Page 60 - Tell Me About the Creation

Piltdown Scandal

The Piltdown Man skull was presented to the
world over a period of 40 years as the biggest

piece of evidence for the claim of "human
evolution". This skull, however, was actually
the biggest science fraud in history.

well-known doctor and also an amateur
paleoanthropologist, Charles Dawson came out with an
A assertion that he had found a jawbone and a cranial
The bust of the
Piltdown Man fragment in a pit in Piltdown, England in 1912. Even though the
which was once jawbone was more ape-like, the teeth and the skull were like a man's.
displayed in
These specimens were labelled the "Piltdown Man". Alleged to be
museums.
500,000 years old, they were displayed as an absolute proof of human
evolution in several museums. For more than 40 years, many scientific
articles were written on the "Piltdown Man", many interpretations and
sketches were made, and the fossil was presented as an important
piece of evidence of human evolution. No less than five hundred
doctoral theses were written on the subject. 63
In 1949, Kenneth Oakley from the British Museum's paleontology
department attempted to try the method of "fluorine testing", a new test
used for determining the date of some old fossils. A trial was carried out on the fossil of
the Piltdown Man. The result was astounding. During the test, it was realised that the

Orangutan
jaw

Human skull
fragments

THE FANFARE OF
EVOLUTIONIST
NEWSPAPERS
False stone tool As soon as Piltdown man was
carved out by a found, many newspapers
pocket-knife covered the subject in banner
SKULL FRAGMENTS
headlines. The above headline
The fragments that Dawson placed in the Piltdown
was printed in a London
pit and then "discovered". These fragments were
newspaper of the time.
deftly put together later on.
58 Tell Me About the Creation