In 1912, Piltdown Man was discovered. This created a great sensation in both the newspapers and halls of science when it was announced by the British Geological Society. They gave it the scientific name Eoanthropus dawsoni which means "Dawson's Dawn Man".
For nearly 40 years the scientific world bowed down before Piltdown Man as the great key to human evolution. Only one specimen existed, when there ought to be thousands if it was really genuine. It took several years to fabricate the Piltdown Man. Dawson and his associates carefully worked on the bones, in order to only provide certain pieces, so a half-ape/half-human appearance could be produced.
In 1916, a dentist viewed the teeth and put into his report that the teeth had been filed down, but they ignore the report. It was not until 1953 that they found out that Piltdown Man was a total hoax. In 1953, Joseph Weiner and Kenneth Oakley applied a recently developed fluorine test to the bones and found that Piltdown man was a grand hoax. Some one had taken an ape jaw and put it with a human skull, filed the teeth somewhat, and then carefully stained it all so that the bones looked both ancient and a matching set.The story of Piltdown Man is a hoax, whether some like it or not. It will ever stand as a great epoch in the history of evolutionary presentations. Other evolutionary frauds have repeatedly been perpetrated and later uncovered. But the Piltdown hoax was the most shaking of the scandalous disclosures. This is because, when it finally occurred, Piltdown Man had been proclaimed as the grand proof that man evolved from apes
For more information on Piltdown Man go to http://www.wikipedia.com .
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