The Cardiff Giant and the Piltdown Man represent some of the earlier and more historically influential accounts of pseudoarchaeological hoaxes. While both were done for different reasons, by different people, in different parts of the world, together they encompass the majority of the motives for instituting and the motives for believing archaeological pseudoscience.

In the case of the Piltdown man, the motives are three. The first was fame. Although Dawson (the current frontrunner for the perpetrator of the Piltdown man) was a fairly well known amateur antiquarian at the time, he wanted to do something to stand out, to put his name in the history books, and finding an important “missing link” in Britain was one way to do that.  Furthermore, part of Dawson’s motivation was linked to how important of finding an early hominin in Britain was to the scientific and general public. In the early 20th century, as the world ramped up to the first World War, scientific discoveries were used as a source of national pride for citizens and a sort of academic pissing contest that added to the tension in Europe itself. When Dawson “discovered” the Piltdown man in 1912, just two years before archduke Ferdinand was assassinated, Britain was one of the only major European countries without a major human ancestor in its archaeological record. Furthermore, the discoveries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were beginning to cast doubt on the predominant evolutionary theory that the modern human brain developed before the modern human body. The Piltdown man solved both problems – it gave Britain the “earliest” human ancestors and confirmed the ideology of the time.

The Cardiff Giant was created to confirm ideology as well. Its creator, Hull, made it to prove his belief that the public “would believe anything if it mentioned the bible.” The Cardiff man, sold as a petrified early giant mentioned in genesis, did exactly that – its success proved the gullibility of the public, presumably to Hull’s satisfaction. It also made a lot of money for all involved. Within a year of its discovery, the Cardiff giant had generated almost a million dollars in today’s money for Hull, his relations, its investors, and PT Barnum (who made his own plaster Cardiff Giant after he was denied the use of the original). This was also a motivation for its creation.

For the most part, both of these hoaxes were believed for the same reasons – they sold an idea, lent credibility to things people already really wanted to believe. In the case of the Piltdown man, it gave British people national pride in a time of great conflict, and it confirmed the theories of other scholars. It was convenient and useful to believe. The Cardiff Giant worked similarly – believing in its legitimacy, or at least getting others to believe in its legitimacy – meant revenue, and the petrified man told a story that the religious populations of Cardiff and Syracuse, New York, already had bought into. It only worked to confirm their belief in the bible.

However, despite their very similar reasons for working, the impacts these two hoaxes had were much different. The Piltdown man, once it was successfully, permanently debunked in 1953, a little over forty years after its discovery, did not have any long-lasting effects on the pseudoarchaeological community. Other than becoming a blemish on the reputation of anthropology and British Archaeologists, in particular, it has little significance. However, it is used by the pseudoarchaeological community as an example of how science foolishly gets stuff wrong and buys into hoaxes. It works as a strawman – if they fell for this, what else are they falling for? 

The Cardiff Giant, on the other hand, reflects a continuing pseudoarchaeological ideology and belief in giants. Often framed as a conspiracy and “proven” using photoshopped images of archaeological sites, the Cardiff Giant was not the first time people tried to use archaeology to confirm biblical literacy, and it wasn’t the last. Despite its creators’ intention to show how easily people can fall for ridiculous, obvious hoaxes, people still fall for similar if not identical fakes today.

Despite the widespread belief in these evolutionary fakes during their glory days and the academic embarrassment the Piltdown Man brought, these cases are excellent examples of how science, and the scientific method in archaeology, actually works. Within months of each of these “discoveries,” the scientific community had assessed and pointed out points of error in these (fairly obvious) fakes. Their perseverance had more to do with political motivation and public interest than it did in actual scientific agreement. Upon scientific scrutiny (which each hoax received), they failed basic scientific tests and were predominantly dismissed by the scientific community.