Two of the greatest hoaxes in history are arguably the Cardiff Giant and the Piltdown Man. They were both anomalies in the archaeological community, and were able to scam thousands of people out of their money.
The Cardiff Giant was interesting, in that, George Hull devised the plan for the hoax after an argument with a minister. His objective was to prove people would fall for anything related to the bible, thus, he paid people to create a giant man. However, money was soon found to be a new motive. Stub Newell, the original owner of the Cardiff Giant, soon realized the profit the giant was making him. He quickly transformed his farm into a tourist attraction and charged people to view the giant, who he rebranded as Goliath. The bible claims giants once walked the earth, and the Cardiff Giant was the first piece of “evidence” to reinforce the scripture. Biblical literalism plays a role in this hoax because giants walking the Earth is ultimately anti-evolution. The Cardiff Giant was proof against evolution, so the Christian community wanted to believe it was true.
The Piltdown man was found by Charles Dawson; He, or whoever created the man, may have wanted to give England a sense of nationalism, by way of proving they are more advanced than other countries who had already identified their own hominins. Fame could explain this creation, as well. The men who make archaeological discoveries this grand often gain a reputation. This hoax was successful because it supported the idea that humans evolved from apes, and it connected evolution to England. [Racist] People wanted to believe that humanity originated from England, a predominantly white country.
I agree with both implication statements, however, I believe that statement two more accurately pertains to the Cardiff Giant and the Piltdown Man hoaxes. Both were founded at a time when we were just beginning to understand our connection to hominins. Furthermore, it seems as though it was not a common courtesy to verify findings during this time. People simply believed anything that supported their ideologies. We did not have the extensive knowledge that is now widely known relating to evolution and past humans. These hoaxes highlight the ways in which science has since self-corrected. There will always be the odd “scientist” that has an agenda they are attempting to push. The self-correcting nature of science, however, has since taught us to peer review any evidence provided for a claim.
I really like everything you said. In terms of the Cardiff Giant, you made a good point about how the motivations for the Giant were all due to Hull’s atheism… until they realized they could make money from the attraction. I always thought of the two motivations BOTH contributing almost equally to the hoax, especially since Stub was just Hull’s accomplice and he is never mentioned as having the same religious beliefs, or lack thereof, as Hull. This would make fame and money his chief and only motivation but, as you said, Hull’s interest in money grew after the “discovery”.
You also said similar things about the Piltdown Man as I did in my post. Charles Dawson did “create” the Man but the remains were actual fossils that he altered to appear aged(more than their 50,000 years) so, like you said, the history of evolution would appear to have started in England.
Finally, I believe it was really interesting that you brought up the idea of the value of peer-review in your last paragraph. This brings up a very good point about how no “other” scientists(as in not Woodward) were initially consulted before the press was notified about the discovery. This is most likely due to Dawson’s specific instructions he had regarding the remains as he protected them from revealing their true characteristics, however, I am surprised Woodward didn’t talk to any other colleagues or even notice the obvious alterations to the bones. In the articles Professor Watrall assigned, many scientists realized that the bones were “fake”(as in, not as old as claimed) but they were not taken seriously until 40 years later. If Woodward or any other colleagues had been asked to verify the remains(possibly even in a blind situation where they don’t know how old the bones are “supposed to be”), this is a way they could have peer-reviewed the remains and findings without bias. Unfortunately, due to all the bias already in the heads of the excavation team, if they did use other scientists to confirm the findings and they didn’t agree just for nationalistic reasons, there is a very large chance that Dawson and Woodward may have just dismissed their evaluation as nonsense.
The Cardiff Giant is an interesting hoax to talk about because it gives great insights into the collective mindset of the public surrounding human evolution in the 1800s. Believing in biblical ineffability in the centuries before industrialization was not considered a “fringe belief” – publicly doubting that the bible wasn’t the direct “Word of God” could have even been dangerous. As the now-established disciplines of geology, paleontology, and archaeology were developing as scientific knowledge frameworks, the scientific community formed many different hypotheses regarding human evolution that were far from the Creation stories that were historically taught. The Cardiff Giant shows that people were interested in seeing evidence for their traditionally held beliefs that claimed to have been found buried in the ground, just like the evidence that the scientific communities used to support their anthro-evolutionary theories. In the case of the Piltdown Man, it’s great to point out that there were definitely racist motivations for wanting to believe that humanity could not have possibly started anywhere but Europe. Dawson’s attempt to give Britain an early hominid specimen to be proud of was a complicated piece in the early 20th century political puzzle. The professionals across differing fields who examined the specimen and raised skepticism against a popularly accepted artifact were truly committed to the nature of science. I do agree that statement two is the most accurate – whether the evidence is believed by the public or the Keeper of Geology, science (as a common set of rules for knowledge creation) corrects itself.
I really like how you compared both of these instances in history. The way you mentioned the monetary motivation peaked my interest. There are many points in human history where money has been the motivation for awful things. We see this in many murder cases. I would be careful in the way you say that the Cardiff Giant was proof against evolution and that is why the Christian community wanted to believe it. Since Christianity is such an umbrella category, there are people who are Christian who do not oppose the idea of evolution.
I also like where you mentioned how it was not common curtesy for a scientist to check out the findings in this time as well. I could not believe during lecture when we were discussing this that for both hoaxes it went on for a while without anyone truly checking these things out. In today’s world, I think as soon as something like these were discovered someone with lots of experience would go to confirm it. Maybe it just took a long time to get to any scientist because of the lack of technology. Though this is still interesting to me because so many people came to the Cardiff Giant attraction especially, I wonder if any of them ever had the thought that it could be fake.
I also like how you mentioned bias, and its presence everywhere. We always have to be careful in any kind of scientific study or discovery to be careful of bias.
Thanks for sharing!