hey guys and welcome back to my channel
so today's video is gonna be an eensy
bit different but not that different
it doesn't really fall into that broad
dark content category that I usually do
on my channel but it's something that I
found really interesting and hopefully
you guys will agree so we live in an era
where information is more easily
accessible than it's ever been before I
can pull out a device that fits in my
pocket but can tell me almost anything I
need to know within literal seconds but
with this information superhighway comes
several different caveats namely
misinformation and frauds pretty much
anyone can put anything out on the
internet that they like and people will
believe it but this isn't really unique
to the information age hoaxes and fraud
have existed for pretty much as long as
humans have let's explore a hoax that
was only perpetrated in the last hundred
years or so but has been called one of
the biggest in archaeology let's talk
about the Piltdown man
so to understand the Piltdown man let's
set the stage a little bit you've
probably heard of Charles Darwin who
formulated the theory of evolution back
in the 1830s the theory became public
knowledge in 1859 when his now famous
book the Origin of Species was published
according to Britannica
we all know about evolution today but it
made huge news back then because it was
completely new it was controversial back
then just like it is today but the
theory made perfect sense to scientists
because if it were true it would fill in
a lot of gaps in their knowledge so they
became determined to find evidence or
proof of it and the competition was
fierce I never saw it explicitly stated but
it seems like scientists in countries
without major discoveries were kind of
looked down on and Britain was one of
those countries enter Charles Dawson I
know his name sounds a lot like Charles
Darwin's but Darwin doesn't really have
much else to do with the rest of this
story so it shouldn't be too confusing
Charles Dawson was a lawyer and amateur
archaeologist and geologist he'd always
had an interest in the natural world and
had made quite a few archaeological
finds which earned him the nickname The
Wizard of Sussex among his finds were a
Roman statuette stone axe and the teeth
of a mammal named plagiaulax Dawsoni
named after him of course and I'm
probably mispronouncing that I'm sorry
at the age of 21 he was elected a fellow
of the Geological Society this was
pretty rare for someone so young and it
was considered an honor in the early
1900s Dawson was the steward at Barkham
Manor in Sussex in the UK so when I was
researching this I got a little bit
confused there is a Barkham manor in
Berkshire but that's almost a hundred
miles away the barkham manor we're
talking about is close to Piltdown a
small settlement in Sussex it shows up
on Google Maps as Barkham manor cottage
but I assume they're the same or at
least in similar locations on the
grounds of Barkham Manor in Sussex was a
gravel pit that was thought to have
dated back to the Ice Age at some point
between 1907 and 1910 a labourer found
skull fragments in the pit and pass them
on to Dawson who he knew had an interest
in archaeology Dawson went to the gravel
pit to do some digging of his own and
found a few more fragments in February
1912 he wrote a letter to his friend Sir
Arthur Smith Woodward who was the head of
the geology department at the Natural
History Museum telling him about the
remains later that year
Dawson went to Smith Woodward's office
and dumped five brown bone fragments on
the table he said they were from a
shallow pit in Piltdown and he believed
belonged to an ancestor of modern man so
just a quick note
before we continue most sources I looked
into said Smith Woodward worked at the
Natural History Museum others said the
British Museum what is now the Natural
History Museum in London actually used
to be part of the British Museum it
split off on its own in 1963 and was
renamed the Natural History Museum
in 1992 in this video I'm mostly going
to be referring to it as the Natural
History Museum but if you research this
on your own it might say the British
Museum so I just wanted to clear that up
Dawson and Smith Woodward continued to
dig at the site whenever they could
which was usually weekends and holidays
they found even more fossils there
including stone tools fossilized animals
and a jaw that still had teeth in it
Smith Woodward tried to reconstruct the
human fragments into a skull what he
came up with had the brain of a modern
man but jaws and teeth closer to an ape he
thought this might be the so-called
missing link between Apes and man Dawson
and Smith Woodward publicly announced
their findings to the Geological Society
of London on December 18th 1912 the new
specimen was named eoantropus Dawsoni after Charles Dawson of course it's
more commonly known as the Piltdown man
or dawn man there have been different
estimates on the age range of this
specimen that ranged from 500,000 years
to over 2 million years Piltdown man was
thought at the time to be proof of not
only evolution but that man had
originated in Europe as you can imagine
this was huge for British scientists
especially Charles Dawson after the
announcement Smith Woodward and Dawson
continued to dig at the site over the
next 3 years they found even more
fossils including teeth nasal bones and
more stone tools but not everyone was
convinced of Piltdown man's legitimacy
in 1913 an anatomist named David Waterson
said Piltdown man's jaw was emphatically
not that of a human
several other scientists agreed over the
next few years
most of them
thought the jaw came from an ape and the
skull came from a modern human
some of them claimed a chimpanzee jaw
could be broken and easily reformed to
look like the jaw of Piltdown man but
these early skeptics were usually just
dismissed or ignored
in 1915 dawson found another pit about
three kilometers away from the original
site in this new pit he found skull and
teeth fragments that he dubbed Piltdown
II after the second discovery as well as
the Natural History Museum vouching for
him most people seem to accept this find
as legitimate
the start of World War one
in 1914 and Charles Dawson's death in
1916 cause digging at the site to slowly
grind to a halt after Dawson's death the
museum was presented with the Piltdown
II fragments in 1938 a memorial was
built for dawson at the site of Piltdown
man's discovery after Dawson's death
Smith Woodward opened up several more
pits in the area and did some digging
but never really found anything of huge
significance in fact after Dawson's
death not much else of significance was
