speaker 1: He's like found teeth of early mammals, he found a
Speaker 1: stone axe, he found bricks from Roman Britain, this hybrid
Speaker 1: iron Roman statuette. So things that aren't like, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't know about them today. But for an amateur
Speaker 1: geologist in Sussex, he's doing really well. People actually call
Speaker 1: him the Wizard of Sussex. So he's someone that Arthur
Speaker 1: Smith Woodward considers a friend. Arthur Smith Woodward, first of
Speaker 1: many Arthur's in this episode, comes to the site to
Speaker 1: dig because if you find an old skull, you might
Speaker 1: find more things. And they dig together June through September
Speaker 1: in nineteen twelve, and they find more skull fragments, a jawbone,
Speaker 1: and a set of teeth. There's also I just want
Speaker 1: to plant this cameo, this French Jesuit geologist Pierre Tilhard Deschardin,
Speaker 1: who also stops by and he actually is just like
Speaker 1: I want to see what's what, and he finds some
Speaker 1: of the teeth.
Speaker 2: And this is in a local tar pit.
Speaker 1: This is in a gravel pit.
Speaker 2: Is in a gravel pit in Sussex, which is nobody
Speaker 2: cares what they're doing in the gravel pit, Like it
Speaker 2: doesn't belong to anybody.
Speaker 1: No, it's workmen who are digging out gravel to like
Speaker 1: pave things.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I'm just saying, like this isn't somebody's property.
Speaker 1: No, I don't think anyone cares about.
Speaker 2: It, okay, Like they're not getting in anybody's way.
Speaker 1: They're also they're going through the scrap piles. Oh, they're
Speaker 1: going through the men the workers that also EXCA had
Speaker 1: already excavated and they're going through the piles.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: So Woodward again, the professional here reconstructs these fragments that
Speaker 1: they found, the jaw, the skull, and he discovers something
Speaker 1: kind of amazing, which is that the skull looks like
Speaker 1: it's human, but from five hundred thousand years ago, which
Speaker 1: you know, for context, archaic Homo sapiens are about three
Speaker 1: hundred thousand years old. More modern Homo sapiens are about
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty thousand years old. So a five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand year old like humanoid skull is amazing.
Speaker 2: How is he getting that number? Because I don't you're
Speaker 2: not carbon dating and you are now nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: I think you are estimating from the best of your
Speaker 1: ability based on the stain, Like the coloring of it
Speaker 1: means like how long it's been in the earth, and
Speaker 1: he's and the size of the skull because human brains
Speaker 1: have gotten bigger over the time.
Speaker 2: And he also and it was just like in some gravel,
Speaker 2: what like six feet down in Sussex, Yeah, sus speaking,
Speaker 2: putting the sus in Sussex.
Speaker 1: Well, here i'must say, here's the even more amazing part.
Speaker 1: And I think what helped him date it?
Speaker 2: Also, if it was small, couldn't it just be like
Speaker 2: a child.
Speaker 1: Maybe. But here's the kind of amazing part. Well, I
Speaker 1: actually I don't think it's I think they know sort
Speaker 1: of what size human scholars like.
Speaker 2: But science, the jaw.
Speaker 1: Does not look like a human jaw. It looks like
Speaker 1: a primate jaw. And that's even more amazing because it's
Speaker 1: a human skull with a primate jaw. But you'd think, oh,
Speaker 1: it's just a monkey jaw that somehow fell into this
Speaker 1: gravel with it a pet monkey. But the teeth were
Speaker 1: mold they had wear patterns that looked like human teeth. Interesting,
Speaker 1: So that's very exciting for a few reasons. First, because
Speaker 1: this big debate was going on at the time whether
Speaker 1: early you know, pre humans developed their brains first or
Speaker 1: their human diet first, And this was showing pretty clearly
Speaker 1: that they developed their brains first, because it was a
Speaker 1: big skull and an ape like jaw.
Speaker 2: That is so convenient that they were having this debate.
Speaker 2: And then they happened to find some evidence they exactly
Speaker 2: answered this debate that answered this to great question, what
Speaker 2: a lucky fine.
