Throughout history, there have been some hilarious, controversial, and confusing hoaxes that have been created. Hoaxes are different from urban legends, rumors, pseudoscience, or even jokes since a hoax is a deliberate and intentional attempt to create something that is false but present it as the truth. We will look at ten of the most interesting hoaxes that fooled a lot of people.
10. The Piltdown Man
The Piltdown Man is a very well known hoax to many people. Some hoaxes are fascinating, funny, mean, or just ho hum. The Piltdown Man is superior to most hoaxes in that it is still partially a mystery, but it remains a great hoax since it is still a highly contentious hoax for many as well as being one that defined science for some years.
It all began in 1912 when a man by the name of Charles Dawson provided the Geological Society of London a few fragments of skull that he said he was given a few years before. He claimed that some diggers were working in a gravel pit in Piltdown and found the skull. Supposedly, the men thought it was a fossilized coconut, so they broke it open. When it wasn't more than a skull, they gave the fragments to Dawson. Arthur Smith Woodward (who worked for the British Museum's geologic area) was extremely interested in the find and went with Dawson to the site where the skull fragments had been found. There they found more fragments and half of the jaw.
Woodward went on to reconstruct the skull with the pieces recovered. The appearance of the reconstruction seemed to suggest that the skull was rather human and the jaw was ape-like. The prevailing opinion at the time in the scientific community was that development began with the brain and spread to other parts, so this find seemed to indicate that. Woodward went so far as to say that the Piltdown Man findings were part of the missing link, which has always been the holy grail for scientists.
This announcement was met with immediate adversity. From 1913-1915, several papers were published claiming that it was clear that the skull was human and the jaw was an apes's. Woodward and Dawson (along with a friend) went to look for more fragments. Dawson then claimed to have found a second skull's fragments nearby, but the exact location has never been determined. Dawson died in 1916. Woodward went on to try to prove the second skull's fragments also presented an important proof of the first skull. When a second skull's fragments were found, most people who disputed the authenticity soon were silenced. The possibility of one human skull and ape jaw together was coincidental but possible, but a second was highly improbable to supposedly have been faked.
The Piltdown Man remains were used as scientific fact for a number of years. Having silenced most of the critics, the believing scientists began to base their findings and articles on the research that had been performed using the Piltdown Man. In 1938, a stone memorial was erected at the site of where the fragments had been discovered.
In 1953, an article was published in "Time" citing that the Piltdown Man was a fake. The fragments had been tested as being that of a human, orangutan, and chimpanzee. Some of the teeth had been modified and some of the fragments had been stained to show age. The true forger has never been identified, even though there are many possible suspects. The main theory is that Charles Dawson himself created the hoax, mostly from the fact that he had created fakes in the 20 years before the Piltdown Man was discovered.
Why was the hoax taken in so blindly? Two reasons. One is that scientists were looking for the missing link and wanted to find it, so the first chance it arrived, they jumped on it. The second is that British scientists wanted to claimed that the earliest humans were found on English soil. It was really a matter of cultural prejudice and nationalism that was a driving force in the acceptance by the British scientific community, and the skepticism of international scientific communities that led to the revelation that it was a hoax.
As said before, the Piltdown Man influenced scientific thought for 40 years. It led to a gray spot in archeology, palentology, and biology that has since been cleaned up, but the thought processes of those 40 years had to be re-examined once it was discovered as a hoax. During that time, the Piltdown Man had been used as evidence in the Scopes Trial in 1925. Maybe the trial would have resulted differently had the Piltdown Man been revealed sooner? All in all, the Piltdown Man is still a hotly debated issue: scientists are embarassed about it and creationists cite it as proof of the inaccuracies of the scientific community. Either way, the Piltdown Man represents the greatest and most famous paleontological hoax ever.
Bet you didn't know that!
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