The Piltdown Man scandal is arguably the greatest scientific fraud ever perpetrated in the UK, with faked fossils being claimed as evidence of our earliest ancestor. It is highly likely that an orangutan specimen and at least two human skeletons were used to create the fakes, which are still kept at the Natural History Museum. Now, a fresh discovery has indicated that Piltdown ‘Man’ could also be referred to as Piltdown ‘Woman’, due to a reassessment of the bones used in the forgery.
Britain’s Biggest Ever Hoax Story
Between 1912 and 1914 Museum palaeontologist Arthur Smith Woodward and the amateur antiquarian Charles Dawson announced the discovery of fossils from Piltdown in Sussex. These were supposedly a new evolutionary link between apes and humans. They indicated a species with both an ape-like jaw and a large braincase like a modern human. It was considered that this could be the missing link in human evolution. Before he died in 1916, Dawson claimed to have discovered further evidence at a second site.
Published 100 years on from Dawson’s death, research in 2016 revealed that the forgeries were created using a limited number of specimens that were all constructed using a consistent method, suggesting the perpetrator acted alone.
The forgeries helped misdirect the study of anthropology for decades. While doubts were raised from the start, it took 40 years for the scientific community to recognize that the remains had been altered to seem ancient and had been planted in the sites.
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