Speaker 1: So it's an amazing fine, and you know what else
Speaker 1: is lucky. It's found in England. What was really exciting
Speaker 1: is because it's so helpful. So there had been a
Speaker 1: fine in Germany and I'm going to mispronounce this because
Speaker 1: it's Latin, but they call it Homo Heidelbergens and it
Speaker 1: was basically a pre human that was found in Heidelberg, Germany,
Speaker 1: and that was very exciting for the Germans. But now
Speaker 1: it's you know, about to be World War one in
Speaker 1: a few years, and we don't want Germany to have
Speaker 1: a more impressive fine than England. So it is pretty
Speaker 1: exciting that we found, you know, wording to the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Georgian magazine at the time, quote natives of Great Britain
Speaker 1: can trace their ancestry further back than any other people's
Speaker 1: on the face of the earth, which is amazing. And also,
Speaker 1: as we were talking about with racism, that fun thing.
Speaker 2: This podcast's bailiwick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, racism. Finding this skull and jobbone really reinforces a
Speaker 1: Eurocentric model of evolution that shows that the races were
Speaker 1: developing separately a very very long time ago, years ago,
Speaker 1: so it's differentiating the races, and it's like showing that, like, well,
Speaker 1: a lot of evolution happened to lead to the superiority
Speaker 1: of white European people, and it just happened to be
Speaker 1: happening on the island of Great Britain. You know how
Speaker 1: it would make sense that all this evolution would be
Speaker 1: happening on this little island.
Speaker 2: Yeah, on this little island with like bad weather and
Speaker 2: not that many different types of crops and you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: a pretty genetically similar population. It makes total sense.
Speaker 1: And then again, just to reiterate, racists did not separate
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand years ago. It happened much much more
Speaker 1: recently because those changes, those developmental changes, are minuscule in
Speaker 1: the scheme of evolution. But they didn't know that at
Speaker 1: the time. Another thing that was pretty exciting for them,
Speaker 1: and the press had a lot of fun with this,
Speaker 1: and like when you're reading articles about it, it's like
Speaker 1: cute because it feels like everyone had an inside doke.
Speaker 1: They also found this carved fossilized elephant thone that had
Speaker 1: been flattened like use is like a decorative object or
Speaker 1: a tool, but it kind of looked like a cricket bet.
Speaker 1: So this guy had a cricket bet, which they liked.
Speaker 1: So Arthur smith Wood where this is the find of
Speaker 1: his career. He announces the discovery at the Geological Society,
Speaker 1: and he named it again apologies for the Latin anthropists
Speaker 1: Dawson I or Dawson's dawn Man. And right away people
Speaker 1: are a little you know, suspicious or at least just curious,
Speaker 1: and they challenge the reconstruction because this isn't a full
Speaker 1: skull they found. It's fragments. And if you've ever tried
Speaker 1: to like put things together, you know that he was
Speaker 1: like making an argument about the size of the brain, right,
Speaker 1: But it's like if you put them together a little
Speaker 1: more down, then the brain could be way smaller, right.
Speaker 2: And if you put them together really far apart, then
Speaker 2: you have two skulls.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean I'm saying like, if you have like six fragments,
Speaker 2: like okay, maybe you have three fragments each from two skulls,
Speaker 2: so like you can the evidence can line up however
Speaker 2: you want it.
Speaker 1: That's it. So people are looking at these fragments being like,
Speaker 1: these fragments are interesting, but the way you're putting them together.
Speaker 1: I'm taking issue with one of the biggest anthropologists who
Speaker 1: took issue with it was our second Arthur of the episode,
Speaker 1: a man named Arthur Keith, who's another anthropologist, and he
Speaker 1: is looking at the way that Smith Woodward reconstructed it
Speaker 1: with certain teeth, like a reconstruction. He like drew in, like, oh,
Speaker 1: and these type of teeth would go here, teeth that
Speaker 1: they didn't find. And he did it with ape like canines.
Speaker 1: Your canines are like the long pointy teeth. And Smith
Speaker 1: Woodward imagine that this, you know, Dawn Man had ape
Speaker 1: like canines, and Arthur Keith is like, but those other
Speaker 1: molars look pretty humanoid. And if they were doing side
Speaker 1: to side chewing, how would they have ape like canines.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make sense. And the two of them were
Speaker 1: so misaligned on this possible model that these lifelong friends
Speaker 1: literally and their friendship.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Arthur's come apart because of the fake teeth,
Speaker 1: the imagined teeth in this model.