found at the original pit at all and
Dawson was the only person who'd even
known where the second pit was Smith
Woodward retired in 1923 and continued
to dig at the site until the early 1930s
he died in 1944 in 1948 his book the
earliest English meant was published
posthumously you can still find this
entire book online and I will leave a
link below to anyone who wants to look
into it further in the decades following
the discovery of Piltdown man other
fossils of early human ancestors were
discovered around the world but they all
looked a bit different from the supposed
missing link
according to history.com
in the 1940s new technology was developed for fossil
dating and people started to question
Piltdown man's legitimacy again in 1949
dr. kenneth oakley began in-depth
analyses of the fossils dr. Oakley and
his team fluorine dated the bones this
test of course measures the amount of
fluorine in the bones the more that's
there the longer they've been buried and
the older they are Piltdown man's
remains didn't have that much fluorine
in them and they couldn't have been
there as long as previously thought dr.
Oakley concluded that these bones that
were thought to have been over a million
years old
were actually closer to five hundred
years old they also did chemical
analyses of and x-rays on the bones as
it turned out the skull was a human
skull but the jaw was from an orangutan
the teeth were also unusually flat if
they had been worn down naturally such
as by grinding food they shouldn't have
been that flat the teeth had been filed
down and the bones stained with iron and
manganese to make them look older
there's conflicting information about
exactly when these findings were exposed
some sources said it was as early as
1952 others said it was as late as July
1954 but one thing was clear the
Piltdown man once thought to be proof of
evolution was a total fraud
obviously this finding was huge scientists who had
believed that Piltdown man was a
legitimate specimen were basically back
to square one it must have been so
frustrating to have something they
accepted as fact completely turned on
its head but one question remained who
was responsible for perpetrating this
hoax one theory is that a man named
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
was responsible Teilhard de Chardin
was a Jesuit priest philosopher and
paleontologist who worked with Dawson at
the gravel pit site people were
suspicious of him from pretty early on
as the theory goes he created the skull
as a practical joke that he didn't
realize would go as far as it did
another theory is that a man named 
Martin AC Hinton was behind the hoax at
the time all this was happening hinton
worked at the Natural History Museum under
Smith Woodward in the 1970s years after
hinton's death a trunk was found at the
museum that he'd used while working
there it contained bone samples along
with a recipe that was the same one used
to make the Piltdown bones look older
according to king's college professor
 Brian Gardiner Hinton was the only
person who would know how to create a
skull like that of Piltdown man but why
would Hinton do this his name has never
even come up before this like I said
earlier Smith Woodward was Hinton's boss
and at some point in the early 1900's he
gave him a contract work to do
Hinton wanted payments in increments as
he completed portions of the work but
Smith woodward refused to pay him at
all until the job was completely done
people who think Hinton did it said he
was angry at his boss and created the
skull to get back at him the next theory
is probably my favorite it concerns
someone we've actually talked about
before on this channel Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle Conan Doyle was known for works
like the lost world as well as the
creation of one of the most famous
fictional detectives Sherlock Holmes
Conan Doyle lived pretty close to
Piltdown and even gave Charles Dawson a
ride to the excavation site once though
I'm not sure just how well they knew
each other some people think he even hid
a clue in the lost world which was
published in 1912 in the same year as
the Piltdown findings admittedly I
haven't read the lost world it's been on
my TBR list for literal years but I
haven't gotten around to it yet anyway
there's apparently a passage in the book
about bones being as easy to fake as a
photograph but why would Conan Doyle do
something like this he was a
spiritualist and he considered spreading
spiritualism to be one of his primary
goals according to Britannica
spiritualism is
if you watch my video
on the Mummy's curse you'll know that
Conan Doyle was one of the first people
to propose the existence of said curse
so he obviously had some pretty closely
held beliefs and scientists love to mock
them
some people believe Conan Doyle created
the Piltdown hoax to get back at British
scientists for mocking his spiritual
beliefs but the most prominent theory
and one that as we'll see in a minute is
almost certainly true is that the
perpetrator of the hoax was Charles
Dawson himself a lot of people also
believe sir arthur Smith Woodward was
involved while others believe he's
completely in the dark but Dawson has
been the most prominent suspect from the
start and there's tons of evidence to
back this up
not only did Dawson keep the bones for awhile
before turning them over to the
museum but he was the only person who
even knew the location of the second
site his neighbors also reported seeing
him staining bones in an office
most people believe he planted the bones
in the gravel pit then dug them up later
Dawson would also have known exactly
what to do he wasn't a professional
scientist but he certainly rubbed elbows
with a lot of them he knew that
scientists thought that a fossil of
early man were it to be found would have
an ape-like jaw and a bigger human brain
and of course that's what he would have
created in Piltdown man exactly what
scientists wanted and if he was
responsible for this it wasn't his only
forgery at least 38 of Dawsons
discoveries were fakes
including the stone axe roman statuette
and teeth of plagiaulax Dawsoni which
I'm still probably mispronouncing but
why would Dawson fake all of these
discoveries including Piltdown man like
we've already discussed the entire
scientific community was a desperate to
find evidence of evolution and Britain
was behind in the competition in a 1909
in a letter to Sir Arthur Smith Woodward
Dawson said he was waiting for the big
find which never seemed to come along
the Piltdown man discovery
a lot of notoriety and I think that's
what he wanted all along
in 2009 a paleoanthropologist named dr.
