Week 4 Piltdown Hoax

The Piltdown Hoax: 1912 Near the Southern English town of Lewes in the little Village of Piltdown, Charles Dawson claimed to have found a piece of a human skull. He shared  his findings with two men,  geologist Arthur Smith Woodward of the Natural History Museum and French Paleontologist Pierre Tay.  The scientific significance was that Dawson thought he found the link between apes and humans.  The hoax was discovered in the 1950’s where they had better dating methods and they launched the first scale analysis.  They were able to proof that the teeth were filed down due to scratch marks and that the jaw was not of a human but a orangutan.      

  Scientist were curious and excited to these finding that they wanted to believe it was true as  they did not have the proper knowledge of  human evolution.  Therefore their faults were  they didn’t want to challenge each other.

 Due to better methods of testing, Dr. Kenneth Oakley of the MNH applied an entirely new method of dating fossils, “the fluorine method”   fluorine is absorbed by bones from water and soil which they are buried in.  The Piltdown jaw and the skull did not match, and drilling into the jaw gave a smell of a more recent bone where the skull did not have the same smell letting them know it was older that the jaw itself.  A clear distinction that they were very different.  They also conducted a “Nitrogen test”. nitrogen distilled as ammonia.  Once again two separate creatures were shown.  Dr. JS Weiner also assisted Dr. Oakley with these findings.

I do not believe removing “humans” would reduce less chance of errors, evolving with new ways such as new machinery and humans operating the machinery would be a good balance.  

Humans bouncing ideas from each other is a great way so get answers and then using machinery to put it to the test.  

Life lessons: for me would be, don’t  always take what someone says at face value.  Always try to find your own facts buy reading, using your critical thinking skills, for example if you know your body is not feeling well and you go to your Doctor and he/she tries to tell you that you're fine, you must go with your gut and ask for more testing. (true story)