When the Piltdown man was discovered he fed into England’s rising need for a prehistoric hominid skeleton of their own. There was fame for the finder, but, more importantly, there was fame for the country as it finally joined other European nations in what I like to think of as the space race of the mid 1800s.
The target audience for the Piltown man was mostly the scientific community. Scientists who were in turn very eager to overlook the fraudulent qualities of the specimen because it meant that they got to participate in writing down some of our own evolutionary history.
The hoax managed to last much longer than it ever should have because so many scientists were willing to believe in the Piltdown man. This belief also manifests in how the Piltdown man was integrated into scientific theory– given its own genus and added into textbooks to be taught to future generations.
The Cardiff Giant is similar in a few ways, and different in a lot of others. Both Piltdown man and the Cardiff Giant drew their inspiration from Biblical Literalism and the idea that before mankind there was a race of giants that walked the earth. After this point of origin they begin to drift apart.
While the Piltdown man was created to spark excitement in the scientific community (and to feed a nationalistic need for pride), the Cardiff Giant was only created to fool people and make money. Despite the fact that we look down on the perpetrator of the Piltdown man as having created a poor forgery, we can’t ignore that the Cardiff Giant is even worse. This time even uneducated people could tell that the giant sitting in a tent in New York was a fake.
Because the Cardiff Giant was never intended to fool anyone with any critical thinking skills, because the hoax was only active for a matter of weeks, and because its only goal was to rake in money rather than to change the scientific record, I personally believe that it did less harm than the Piltdown man.
Lastly, I’d like to give credit where it’s due: to the scientists who questioned each hoax from the beginning. It’s true that there were members of the scientific community (especially in the case of Piltdown man) who were complicit, but there were also those who stood up to the illusion. The last point in common that both of these hoaxes have is that they were eventually both proven to be false through the application of the scientific method and some due diligence.
It should be noted that not only did Piltdown man target the scientific community, but also wider society at the time, especially if it was rooted in nationalism. Nationalism is borne and bred through the masses, and if they didn’t know about the significance of piltdown, Britains’s place in the Great Paleontological Game would’ve been moot. Cardiff was surely utilized towards the popular mind, this is true, but to lay Piltdown alone in Academia would not truly recognize its nationalistic roots. This post does still well recognize the origins of these hoaxes, regardless.
The only thing I’d say I’d truly disagree with is the idea that Cardiff was worse because it was easily discovered. True, it was such a blatant and greedy thing to do, but its quick demise truly snuffed out any lingering ideas about its legitimacy. People fell for it, obviously, since it was so profitable at the time…but none today nor in the succeeding years have tried to hold this up as a “true tale” or “false flag” or the like. Piltdown was take seriously, as I mentioned in my own post, by scientists and academics for decades. This lack of scrutiny could have easily done so much more damage to science than it did.
I thoroughly enjoyed the manner in which you structured your post. One thing I am confused about is how the Piltdown Man is derived from Biblical Literalism. I was under the impression that the Piltdown Man was simply a specimen that helped prove that humans developed a large brain before anything else and helped bolster British nationality. A human skull and a chimpanzee mandible would make for quite a change in the perception of how humans evolved, as opposed to bipedalism evolving first as all the other hominids suggested. I agree with the statement that the Cardiff Giant was never intended to truly make a mark on the scientific community and was just a money-making ploy. I also really like the term of “the space race of the 1800s” because that is probably the closest thing that comes to this idea of nations using scientific breakthroughs as a marker for the greatness of said nation. I also like that you stated that both hoaxes were proven to be such through the application of the scientific method. The Cardiff Giant had clear sculpture marks and it wouldn’t take a genius to see that it was in fact made of gypsum rather than mummified or petrified remains. The Piltdown Man on the other hand took a bit more effort in proving false. I will say that I find it hilarious that after this fake, people looked through Charles Dawson’s previous antiquities and found over thirty fake artifacts. The things people will do for a little notoriety is fascinating