Isabelle de Groote began a years-long study
she and her team looked at Piltdown man
a bit harder to see if they could find
out who perpetrated the hoax the team
included historians DNA experts dental
experts and paleobiologists dr. de
Groote and her team did DNA tests on the
jaw that had already been found to be
from an orangutan they determined they
were all from the same orangutan and
they speculated that whoever did this
got the bones from a curiosities shop they
weren't able to extract any DNA from the
human skull or do any sort of carbon
dating on it because it had degraded
too much but they did find a few more
interesting things they discovered that
cracks and gaps in the bones had been
filled with putty and gravel the gravel
had supposedly been added to make it
look like the bones had been sitting in
the gravel pit for a while the putty had
been used to reform the jaw and put the
teeth back in after breaking it and
reforming it to make it look more
authentic the team also found out more
about the actual bones dr. Oakley
believed in the 1950s that the orangutan
bones came from a female juvenile
orangutan dr. de Groote and her
colleagues believed this orangutan
came from Borneo an island in the South
Pacific they also concluded that the
skull fragments came from two or three medieval humans dr. de Groote said
there was a fingerprint throughout all
of these specimens because of the
consistency of technique she believed
one person was behind the whole thing
she also noted that bones from the same
orangutan were used in Piltdown and
Piltdown II and remember Charles Dawson
was the only person who knew where the
site that Piltdown II had been found was
due to this along with all the other
evidence
she and her team concluded that the
perpetrator was Charles Dawson she
announced her findings in a paper in
2016
though she did say that it wasn't clear
if Dawson acted alone or had help
as of 2012 the Piltdown man skull is in a safe
at the Natural History Museum in London
after the study by dr. de Groote and her
team was published in 2016 there hasn't
been a lot of major news on the story
but one question remains
assuming it was Charles Dawson and I
think it's pretty safe to say it was how
did he pull the wool over so many
people's eyes for so long there are a
few theories floating around but I want
to talk about two in particular that I
think both contributed the first is that
scientists in 1912 couldn't study these
so-called
remains after the announcement Piltdown
man's remains were locked up tight and
most scientists never got a chance to
study them up close having to draw
conclusions based on a reconstruction
it's difficult to study something
without actually you know seeing it
although it does happen quite a bit the
other reason I think this happened is a
phrase that you've probably heard
floating around on the internet for the
past few years confirmation bias
to scientists in the late 1800s and
early 1900s evolution made perfect sense
to them as a theory and like we've
already discussed they were desperate to
find evidence or proof of it it's not
hard to see how they could have wanted
the Piltdown man to be real so much that
they ignored all evidence to the
contrary remember there were skeptics
early on but they were usually ignored
or dismissed so I don't think it's going
to come as a shock that creationists
frequently bring up the Piltdown man
hoax as a fraud of evolution there are
plenty of websites discussing or focused
on creationism that talk about the
discovery and subsequent exposure of the
hoax from what I gather just reading
through them it seems like they're
mostly focused on the confirmation bias
and how scientists were duped by the
hoax because they so desperately wanted
to prove evolution so a few more things
I want to mention before we go there are
some books on the subject some of the
most well-known ones are the Piltdown
Man hoax case closed
and the Piltdown Papers I will leave
links for those below if you want to
check them out they're also used to be a
band called Piltdown men according to
last.fm this rock-and-roll instrumental
group was active in the early 1960s and
actually got their name from the
Piltdown Man hoax some of their songs
include McDonald's cave and brontosaurus
stomp and their music sounds very much
like the rock music of that era I will
leave a link below to a playlist with
some of those songs on it if you want to
check that out as well so that's just
about all I have for you today on the
Piltdown Man hoax and as always I would
love to know your thoughts down below if
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you so much for watching and I will see
you next time
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