January 19, 2026 • 42 mins
In December 1912, Arthur Smith Woodward, a paleontologist at the British Museum, presented something extraordinary to the Geographical Society: a "missing link" fossil, a species he named "Dawson's Dawn-man" after the Sussex solicitor who found the original fossil. It was the find of a lifetime, and a much-needed bit of national pride for the English. The only problem? It wasn't real.
SOURCES:
The Piltdown Man Hoax: Case Closed by Miles Russell
Piltdown Man: The Secret Life of Charles Dawson by Miles Russell (Tempus, Stroud, 2003)
https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/the-problem-of-piltdown-man/
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/nov/23/piltdown-man-remains-exposed-as-fake-1953
https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2016/08/folklore-piltdown-man-hoax/
'The Perpetrator at Piltdown' by J Winslow and A Meyer, Science (September, 1983)
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2016/august/piltdown-man-charles-dawson-likely-fraudster.html
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/piltdown-man-paleoanthropologys-april-fools-176401927/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Folks, it's a hugo. No, I haven't.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Seen when us see the Welcome to Hoax, a podcast
about the lies we wish were true.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
And truths that sound like lies. I'm the ghost of
Danish Sports and I'm the evil twin of Lizzie Logan.
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Lizzie. Are you a biology person? Did you like biology
in school? I liked it? Okay.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. I mean, that's
really all we need for this episode. I'll get you
to college. I love biology. I was a big I
was pre met in college. This is in fact I
remember from your memoir. This is a fact we know.
I worked at the Adler Planetarium when I was in
high school.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Not just the shock Chicago's Planitarium. Is that biology that's
planning it's planets.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
But I did also almost get a summer internship at
the Field Museum back in my pre mid day.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I'm almost proud of you.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
I thank you. I instead made the decision to get
take an internship at Conan and move out to Los
Angeles and do an entirely different career path. So that
was really a moment that could have been. But I'm
much happier now.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
And now you know me.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
That's true. But I am someone who really likes biology
and evolutionary biology, and so this is a story I
have known about for a very long time, and I'm
excited to sort of dive into it.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Wait is this Am I about to find out that
the hoax is evolution?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Ohzy?
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Because God created the world in six days and then
on the seventh thing he rested.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yeah, he made men perfectly exactly as we are, We've
never changed.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
And then he made woman out of a rib.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yeah. Oh okay, No, but it is a hoax. That
is a pretty popular hoax. But I was very excited
as I dove into it to find layers about why
it maintained for so long and sort of understand the
historical context around it. So with that, Lizzie, do you
(02:14):
know the phrase missing link?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yes, So it's the proverbial or like mythical step between
like not apes, but like the prehistoric ancestor that we
share in common with apes and cavemen.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
And I think there's a joke about this in the
TV show like The Wild Thornberry's maybe where like they
maybe adopt a kid who's the missing link and he's
like very wild.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Donny.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, I think there's a joke about that, but I
might feel like confusing different things from my childhood, but
like that that's what I know it.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
You're exactly right. Oh, but what I mean say is
the term missing link isn't actually really useful, and it's
considered in biology an outdated term because there's a very
sort of primitive view of evolution that's like can you
picture in your mind's eye that like diagram of like
a fish and then it like starts walking on it's
(03:22):
a man. So that's sort of a view of evolution
that's known as orthogenesis, which is like a very linear
model of evolution, which is just like one, two, three,
blah blah blah, that like march. That image is called
the march of progress, and it sort of is a
version of evolution that kind of has like religious overtones
because it's like we're being perfected, We're going from simple
(03:43):
organisms to complex organisms.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Intelligent design vibes.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
A little bit like even though it is still evolution,
it's a very basic understanding of evolution, and it's just
not right, Like we don't go from worse to better species.
That's just not how works. Orthogenesis is like one after another.
And then the idea was something called phylogeny, which is
like a evolution that's like a branching tree. That's like
(04:09):
we and apes have a common ancest yes, And so
you're like, okay, that's pretty complicated, but you know apes
seven anywhere from seven to thirteen million years ago, we
diverged from apes and then became different species. But now
evolutionary historians refer to evolution as a braided stream because
(04:29):
it turns out there are like a ton of early
human versions that then interacted and bred together and intermingled,
like there's Neanderthal DNA in Homo sapiens and vice versa.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Like you're using a lot of euphemisms for like early man,
fucking apes, early like fucking ape type people.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
So we're back and forth. Like if you actually look
at a diagram of like all the different subversions of
humans that exist, did you know millions of years ago,
it's like a very dense tree or like a bush
with branches going back and forth. So missing link doesn't
really make sense because there would be like so many
(05:14):
missing links because you can just be like, Okay, well
where on this point does that fossil go, And it
could be anywhere on that map. That's not just like
one linear progression where we're actually missing anything because we
do have all those fossil records, but we don't have
a lot of fossils. When you know, people are like, oh,
(05:35):
do you have every single fossil? Like no, and they
did not have a lot of fossils, you know, one
hundred years ago they had even fewer because finding fossils
is hard.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, I mean when you were like that, do we
have every fossil, I'm like, I would say, we probably
have almost none of the fossils.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah, only a tiny percentage of living organisms become fossils.
