It is difficult to be brief in a synopsis of the Piltdown Man story because there are so many details of great impact, with many participants, over a significant period of time. 

            Piltdown begins in the early 1900s, in the southeast of England where a day laborer discovered a piece of what he thought was human skull. He passed it on to Charles Dawson, a lawyer by trade, and an amateur archeologist. Dawson felt the find held great potential. In approximately 1912 he contacted eminent geologist, Sir Arthur Smith Woodward. They joined forces for a summer of digging. They found animal fossils and stone-age tools. In pre-WWI, late 1912 they presented their findings to a grateful British Empire. Amongst their findings was a jawbone. They thought they’d discovered the missing link. The jawbone suggests the teeth were worn down in the manner of man, and its size suggested it was of ape origin. After much ado, Sir Woodward named the creature Eoanthropus dawsoni. With the weight of Sir Woodward’s opinion of the jawbone, and what it represented firmly behind them, Britain took their place amongst other countries with their scientific finds. With the Natural History Museum behind them, the find was considered evidence of the undisputed earliest human ancestor.

            1953 brought an end to that thinking. The Piltdown man was discovered to be a fake! The British public was scandalized, and the scientific world outraged. Egos were involved and the British Empire stood there shame-faced. Scientists who had built their livelihoods upon the genuineness of the Piltdown Man, were shamed. Carbon dating of fossils was still a long way off. In the Natural History Museum’s mineral department, Kenneth Oakley performed state-of-the-art nitrogen testing and discovered the relative youth of the bones. The Piltdown Man’s bones were not even human, probably Orangutans. All of the bones were proven to be forged.

            Who could plan and carry out such a hoax against England, and the public in general? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has a connection to the story in that he lived down the road from Piltdown and knew all the players in the scenario. Being a proponent of spiritualization, all the rage in those days, he believed that spirit photographs were evidence, and set out to convince the world. His efforts quickly disrupted his credibility in the scientific community, regardless of the fact he was a medical doctor.  Ultimately Charles Dawson himself was held most liable for the fraud, though many thought Sir Woodward was in on the scam too.

            Human faults heavily weighing in on the finding of Piltdown Man would be vanity of the museum's thinking and the egotism of the central characters. Subsequently, rivalries between scientists and museum chairman department heads developed. Notoriety for the find itself could cause many to dump their long held beliefs of the honor and dignity of their profession. The people of England wanted their place in scientific history. First the ego of Dawson, a lawyer, so generally not above a little scheming, and clearly a wanna-be archeologist.  He was seeking academic credibility and standing amongst the scientific community.  It wasn’t until the subsequent discovery of Dawson’s earlier finds, alleged Roman artifacts were discovered in Pevensey in Sussex County, near Piltdown, that Dawson’s treachery was fully realized. Doubt was also cast upon Sir Woodward’s possible connection to the hoax. He was Dawson’s greatest supporter, who believed till his death of the genuineness of the Piltdown Man. If he were a man of science, wouldn’t he have been a bit more skeptical throughout the digging and the findings? Perhaps, as the videos suggest, Sir Woodward wanted to protect the Natural History Museum’s and Britain’s interests in the discoveries. It is further notable that Charles Hinton, an employee of the Natural History Museum, and subsequently head of the department of zoology, was found with a suitcase full of bones that looked surprisingly like the Piltdown bones, with the same markings inside and out. You are left to wonder just how far flung this hoax had gone? There were great rivalries between departments and chairmen of departments in the Natural History Museum. Each department wanted the glory of the find, yet no responsibility in perpetuating an ongoing hoax. Hinton may have been experimenting on the “bones” because he wanted to replicate their validity, or was he part of the hoax all along? The discovery that nearly 50 objects of Dawson’s discoveries were fakes, forgeries, and that the scientific community was taken in by it, was a scam of epic proportions.

            Securing England’s scientific place in history was the purpose of Piltdown Man.  Previously, England had no findings of her oldest human remains and had taken a back seat to other countries findings, like Germany. England’s arch rival at the time, when WWI broke out. It seems interesting to note that nothing was ever found again in Piltdown after Dawson’s passing in 1916.

            The process initially responsible for discovering the Piltdown Man to be a hoax was nitrogen testing. It wasn’t until 1961 that radiometric (carbon) dating provided the most absolute technique for dating fossils. 

            How can one possibly remove the human variable from the equation of scientific discovery? It seems impossible. Without man thirsting to learn more, to see just beyond the ridgeline, there would be no discoveries at all. Therefore, man must continue to venture “where no man has gone before”. It is part of the quest.

            This is indeed an example of a life lesson. Believe nothing without verifying the facts. But, how could this have been proven wrong before nitrogen testing came into practice, and subsequently carbon dating, or any of the advancements in scientific technology today? For that matter, how could the scientific community as a whole have been so misguided as to have held onto the belief of the bones irrefutable legitimacy? Without the advancement of today’s technology the real proof would lie just outside the realm of reality.