Speaker 2: Can I just say it is I mean, granted, you know,
Speaker 2: we have the benefit of hindsight, and these people were scientists,
Speaker 2: and they believed what they believe based on the evidence
Speaker 2: they had at the time. But yes, looking back, it
Speaker 2: is a little bit silly to me that they thought that, like,
Speaker 2: you know, the absolute peak of human evolution could only
Speaker 2: have come out of Great Britain. Well, you know, an
Speaker 2: island that can only produce people named Arthur.
Speaker 1: Apparently, I don't think of that one.
Speaker 2: You don't even have diversity of name.
Speaker 1: I don't think they thought that the only high fossils
Speaker 1: were in England. I think no, again, because they had
Speaker 1: found these fossils in Germany. But I think they were
Speaker 1: excited that they finally had their own. Some people, if
Speaker 1: you can believe it, were saying that, like, it actually
Speaker 1: looks like an ape jaw with a human skull. It
Speaker 1: just doesn't look like it's one being one person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that they just found an ape jaw and found a
Speaker 1: human skull.
Speaker 2: Right, why are you putting them together?
Speaker 1: So there are published people like in nineteen thirteen, a
Speaker 1: man named David Watterson publishes in a journal that he's like,
Speaker 1: this just looks like an ape jaw and human skull
Speaker 1: to me, but don't go together. Don't go together. And
Speaker 1: they were like, these things could have just ended up
Speaker 1: in a heap together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they're maybe not even from the same time period.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. In nineteen fifteen, Dawson says, in
Speaker 1: another site two miles away, he found fragments of a
Speaker 1: second skull, also with this same jaw that looks like
Speaker 1: an ape like jaw. So this find is known as
Speaker 1: pilt Down two. People don't talk about pilt Down two
Speaker 1: as much because we didn't get a ton of detail
Speaker 1: about it. We don't even know where the exact site
Speaker 1: is because Dawson didn't write it down. And then in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen Dawson dies, Oh rip he dies. He's only
Speaker 1: fifty two.
Speaker 2: Did he become a fossil?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I hope I bet he wishes me.
Speaker 2: I hope, I bet I bet he tried.
Speaker 1: But basically he had found what is known as pilt
Speaker 1: Down too sort of left it to Arthur Smith Woodward,
Speaker 1: who presents the finds to the Geographic Society and kind
Speaker 1: of like dances around the fact that he doesn't actually
Speaker 1: know where it came from. But this one is a
Speaker 1: frontal bone, an occipital fragment, a lower molar that is
Speaker 1: the same species as the original find. So it's like
Speaker 1: if an ape jaw just happened to be in a
Speaker 1: heap pile with a human skull, and that was just
Speaker 1: like a weird coincidence. Why would it happen twice? So
Speaker 1: for the next few decades it sort of remains an
Speaker 1: interesting find and a source of national English pride, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of overshadowed by other exciting finds all over
Speaker 1: the world, and it kind of runs contradictory to other
Speaker 1: evidence that starts coming out about evolution, namely that it
Speaker 1: seems that the human jaw developed before the human brain.
Speaker 1: So every other fossil that they're finding around the world
Speaker 1: in the next few decades seems to prove that one.
Speaker 1: So it's like, well, the piltdown Man is kind of
Speaker 1: this unusual aberition. And then in the early nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: a man named Joseph Weiner who works at the British
Speaker 1: Museum basically goes to his boss, Kenneth Oakley and is like, hey,
Speaker 1: no one's actually really looked at those piltdown fragments for
Speaker 1: a while, right, And it's true they had been like
Speaker 1: put away for safe keeping and people had examined like
Speaker 1: molds and photos, but not the actual artifacts. So they
Speaker 1: get the team together. Oakley is the leader of this group,
Speaker 1: and they basically are like, well, now it's the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: We have all these new tools at our disposal. They
Speaker 1: are able to do nitrogen dating and florine absorption tests.
