In 1912, Charles Dawson proclaimed that he had found the missing link between ape and man. At this time, evolution science was just first starting to be researched, and Dawson’s discovery was a very important breakthrough at the time, before it was revealed to be a hoax. On the other side of the world, in 1869, the Cardiff Giant was discovered by Stub Newell on his farm in Cardiff, New York. It was put on display for a few months before being revealed as a fake.
While both the Cardiff Giant and the Piltdown Man are hoaxes related to human prehistory, the motives behind each are very different as well as their impacts. For the Piltdown Man, Charles Dawson wanted to draw attention back to England as the center for culture and human advancement, and at the time when the attention was on Africa and the Middle East as the beginning of modern humans and center of pre-human ancestors, Dawson’s idea was to bring the attention back to England and give the credit to white people, frankly. His thought was to show English people as the start of the higher evolved race, while others were not as well evolved from apes as white people are. On the other hand, the George Hull’s motives behind the Cardiff Giant were much less severe and more money-centric. His main motive was to make money off of gullible people who are willing to believe in a petrified giant. The reason these people would believe that this giant was real was because of the many biblical references to giant men, and as George Hull was an atheist, he thought that if they’re willing to believe anything they read in the bible, they’ll be willing to pay to see the Cardiff Giant.
The Piltdown Man was successful because it was discovered at a very convenient time in history, as I mentioned before when evolution science was first being developed and understood, so people were willing to believe in any possible addition to the evidence of evolution from apes. If this man was a real man, he was indeed the missing link in our evolutionary story and seemed to provide solid proof that humans did indeed evolve from apes. The Cardiff Giant was successful because at that time, not a lot was known about human prehistory, and old stories like the bible provided vague definitions of who (or what) roamed the earth many many years before we did. If this Giant was real, that would prove that giants did in fact roam the earth many years ago and that the Bible is best interpreted literally, because its stories are true.
Both hoaxes exemplify the self-corrective nature of science, because both hoaxes were believed to be true or real upon first discovery, whether by a majority or a smaller group of scientists, but upon further investigation they were found to be falsified and the other evidence we have of evolution and that there were never any giants stays strong.
Hi Sabrina! I really enjoyed reading your post and I think the title is really smart. I agree that the motives for the Piltdown Man and the Cardiff Giant were different. While the Hull with the Cardiff Giant focused on proving that people are gullible if you frame your evidence right and also wanted to make money, Dawson with the Piltdown Man focused on nationalism and changing the scholarly community’s opinion on where humans evolved from Africa to Europe. I agree also that the Piltdown Man was accepted mainly because not much was known about evolution as it was a brand new concept that had begun to be applied throughout the academic world. I also think that nationalism and racism played a role in its success because many white scholars accepted that the Piltdown Man was real and that it proved that humans evolved from Europe even though it was an anomaly to find such a fossil in Europe. I think it is interesting that Hull and Newell looked to use the Cardiff Giant to prove that people were gullible if something had enough “evidence” and they did prove that. Many people believed the Cardiff Giant was real solely because there was “evidence” – a “petrified man” – and there was mention in a religious text. I agree that both hoaxes show the self-corrective nature of science because while both were perceived to be true, science came through and proved that they were hoaxes beyond a doubt impacting the scientific community and general public for the better.
This was very well written. You noticed some points that I left out of my post, but there were also some things I noticed that you didn’t mention. I think it’s important to add that another dimension of Dawson’s intentions with the Piltdown man was ideological. In the period the Piltdown man was “discovered,” the prevailing evolutionary theory said that humankind must have evolved a modern brain before a modern body. One of the reasons Dawson made the Piltdown man skull the way he did was because it confirmed that theory. This is also one of the reasons people were more willing to believe the Piltdown man wasn’t a hoax despite overwhelming evidence – they so wanted to it be true, they so expected it to be true, that it was an easier pill to swallow. I agreed with what you said about it confirming the self-corrective nature of science. The difference between pseudoscience and real science is that real science can look at something like this and construct rational, evidence-based arguments about why it is not supportable. Real science is why stuff like this can come up and be dismissed.
In regards to the Cardiff Giant, I agree with the substance of what you’ve said, but I would add that part of Hull’s motivation for the creation of the Cardiff Giant was to win ideological points on his worldview. Hull came up with the idea for the Cardiff Giant after getting into an argument with a local pastor about the literalism of the bible.
I really like your post and agree with your points. Your introduction of the Piltdown man and Cardiff Giant really exemplifies how both were tied together and both very specific to the era they took place in. I agree with you take on how the Piltdown man was along with being politically drive was also racially driven. That is a point that I originally didn’t think about in reference to this hoax. It makes a lot of sense that the Piltdown Man could be used to fuel scientific racism especially in 1912 England. I also agree with you point that the Cardiff giant was much less malicious in the terms of now exactly being a scientific discovery. The Cardiff Giant was designed with money making the only factor on the minds of its creators, while this isn’t morally right it does seem much less detrimental than the Piltdown Man who was created with the goal of being a fake scientific artifact. I also like your point about how both of these show the self-correcting nature of the scientific method and science as a practice. Both were originally seen as important discoveries, but time soon revealed the truth. I think that many of the ways that we understand the world follows this method, as new theories are written, and old theories disproven our understanding also changes. This slow and unsure process is the only real way to go about new discoveries, but it does have its obvious flaws and makes mistakes.