I recently learned about two giant man hoaxes, even though they both concerned Giants, they are respectively different in nature. The Piltdown man hoax happened in 1908, a skull -fragment was discovered in the Piltdown region of Sussex. The Fossil was discovered by Charles Dawson. The reasons behind this hoax are because of Nationalism, Scientific Ideology, and Fame. To start, all these other European countries were having archaeological discoveries. These discoveries were then put in museum and seen as a source of pride. England was left to twiddle their thumbs. So, one day, they decided to create a discovery of their own. That way, they wouldn’t be the only people who didn’t discover anything and have money poured into here museum. Another motivation was scientific ideology. The skull fragment that they discovered aligned with the times “brain-centered” paradigm that scientist believed. So not only did they discover a skull fragment, it was the only piece of “evidence” that confirmed human evolutionary beliefs at the time. The last motivation was fame for the people involved. The discovery bought in a great deal of money and notoriety for Dawson and Woodward, but for England in general.  This was successful because people WANTED to believe that it was true, they wanted to believe the England found because of strong nationalism and that their belief about evolution was correct. People see the thing they want to see, even though it is clearly incorrect.

In the hoax of the Cardiff Giant of 1869, a farmer by the name of Stub Newell had discovered a petrified man (giant) on their property. Which was clearly false, and was determined to be so a week later. But within that week the Cardiff Giant exhibit amassed a large sum of money for their town and the individual. Money was one of the motivations for the hoax but there was another reason. In on the plan was another man name George Hull, which was out to prove an Ideology. Hull was a strong atheist, so he determined that if he could fool people with this fraud, it would prove his point about people believing in anything that was mentioned in the bible. This became successful because like to believe that the past was greater than what it was and they want to believe in these religious stories so the Cardiff Giant confirmed it. Sometime we overlook and don’t question things when we want to believe it.

The impact of these two hoaxes on scientific understanding of the human past in demonstrates that everything is not what it seems. Sometimes documents/recordings and discovery can be false, whether it was on purpose of by accident. There are so many aspects to look as such as motivations and context at the time to determine what is actually true. That would be the impact of these two hoaxes. With that being said, I do believe that the implication that both hoaxes exemplify the self-corrective nature of science. It was through science that these two hoaxes were uncovered. If you believe in the process, and it is unbiased and ran out of the pure nature of discovery than science can and should be trusted. Science is meant to unveil the “truth”, which I believe will happen eventually. That does not mean that there will be mistakes along the way because people’s intentions may serve their own self-interest, but if you can remove that aspect, then science is the only objective thing we have in this world.