Speaker 1: And a florin absorption test is basically like, if a
Speaker 1: fossil has been in the earth for a long time,
Speaker 1: it absorbs more florine, so you can tell how long
Speaker 1: it's been down there by how much florine.
Speaker 2: See, that is more sciencey to me than what color
Speaker 2: is it?
Speaker 1: And it out that they were much more recent fossils
Speaker 1: than had been specified.
Speaker 2: That makes sense to me again because they were dug
Speaker 2: up by some guys going through gravel.
Speaker 1: And they also prove that the jaw and the skull
Speaker 1: are different ages.
Speaker 2: Again, that makes sense to me because it would be
Speaker 2: a hell of a coincidence if they were from the
Speaker 2: same body.
Speaker 1: Here's the Also, the thing they realized by looking pretty
Speaker 1: close and taking X ray photographs of the teeth, because
Speaker 1: they realized that these teeth with these sort of human molars,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really look like human chewing patterns. And so
Speaker 1: they were like, okay, what we can do is we
Speaker 1: can take an X ray and if those molars had
Speaker 1: been ground down when this person had been alive, it
Speaker 1: would show signs of healing, because it's like if you
Speaker 1: damage your body, it will heel a little bit. So
Speaker 1: they take to teeth heel, I guess, yeah, or just
Speaker 1: like enough enamel. I don't that's what they say, Lizzie
Speaker 1: learns things live on the pad. It says that they
Speaker 1: were taking X ray photographs to look for signs of healing.
Speaker 2: Fascinating.
Speaker 1: And here's the crazy part. Oh yeah, new dentine. So
Speaker 1: that's what's being reposed. I don't know what denteine. I
Speaker 1: guess is just a part of a tooth that can
Speaker 1: grow back.
Speaker 2: Fascinating.
Speaker 1: It turns out that no new denteine had grown. This
Speaker 1: had not happened while the subject was alive. It was
Speaker 1: just post mortem tooth damage. Lizzie, would you believe it
Speaker 1: if I told you that these teeth had just been
Speaker 1: filed down with a file. And here's what else they discover,
Speaker 1: all for.
Speaker 2: A little bit of geologist glory.
Speaker 1: A little bit of geologist not even any money. So
Speaker 1: here's also the crazy thing is, remember how I told
Speaker 1: you it's like dark, It's like the color of a coconut. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it turns out if that was authentic, it would
Speaker 1: go all the way into the bone, right, But if
Speaker 1: you cut it open just a little bit, it's white underneath.
Speaker 2: Baby, there's just like some teeth he found at the
Speaker 2: local butcher.
Speaker 1: He stained these fossils with iron and chromic acid to
Speaker 1: make them look older. It was a surface level stain,
Speaker 1: like it's a it's a bad hoax. There's also there's
Speaker 1: also dental putty.
Speaker 2: I mean, at this point, I'm thinking, like, were they
Speaker 2: like cardboard cutouts of teeth?
Speaker 1: Like? Well, So, November nineteen fifty three, Time magazine publishes
Speaker 1: evidence proving that it was definitely a forgery, this big
Speaker 1: expose led by Kenneth Oakley. They proved that the skull
Speaker 1: was only a few hundred years old, like it was
Speaker 1: a medieval skull, and it was a lower jaw of
Speaker 1: an orangutan, And there were chimp teeth that were literally
Speaker 1: filed down, which again is like people should have known that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that seems like something you could test for in
Speaker 2: nineteen twelve. Well, so the question then is why did
Speaker 2: it take so long to discover the hoax? And there's
Speaker 2: a few reason and what's the point of the hoax.
Speaker 2: But I assume we'll get to that laser. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: But why did it.