Like if you die and you're buried, you don't become
a fossil. There has to be like a very specific
geo process like the Librea tarpits, you know, being buried
under sediment or like specific weather conditions like a really
dry desert. So like fossils are really rare. But after
(06:16):
Darwin published on the Origin of Species in eighteen fifty nine,
people wanted fossils to go prove what he was talking about.
Particularly at that time, they wanted the missing link, which
would be ideal. But again, we now know there are
millions of missing links. It doesn't actually matter, But back
then it would be like the find of a lifetime.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Cool. Can I ask a question that probably were going
to cut, Yes, but I'm just curious, Yeah, is anyone
looking for like a racial missing link?
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yeah, that is actually a really big and important question
that we should not cut because we get to it
in this.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Episode, Okay, because like I don't know if that was
like just like I just don't want to sound super ignorant,
because I'm like, we all come from an ancestor. But
I know that genotypically, which is what's on the inside,
all of humankind is one race, the human race, But phenotypically,
(07:14):
which is what's on the outside, there are clear categories
of people based on where your ancestors are from. Like, Yeah,
all the people from one part of the world look
really alike in one certain way, and all the people
from another part of the world look really alike in
another certain way. And I'm like, clearly, somewhere in the
family tree, there's gotta be someone who looks halfway between
(07:35):
these people, right, And at some point one brother went
to one part and one brother went to a different part,
and then they ended up looking different. And I'm like,
how did this happen?
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Well, Lizzie, I am gonna blow your mind and say,
if you believe it. In the early twentieth century, people
were really fixated on why different people look differently.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah, I believe it, and I don't want to be
I don't want to I don't want anyone to think
that I am fixated on that.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
No, it's interesting. It's a question that side.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Don't take that your race is the most important thing
about you. I'm not fixated on race as a person,
but I am fascinated by humans.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
The spoiler alert answer, which is not a spoiler alert
because it's science, is it turns out we evolved separately
much later than people think, like less than one hundred
thousand years ago, and at the time, what was a
theory called like the out of Africa theory is correct.
We all evolved in Africa, and then more recently than
(08:34):
they believed at the time, the different you know, racist
and ethnicities formed, but they didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
It's just like green eye people just kind of showed
up in a couple spots.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Okay, but we're in the early twentieth century right now.
We're going to start our story in nineteen twelve when
a man named Charles Dawson, not Charles Darwin, unrelated.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
And not Charles Dickens and not Charles Dickens are main character.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Charles Dawson is a solicitor from Sussex. He's a lawyer, okay,
but he's also an amateur geologist and archaeologist who just
does it as a hobby. Loves it for the love
of the game. He wants to get it, you know.
He loves the geographical society and wants to rub elbows
with them. But he's not a professional.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
He is paleontologist, like a job at this point.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah, I mean, well, he's friends with a man named
Arthur Smith Woodward, who is the keeper of geology at
the then the British Museum of Natural History. Now it's
a separate museum known as the Natural History Museum. So
that guy's a professional. Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Charles Dawson writes to this professional and says, I found
something that might be kind of interesting. According to Charles Dawson.
A few years back he had seen workmen digging in
the pilt down gravel pit near where he lived, and
one of them, one of the workmen had mentioned that
he found something that he thought was a fossilized coconut,
(09:59):
and Dawson went to investigate. And it turns out this coconut,
what looked like a coconut, was just like a dark
brown stained skull, and it was dark brown because it
was incredibly incredibly old. So then Dawson goes back to
like the scrap piles of this gravel pit and finds
the rest of this skull, and he's writing to Arthur
(10:21):
Smith Woodward and saying this might be interesting. Do you
want to come take a look. Yeah, So a bit
about Dawson before we introduce Smith Woodward. Even though Dawson
is not a professional, he has made several pretty impressive fines.
