The Cardiff Piltdown Hoaxes

he Piltdown Man and Cardiff Giant where both archaeological ‘discoveries’ that tricked many people into believing their façade. Stub Newell and Charles Dawson had very different reasons for fooling the public with their pseudoscience ranging from fame and money, to Nationalism and scientific ideologies.

For Dawson, an archaeological discovery in the early 1900’s when England had no finds that contributed to human evolutionary knowledge, would skyrocket his reputation and be a huge win for England. Similarly, for Newell the fame a goliath discovery would bring would be endless. People already read and believed the bible stories so unearthing a giant would bring people far and wide to witness the proof that could confirm their religious stories. Not to mention the money.

The initial success of Dawson was more than likely due to the widespread belief that human were direct descendants of apes. So of course, seeing ‘proof’ sparked a huge interest from the community. ‘The missing link: found!’ I imagine many of us today would click that headline if we scrolled over it in the news. Seeing as it was a little too soon for digital media, the community launched their investigation of the site and found many other components that eventually disproved the fossils as being human at all, let alone the missing link. Dawson had a moderate impact on the understanding of the human past that lasted for decades before being dissolved the moment it was found that he had altered his ‘evidence’ to fit the understanding of what the missing link should be nearly 50 years earlier.

The success of Newell can be attributed mainly to his cousin, who later admitted to concocting the whole scheme. With religion being extremely prevalent, seeing proof of your beliefs was worth the price. People want to believe the things they’ve been taught to have faith in are true, the Newell’s took advantage of that fact and used it to line their pockets in the process. Though the fame was short-lived before the truth about the giant was exposed. Newell had only a slight impact on the scientific community seeing as his success

I more so agree with the implications that both hoaxes exemplify the self-corrective nature of science because there will almost always be one person who questions the legitimacy of what is in front of them. It may have taken longer in Dawson’s case, but in the end the goal of science is to learn and the only way to learn about the past or future is to ask questions and experiment. Which led to the ultimate disproving of both of these pseudoscientific claims.