Speaker 1: Take so long for them to discover I mean, first,
Speaker 1: to be fair, chemical dating techniques were pretty primitive in
Speaker 1: the nineteen tens. Yeah. Yeah. The big reason though is
Speaker 1: I also think people were kind of distracted arguing how
Speaker 1: to interpret the find that they didn't even ask the
Speaker 1: bigger question of is it even real? Because you have
Speaker 1: these skull fragments and so you're all debating like, okay,
Speaker 1: well which way do they fit together? Which way do
Speaker 1: these teeth go? How should these teeth look that you're
Speaker 1: not asking the bigger question. Yes, it's like a magician
Speaker 1: like sleight of hand situation.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: And then I mean the big answer is like like
Speaker 1: ring a little bell, like racism, Like it reinforced something
Speaker 1: people wanted to believe. They wanted to believe that there
Speaker 1: was this major find in England. You know, there had
Speaker 1: been discoveries in France and Germany, and England was feeling
Speaker 1: a little bad about themselves. And you know when there
Speaker 1: were other discoveries in Africa that contradicted the piltdown man,
Speaker 1: they were just like, well that's a different branch of evolution,
Speaker 1: you know, and like confirmation bias. I mean that's how
Speaker 1: science works. Whereas you look at information and things don't
Speaker 1: make sense, you come up with a reason for it.
Speaker 1: And if you want to believe that the data is true,
Speaker 1: your first instinct isn't like, well the data's wrong, You're like, well,
Speaker 1: how do I explain this? Yes, because they didn't understand
Speaker 1: evolution fully back then the way we do now, especially
Speaker 1: the divergence of human evoration. And like I said, like racism,
Speaker 1: like the Piltdown Man was also really upheld and celebrated
Speaker 1: by racist people because it proved something they wanted to believe.
Speaker 1: But the crazy thing, I think the reason that the
Speaker 1: Piltdown Man is one of the famous, most famous scientific
Speaker 1: hoaxes in history is because it took forty years for
Speaker 1: it to be fully revealed. And again, I want to
Speaker 1: make it clear, in those forty years, people individuals like
Speaker 1: wrote papers being like I don't actually think it's real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the giant scientific consensus had not come to that determination.
Speaker 2: Well, it also seems like people in those forty years
Speaker 2: were saying like, oh, this is something strange that we
Speaker 2: don't know what it was, and it doesn't disprove our
Speaker 2: theories of evolution. Yeah, they weren't saying someone is duping
Speaker 2: us on purpose.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: That to me is the twist. Like scientists all the
Speaker 2: time find stuff, don't know what it means. Some fringe
Speaker 2: group is like it means there's aliens, and the scientific
Speaker 2: community is like, no, it doesn't. That's not to say
Speaker 2: we do know what it is, but we know it
Speaker 2: doesn't mean there's aliens.
Speaker 1: And you know what people say all the time is, oh,
Speaker 1: scientists are just making that up. Evolution isn't real.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's like, well, okay, it is a theory, but
Speaker 2: like it's real, it's real, But like it is still
Speaker 2: a reveal that like, oh he did it on he
Speaker 2: did it on purpose, Like I would have believed that
Speaker 2: he found it and was just like just really wanted
Speaker 2: to believe that these two things went together. Why did
Speaker 2: he do that?
Speaker 1: Well here's the thing.
Speaker 2: But beyond racist pride, because like what poss like we bruh, we.
Speaker 1: Don't actually know for a fact who did it. If
Speaker 1: you're asking who did this hoax, the obvious answer is
Speaker 1: Dawson the solicitor, who was like, hey, I found some
Speaker 1: interesting things and the answer of why he would want
Speaker 1: to do it is because he wanted the respect of
Speaker 1: the geological society. He wanted the pride and prestige that
Speaker 1: came from a once in a generation find. Okay, And
Speaker 1: he was an amateur who wanted to be taken seriously.
Speaker 1: He had a history of interesting finds and really wanted
Speaker 1: to be validated by the establishment.
Speaker 2: I guess I'm just stagging him up against the other
Speaker 2: hoaxters that we've covered, who get so much more time
Speaker 2: and effort into their hoaxes that I'm like, this one
Speaker 2: is really sort of like pathetic to me. But like
Speaker 2: he only did kind of the one thing, like I
Speaker 2: know you said that he did another one. Well, but
Speaker 2: like that other guy wrote like a whole Shakespeare.
Speaker 1: Who Shakespeare, you know what I mean, just to impress he.
Speaker 2: Was and he wrote like letters and poems, and he
Speaker 2: had the tea bags and he was staining the thing,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And this guy was using acid on his on his fossils.
Speaker 1: He was filing down teeth, monkeys, teeth, a handful.