He's like found teeth of early mammals, he found a
(10:42):
stone axe, he found bricks from Roman Britain, this hybrid
iron Roman statuette. So things that aren't like, you know,
we don't know about them today. But for an amateur
geologist in Sussex, he's doing really well. People actually call
him the Wizard of Sussex. So he's someone that Arthur
Smith Woodward considers a friend. Arthur Smith Woodward, first of
(11:05):
many Arthur's in this episode, comes to the site to
dig because if you find an old skull, you might
find more things. And they dig together June through September
in nineteen twelve, and they find more skull fragments, a jawbone,
and a set of teeth. There's also I just want
to plant this cameo, this French Jesuit geologist Pierre Tilhard Deschardin,
(11:28):
who also stops by and he actually is just like
I want to see what's what, and he finds some
of the teeth.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
And this is in a local tar pit.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
This is in a gravel pit.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Is in a gravel pit in Sussex, which is nobody
cares what they're doing in the gravel pit, Like it
doesn't belong to anybody.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
No, it's workmen who are digging out gravel to like
pave things.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Oh okay, I'm just saying, like this isn't somebody's property.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
No, I don't think anyone cares about.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
It, okay, Like they're not getting in anybody's way.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
They're also they're going through the scrap piles. Oh, they're
going through the men the workers that also EXCA had
already excavated and they're going through the piles.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
So Woodward again, the professional here reconstructs these fragments that
they found, the jaw, the skull, and he discovers something
kind of amazing, which is that the skull looks like
it's human, but from five hundred thousand years ago, which
you know, for context, archaic Homo sapiens are about three
(12:29):
hundred thousand years old. More modern Homo sapiens are about
one hundred and sixty thousand years old. So a five
hundred thousand year old like humanoid skull is amazing.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
How is he getting that number? Because I don't you're
not carbon dating and you are now nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
I think you are estimating from the best of your
ability based on the stain, Like the coloring of it
means like how long it's been in the earth, and
he's and the size of the skull because human brains
have gotten bigger over the time.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
And he also and it was just like in some gravel,
what like six feet down in Sussex, Yeah, sus speaking,
putting the sus in Sussex.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Well, here i'must say, here's the even more amazing part.
And I think what helped him date it?
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Also, if it was small, couldn't it just be like
a child.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Maybe. But here's the kind of amazing part. Well, I
actually I don't think it's I think they know sort
of what size human scholars like.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
But science, the jaw.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Does not look like a human jaw. It looks like
a primate jaw. And that's even more amazing because it's
a human skull with a primate jaw. But you'd think, oh,
it's just a monkey jaw that somehow fell into this
gravel with it a pet monkey. But the teeth were
mold they had wear patterns that looked like human teeth. Interesting,
(13:51):
So that's very exciting for a few reasons. First, because
this big debate was going on at the time whether
early you know, pre humans developed their brains first or
their human diet first, And this was showing pretty clearly
that they developed their brains first, because it was a
(14:11):
big skull and an ape like jaw.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
That is so convenient that they were having this debate.
And then they happened to find some evidence they exactly
answered this debate that answered this to great question, what
a lucky fine.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
So it's an amazing fine, and you know what else
is lucky. It's found in England. What was really exciting
is because it's so helpful. So there had been a
fine in Germany and I'm going to mispronounce this because
it's Latin, but they call it Homo Heidelbergens and it
was basically a pre human that was found in Heidelberg, Germany,
and that was very exciting for the Germans. But now
(14:48):
it's you know, about to be World War one in
a few years, and we don't want Germany to have
a more impressive fine than England. So it is pretty
exciting that we found, you know, wording to the Atlanta
Georgian magazine at the time, quote natives of Great Britain
can trace their ancestry further back than any other people's
(15:08):
on the face of the earth, which is amazing. And also,
as we were talking about with racism, that fun thing.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
This podcast's bailiwick.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah, racism. Finding this skull and jobbone really reinforces a
Eurocentric model of evolution that shows that the races were
developing separately a very very long time ago, years ago,
so it's differentiating the races, and it's like showing that, like, well,
a lot of evolution happened to lead to the superiority
(15:43):
of white European people, and it just happened to be
happening on the island of Great Britain. You know how
it would make sense that all this evolution would be
happening on this little island.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Yeah, on this little island with like bad weather and
not that many different types of crops and you know, yeah,
a pretty genetically similar population. It makes total sense.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
And then again, just to reiterate, racists did not separate
five hundred thousand years ago. It happened much much more
recently because those changes, those developmental changes, are minuscule in
the scheme of evolution. But they didn't know that at
the time. Another thing that was pretty exciting for them,
and the press had a lot of fun with this,
and like when you're reading articles about it, it's like
cute because it feels like everyone had an inside doke.
