In 1912 a man named Charles Dawson
was digging in a gravel pit in a town in England called Piltdown. He claimed
that he had found a piece of an ancient human skull, it was a jaw to be more
exact. It was not just a normal human skull though, the shape appeared to come
from a monkey and then the teeth were ground down like it was a human. All of
the scientists thought that they had found another branch but instead, they
found out that it was all a hoax. The teether were ground down by humans. All of
the facts led back to Charles Dawson.
This is
something that the scientist thought was a new discovery and new facts but
instead, just because someone wanted the glory for making a new discovery he decided
to cheat the system and make the new discovery himself, hand make it. History does
not work like that. This is the only thing that scientists have seen of someone
changing ancient artifacts.
It is
not possible to remove the “human” factor in science. I know I am supposed to
say that it just hasn’t been proven “yet” that we can remove our humanness but,
we as humans have never been perfect and never will be perfect besides one man
that stepped onto this earth. I do think we can limit the errors and maybe not
make mistakes in some areas or not make as many mistakes, but you can not apply
that to every single area. It just isn’t possible. I will stand firm on that. We
are “human” and we do make mistakes.
Lastly, some things you can take away from this is, you can
not believe everything you hear and you kind of have to discover it for
yourself. Even though you see something with your eyes does not mean it is true.
Discover it for yourself and study it.
You have good points in your synopsis but some clarification is needed and some additional information is needed.
ReplyDeleteThe discoverers of Piltdown didn't think the jaw was of a monkey (and the grinding of the teeth wasn't discovered until much later). It was much larger than that. Their conclusion was that it was more primitive than a modern human jaw, perhaps of a non-human ape. Additionally, they then found skull/cranium fragments which suggested a larger, human-like brain-size. These points are important with regard to significance. More information below.
Yes, scientists thought they had found another branch of the hominid family tree, but the significance of this discovery (had it been valid) goes beyond just adding to the hominid ancestry. Had Piltdown been valid, it would have helped us better understand *how* humans evolved from that common ancestor with non-human apes. Piltdown was characterized by large cranium combined with other more primitive, non-human traits (like the jaw), suggesting that the larger brains evolved relatively early in hominid evolutionary process. We now know this to be incorrect, that bipedalism evolved much earlier with larger brains evolving later, but Piltdown suggested that the "larger brains" theory, supported by Arthur Keith (one of the Piltdown scientists) was accurate.
You skip from the discovery of the fossil to the discovery of the hoax. A lot happened in there, 40 years worth of events. How was the hoax uncovered? When? Why did it take that long to uncover the hoax? What else was happening in paleoanthropology that pushed researchers to re-examine the veracity of Piltdown? Expand.
I agree that ambition may have played a role in this hoax, leading to the creation of the fossil. Greed and even revenge (by Hinton) has also been suggested as motivating faults. Other than the culprits, can you find fault with anyone else? How about the scientific community? Why did they accept this find so readily without proper scrutiny? What might have inspired them (particularly the British scientists) to not do their jobs properly when it came to this particular fossil?
Missing the next section on the positive aspects of science that helped to uncover the hoax?
In the human factor section, if you could, would you want to eliminate this from science? You do seem to be assuming all human factors are negative (i.e., human error). Is that the case? Do humans bring nothing positive to the scientific process? How about curiosity, ingenuity and innovation? Could we even do science without these factors?
Good life lesson.
I support your thoughts of humans not being able to be disconnected from science to prevent human error. One thing I did want to point out is that you didn't mention the other scientist that were apart of the hoax. For example Arthur Keith. I think he was very important to the whole story; especially because he examined the jaw and in a way supported the hoax in order to prove his theory that primitive humans were more human looking then ape looking, and that our brains started out large and then we learned to walk up. Personally I couldn't believe that he would do just about anything like Charles Dawson to support his theory. Were you surprised by that as well?
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