Speaker 2: Of teeth like one time, Like I don't know, this
Speaker 2: just seems really lazy to me.
Speaker 1: Well, so people also think Okay, did he have an
Speaker 1: accomplice did if it was Dawson, was Arthur Smith Woodward
Speaker 1: either in on it or did he originate it? I
Speaker 1: kind of think know that he was just like a
Speaker 1: willing dupe, sure like it made his reputation, and I
Speaker 1: think he decided not to look too critically at it.
Speaker 1: I also think Arthur Smith Woodward was friends with Dawson
Speaker 1: and he trusted him, So I don't think it doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense for me when people are like, he was
Speaker 1: probably in on it. To me, that doesn't quite line up.
Speaker 1: You can't prove he wasn't, but it always rang a
Speaker 1: little false for me that he would be willing to
Speaker 1: put his reputation on the line that way. It's very
Speaker 1: risky for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if he was a professional who was making money
Speaker 2: from like being a science man.
Speaker 1: Stephen J. Gould like the famous popular historian, popular science writer,
Speaker 1: professor at Harvard.
Speaker 2: Once again our definition of famous is he.
Speaker 1: Has said in two very famous essays famous to me
Speaker 1: that he thinks that Jesuit priest Pierre Tilhard Desharin was
Speaker 1: part of the conspiracy. He lays out some points about like,
Speaker 1: well he was there, and I'm like it's possible, but
Speaker 1: it's not like smoking gun evidence.
Speaker 2: Like would he have done that for like Christians?
Speaker 1: No, just to like be in on the hoax. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: just to like, I don't know the pride of discovery.
Speaker 1: I think archaeologists, like I said, like, fossils are hard
Speaker 1: to find, and I think they really want to feel
Speaker 1: good about themselves. I mean, fossils are cool.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to deny it.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the other theory. And this is the third
Speaker 1: Arthur in our episode.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say it again on the pod. England is
Speaker 2: a silly place.
Speaker 1: Well, Lizzie, would you believe me if I said this
Speaker 1: episode's getting a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle cameo, all.
Speaker 2: Right, number one drink if we mention them, Taylor Swift,
Speaker 2: number two drink, if we mention them. P. T. Barnum,
Speaker 2: number three drinker, if we mentioned them, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Speaker 1: People think Arthur Conan Doyle might have been the perpetrator
Speaker 1: of the Piltdown hoax based on the fact he was
Speaker 1: neighbors with Dawson, He's nearby, he played golf near the
Speaker 1: Piltdown site. I'm convinced he was mad at the science
Speaker 1: tivic establishment, humiliating. You know, his favorite spiritualists lived in
Speaker 1: the area. People read his novel The Lost World, and
Speaker 1: they think it's him doing a da Vinci code. He
Speaker 1: was like leaving hints in it. I'm convinced what I
Speaker 1: kind of find amazing about the it was Sir Arthur
Speaker 1: Conan Doyle. Theory is, remember how I mentioned earlier that
Speaker 1: this all started because Dawson wrote to his friend Arthur
Speaker 1: sinth Woder was like, hey, I found something kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: That letter began with some like hey, what's up, like
Speaker 1: casual conversation, and he also is like, hey, you know
Speaker 1: our mutual friend Arthur Conan Doyle, Like here his working
Speaker 1: on a novel the you know, hidden the Lost World,
Speaker 1: which in like a murder mystery. That is how you
Speaker 1: set it up, that is rap it foreshadowing. The evidence
Speaker 1: against Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is there is no actual
Speaker 1: evidence that he's just the most famous guy nearby.
Speaker 2: Uh, I'm convinced, you know he did it.
Speaker 1: But if he was trying to humiliate the scientific establishment,
Speaker 1: when you have said at some point, hey, yeah, he
Speaker 1: forgot to be forgotten the reveal he forgot to do
Speaker 1: the reveal. But the thing is, we didn't have any
Speaker 1: real smoking guns until the nineteen seventies. A trunk is
Speaker 1: found in the Natural History Museum and they open it
Speaker 1: and it was left by a zoologist named Martin Hinton
Speaker 1: who had died ten years earlier. And they opened this
Speaker 1: trunk and discover bones that are stained, just like the
Speaker 1: pilt down man bones.