(16:29):
They also found this carved fossilized elephant thone that had
been flattened like use is like a decorative object or
a tool, but it kind of looked like a cricket bet.
So this guy had a cricket bet, which they liked.
So Arthur smith Wood where this is the find of
(16:52):
his career. He announces the discovery at the Geological Society,
and he named it again apologies for the Latin anthropists
Dawson I or Dawson's dawn Man. And right away people
are a little you know, suspicious or at least just curious,
and they challenge the reconstruction because this isn't a full
(17:14):
skull they found. It's fragments. And if you've ever tried
to like put things together, you know that he was
like making an argument about the size of the brain, right,
But it's like if you put them together a little
more down, then the brain could be way smaller, right.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
And if you put them together really far apart, then
you have two skulls.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yeah exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
I mean I'm saying like, if you have like six fragments,
like okay, maybe you have three fragments each from two skulls,
so like you can the evidence can line up however
you want it.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
That's it. So people are looking at these fragments being like,
these fragments are interesting, but the way you're putting them together.
I'm taking issue with one of the biggest anthropologists who
took issue with it was our second Arthur of the episode,
a man named Arthur Keith, who's another anthropologist, and he
is looking at the way that Smith Woodward reconstructed it
(18:06):
with certain teeth, like a reconstruction. He like drew in, like, oh,
and these type of teeth would go here, teeth that
they didn't find. And he did it with ape like canines.
Your canines are like the long pointy teeth. And Smith
Woodward imagine that this, you know, Dawn Man had ape
like canines, and Arthur Keith is like, but those other
(18:27):
molars look pretty humanoid. And if they were doing side
to side chewing, how would they have ape like canines.
That doesn't make sense. And the two of them were
so misaligned on this possible model that these lifelong friends
literally and their friendship.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, the Arthur's come apart because of the fake teeth,
the imagined teeth in this model.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Can I just say it is I mean, granted, you know,
we have the benefit of hindsight, and these people were scientists,
and they believed what they believe based on the evidence
they had at the time. But yes, looking back, it
is a little bit silly to me that they thought that, like,
you know, the absolute peak of human evolution could only
(19:13):
have come out of Great Britain. Well, you know, an
island that can only produce people named Arthur.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Apparently, I don't think of that one.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
You don't even have diversity of name.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
I don't think they thought that the only high fossils
were in England. I think no, again, because they had
found these fossils in Germany. But I think they were
excited that they finally had their own. Some people, if
you can believe it, were saying that, like, it actually
looks like an ape jaw with a human skull. It
just doesn't look like it's one being one person. Yeah,
(19:47):
that they just found an ape jaw and found a
human skull.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Right, why are you putting them together?
Speaker 1 (19:52):
So there are published people like in nineteen thirteen, a
man named David Watterson publishes in a journal that he's like,
this just looks like an ape jaw and human skull
to me, but don't go together. Don't go together. And
they were like, these things could have just ended up
in a heap together.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah, And they're maybe not even from the same time period.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
But here's the thing. In nineteen fifteen, Dawson says, in
another site two miles away, he found fragments of a
second skull, also with this same jaw that looks like
an ape like jaw. So this find is known as
pilt Down two. People don't talk about pilt Down two
as much because we didn't get a ton of detail
(20:36):
about it. We don't even know where the exact site
is because Dawson didn't write it down. And then in
nineteen sixteen Dawson dies, Oh rip he dies. He's only
fifty two.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Did he become a fossil?
Speaker 1 (20:50):
I don't know. I hope I bet he wishes me.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
I hope, I bet I bet he tried.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
But basically he had found what is known as pilt
Down too sort of left it to Arthur Smith Woodward,
who presents the finds to the Geographic Society and kind
of like dances around the fact that he doesn't actually
know where it came from. But this one is a
frontal bone, an occipital fragment, a lower molar that is
the same species as the original find. So it's like
(21:18):
if an ape jaw just happened to be in a
heap pile with a human skull, and that was just
like a weird coincidence. Why would it happen twice? So
for the next few decades it sort of remains an
interesting find and a source of national English pride, but
it's kind of overshadowed by other exciting finds all over
(21:41):
the world, and it kind of runs contradictory to other
evidence that starts coming out about evolution, namely that it
seems that the human jaw developed before the human brain.
So every other fossil that they're finding around the world
in the next few decades seems to prove that one.
