A Practical Joke That Roiled and Set Back Archaeology for Decades
It took four decades before Piltdown Man was debunked. That made it one of history’s most successful scientific hoaxes. It was also a hoax that seriously delayed the progress of science and archaeology. In those decades, few resources were directed at the study of human evolution in Africa, where the actual missing links were ultimately discovered. Despite the dearth of funds for African archaeological exploration, more proto-human fossils were discovered in Africa in the 1930s. Those finds, coupled with additional Neanderthal finds, left Piltdown Man as an odd outlier in human evolution.
Nonetheless, the hoax continued to have powerful defenders, and it was not until the 1950s that the fossils were subjected to rigorous scientific examination. They turned out to be fragments of a modern human skull, only 600-years-old, the jaw and teeth of an orangutan, and the tooth of a chimpanzee. Chemical tests showed that the bones had been stained to make them look older, and the ape teeth filed down to look more human-like. As to the perpetrator, he was a disgruntled museum employee who wanted to get back at his boss, Britain’s chief paleontologist, because he had denied him a pay raise.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
BBC – Goodies’ Fan Alex Mitchell 1975 Laughter Death Solved
Cleugh, James – The Divine Aretino: Pietro of Arezzo, 1492-1556, a Biography (1966)
Cortauldian – Masculinity in Ancient Greece
Cracked – The Emperor Who Was Murdered Over a Roast Joke
Daily Beast – The Rhinoceros Who Won an Election by a Landslide
Encyclopedia Britannica – Battles of Trenton and Princeton
Encyclopedia Britannica – Martin I of Aragon
Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia – Trenton and Princeton Campaign (Washington’s Crossing)
Fang Xuanling – The Book of Jin
History Collection – Pilot Accidentally Lands in Enemy Airfield and Other Historic Mistakes
King, Ross – Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture (2013)
National Geographic Magazine, February, 2014 – Brunelleschi’s Dome
Natural History Museum – Piltdown Man
Palestine Herald Press, June 2nd, 2009 – Waco Attorney Still Going Strong at 91
Scotsman, The, April 18th, 2011 – The Curious Case of Thomas Urquhart
Taking on the World – The Joke that Killed Martin of Aragon
Time Magazine, October 19th, 1959 – BRAZIL: The Rhino Vote
Unbelievable Facts – 10 People Who Died From Laughing Too Hard
Washington Post, January 25th, 2022 – Miss Manners: Why Is It Taboo to Ask a Woman Her Age?