Speaker 2: What animals type? Who's bone?
Speaker 1: I think like bones he got legally. I don't think
Speaker 1: he was more human bones.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Okay, but suspicious because I was suspicious
Speaker 2: there he just left. Why would there be stained bones
Speaker 2: sitting in this museum exactly? Why is your trunk filled
Speaker 2: with stained bones? Okay, it's suspicious, but there's also like
Speaker 2: it doesn't really seem like Hinton was the one who
Speaker 2: did it. And people kind of explain that as like
Speaker 2: maybe he was maybe he suspected a hoax and was
Speaker 2: trying to find out figure out how they did it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe he was doing a little a little uh investigation.
Speaker 1: Exactly like maybe he was doing like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: want to embarrass anyone, but I want to like see
Speaker 1: if I can also stay in these bones. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: like just spoil everything and just be like it was Dawson.
Speaker 1: It was Dawson who did the fake. Maybe Tomorrow was
Speaker 1: ining on it with him, but it was one hundred
Speaker 1: percent Dowson.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: And now Miles Russell, who's this British archaeologist and this
Speaker 1: writer that I absolutely love because he's just like he's
Speaker 1: the king of the haters in the best way. Like
Speaker 1: if you watched any of the Diddy documentary, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just like fifty cent.
Speaker 2: Oh I love a hater.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Miles Russell is the fifty cent of this story. Great,
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan. He wrote this book called The
Speaker 1: Piltdown Man Hoax Case Closed that was very helpful to
Speaker 1: me in this episode. And he decides in exhaustive detail
Speaker 1: to go through the dozens of Dawson's other earlier discoveries
Speaker 1: and proves one by one that they all were fake.
Speaker 2: You know, there's always more. This is again like rappers
Speaker 2: do have the best beefs. Yeah, it's Kendrick dropping one
Speaker 2: after the other after the other after the other against Drake.
Speaker 2: Give it to me, Give it to.
Speaker 1: Me, and again Dawson has died decades before. Dawson is dead,
Speaker 1: but he Miles Russell just goes next next, Yeah, thirty
Speaker 1: eight times thirty you'd be like, well three you prove
Speaker 1: you've proven it. He's yeah, faked. Three are no thirty
Speaker 1: eight And in his words, to quote him, pilt Down
Speaker 1: was not a one off hoax more they more the
Speaker 1: accumulation of a life's work. Yeah, so that's it. He
Speaker 1: was just like this amateur who wanted to be taken seriously.
Speaker 1: So he was the Wizard of Sussex, but like in
Speaker 1: a Wizard of ozway. Yeah. In twenty sixteen, Piltdown Man
Speaker 1: came back into the news because there was this big
Speaker 1: like one hundred year retrospective, massive review study that showed
Speaker 1: that did like a real investigation, like a forensic analysis,
Speaker 1: and they determined that it was only one actor. They
Speaker 1: were like, it was only one guy like doing the
Speaker 1: staining and the filing and all that, and it was Dawson. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's all consistent with Dawson.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's the Piltdown Man, which is a massive embarrassment
Speaker 1: to the British scientific establishment but also kind of bad
Speaker 1: for science as a whole because creationists cite it still
Speaker 1: as proof that scientists are lying about evolution.
