Piltdown Man was a major scientific hoax. A forger cobbled together the jawbone of an orangutan, the teeth of a chimpanzee, and the skull of a human, then passed the contraption off as the fossilized remains of a hominid ancestor of Homo sapiens. The ruse fooled the scientific community for 30 years.
Here are two possible lessons a person might have drawn from the Piltdown Man hoax, probably the most notorious hoax in science history:
- This fraud distorts the current picture of the evolution of hominids; all our current evidence will have to be reevaluated, and that picture may have to be significantly revised.
- Evolution is bunk!
The first conclusion would be a reasonable assessment. The second is insane.
This observation may be of some topical relevance.