Speaker 2: But he wasn't a scientist. He was just some josh moo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the scientist believed it and like wrote about
Speaker 1: it and celebrated it. And it's like it reinforces the
Speaker 1: thing of like, well, they just want to see what
Speaker 1: they want to say. But I will say scientists were
Speaker 1: also the people that were like, it's not real. That's true,
Speaker 1: so you know, but unfortunately that's the hard part and
Speaker 1: why it's like kind of a damaging hoax. And it's
Speaker 1: also a damaging hoax because genuinely it held back knowledge
Speaker 1: of evolutionary science for forty years, which is like that's
Speaker 1: like a career. Yeah, and again, these data points are
Speaker 1: relatively rare at this point. So if you are basing
Speaker 1: your information on human evolution and you have this one
Speaker 1: major data point, it affects how you think and how
Speaker 1: you analyze other finds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if anyone out there is thinking of doing any
Speaker 2: sort of archaeological hoax, can you do it on something
Speaker 2: that's like settled science or something that doesn't matter?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, phish, something that I also think is
Speaker 1: kind of random and fun. And I hope no one
Speaker 1: gets mad at me for this, so please don't get
Speaker 1: mad at me. If you're listening to this and you're
Speaker 1: a scientologist, I just think it's funny. El Aron Hubbard
Speaker 1: wrote this book Scientology, a History of Man, and he
Speaker 1: that's like a book and talking about how like different
Speaker 1: phases of human evolution you can like have trauma from
Speaker 1: those phases. So it's like you can have subconscious trauma
Speaker 1: from like your cavement era. And he specifically does call
Speaker 1: out the pilt down phase as one of the phases
Speaker 1: of human history where you can have subconscious trauma that
Speaker 1: scientology could undo, Like if you're obsessed with biting or
Speaker 1: have mouth issues because like the piltdown jaw was like
Speaker 1: a monkey jaw, then scientology can help you undo that
Speaker 1: past trauma. And that book was published in nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: like before it was revealed as a fraud.
Speaker 2: Well, and that was actually the only thing l Ron
Speaker 2: Hubbard was ever wrong about exactly, and you're on the
Speaker 2: record other than that he's correct about every.
Speaker 1: Correct about everything was wrong. It was just one year
Speaker 1: early wrong about that wrong thing. Or maybe Alron had
Speaker 1: it figured out and there was a different phase of
Speaker 1: evolution that we just don't know about.
Speaker 2: And goodness, everyone wants going clear scientology in the Prison
Speaker 2: of Belief. It's a very good documentary and I will
Speaker 2: just let it speak for itself.
Speaker 1: So that is the Piltdown Man hoax. It is one
Speaker 1: of the most famous archaeology, if not the most famous
Speaker 1: archaeological hoaxess in history. It's a fun Sir Arthur Conan
Speaker 1: Doyle cameo. But I want everyone to listen to this podcast.
Speaker 1: Everyone who listens to this podcast to do a public service,
Speaker 1: which is if ever anyone brings up like, hey, I
Speaker 1: heard it was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who did it?
Speaker 1: You have to be this spoilsport who's like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: so fun. But no he didn't.
Speaker 2: I don't think you have to be this sky I do,
Speaker 2: but no.
Speaker 1: We need to present correct information.
Speaker 2: I think you have to plug this podcast. I think
Speaker 2: you have to say I think.
Speaker 1: I heard about that.
Speaker 2: I can't remember where, Oh it was this podcast hoax,
Speaker 2: And then you have to make them download this episode
Speaker 2: even better.
Speaker 1: So find us online. If you like this show, leave
Speaker 1: us a review, leave us a rating on wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, tell your friends about it. If you
Speaker 1: want to email us. I actually I read all the emails.
Speaker 1: Hoax thepodcast at gmail dot com. Lizzie, where can we
Speaker 1: find you on the Internet.
Speaker 2: You can find us also on Instagram at at Hoax
Speaker 2: the Podcast. I'll respond to all the dms. Oh, one
Speaker 2: last bit of hoaxkeeping. It doesn't really matter for the show,
Speaker 2: but I just thought it was interesting in our first
Speaker 2: episode because we were texting each other pictures.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think people in their heads in vision that we
Speaker 2: were doing this on zoom.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: You have then kept that vision in their minds, and
Speaker 2: I've talked to a few people who are like, you
Speaker 2: do a really good banter. It really feels like you're
Speaker 2: in the same room. Just so everybody knows we are
Speaker 2: in the same room.
Speaker 1: All the time, or are we always the same broke
Speaker 1: all of these episodes, we're in the same view we are.
Speaker 2: So please feel that you're in this room with us
Speaker 2: as you rate, review and subscribe, and please please polks responsively.
Speaker 2: Hi Hoax is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our hosts
Speaker 2: are Danish Schwortz and Lizzie Logan. Our executive producers are
Speaker 2: Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer Rima L.
Speaker 2: K Ali and producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk. Our
Speaker 2: theme music was composed by Laine Montgomery. For more podcasts
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