(22:01):
So it's like, well, the piltdown Man is kind of
this unusual aberition. And then in the early nineteen fifties,
a man named Joseph Weiner who works at the British
Museum basically goes to his boss, Kenneth Oakley and is like, hey,
no one's actually really looked at those piltdown fragments for
a while, right, And it's true they had been like
(22:22):
put away for safe keeping and people had examined like
molds and photos, but not the actual artifacts. So they
get the team together. Oakley is the leader of this group,
and they basically are like, well, now it's the nineteen fifties.
We have all these new tools at our disposal. They
are able to do nitrogen dating and florine absorption tests.
(22:43):
And a florin absorption test is basically like, if a
fossil has been in the earth for a long time,
it absorbs more florine, so you can tell how long
it's been down there by how much florine.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
See, that is more sciencey to me than what color
is it?
Speaker 1 (22:59):
And it out that they were much more recent fossils
than had been specified.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
That makes sense to me again because they were dug
up by some guys going through gravel.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
And they also prove that the jaw and the skull
are different ages.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Again, that makes sense to me because it would be
a hell of a coincidence if they were from the
same body.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Here's the Also, the thing they realized by looking pretty
close and taking X ray photographs of the teeth, because
they realized that these teeth with these sort of human molars,
it doesn't really look like human chewing patterns. And so
they were like, okay, what we can do is we
can take an X ray and if those molars had
(23:43):
been ground down when this person had been alive, it
would show signs of healing, because it's like if you
damage your body, it will heel a little bit. So
they take to teeth heel, I guess, yeah, or just
like enough enamel. I don't that's what they say, Lizzie
learns things live on the pad. It says that they
were taking X ray photographs to look for signs of healing.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Fascinating.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
And here's the crazy part. Oh yeah, new dentine. So
that's what's being reposed. I don't know what denteine. I
guess is just a part of a tooth that can
grow back.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Fascinating.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
It turns out that no new denteine had grown. This
had not happened while the subject was alive. It was
just post mortem tooth damage. Lizzie, would you believe it
if I told you that these teeth had just been
filed down with a file. And here's what else they discover,
all for.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
A little bit of geologist glory.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
A little bit of geologist not even any money. So
here's also the crazy thing is, remember how I told
you it's like dark, It's like the color of a coconut. Yeah.
So it turns out if that was authentic, it would
go all the way into the bone, right, But if
you cut it open just a little bit, it's white underneath.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Baby, there's just like some teeth he found at the
local butcher.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
He stained these fossils with iron and chromic acid to
make them look older. It was a surface level stain,
like it's a it's a bad hoax. There's also there's
also dental putty.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
I mean, at this point, I'm thinking, like, were they
like cardboard cutouts of teeth?
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Like? Well, So, November nineteen fifty three, Time magazine publishes
evidence proving that it was definitely a forgery, this big
expose led by Kenneth Oakley. They proved that the skull
was only a few hundred years old, like it was
a medieval skull, and it was a lower jaw of
an orangutan, And there were chimp teeth that were literally
(25:40):
filed down, which again is like people should have known that.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah, that seems like something you could test for in
nineteen twelve. Well, so the question then is why did
it take so long to discover the hoax? And there's
a few reason and what's the point of the hoax.
But I assume we'll get to that laser. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
But why did it.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Take so long for them to discover I mean, first,
to be fair, chemical dating techniques were pretty primitive in
the nineteen tens. Yeah. Yeah. The big reason though is
I also think people were kind of distracted arguing how
to interpret the find that they didn't even ask the
bigger question of is it even real? Because you have
(26:23):
these skull fragments and so you're all debating like, okay,
well which way do they fit together? Which way do
these teeth go? How should these teeth look that you're
not asking the bigger question. Yes, it's like a magician
like sleight of hand situation.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
And then I mean the big answer is like like
ring a little bell, like racism, Like it reinforced something
people wanted to believe. They wanted to believe that there
was this major find in England. You know, there had
been discoveries in France and Germany, and England was feeling
a little bad about themselves. And you know when there
(26:58):
were other discoveries in Africa that contradicted the piltdown man,
they were just like, well that's a different branch of evolution,
you know, and like confirmation bias. I mean that's how
science works. Whereas you look at information and things don't
make sense, you come up with a reason for it.
And if you want to believe that the data is true,
your first instinct isn't like, well the data's wrong, You're like, well,
(27:20):
how do I explain this? Yes, because they didn't understand
evolution fully back then the way we do now, especially
the divergence of human evoration. And like I said, like racism,
like the Piltdown Man was also really upheld and celebrated
by racist people because it proved something they wanted to believe.
But the crazy thing, I think the reason that the
(27:43):
Piltdown Man is one of the famous, most famous scientific
hoaxes in history is because it took forty years for
it to be fully revealed. And again, I want to
make it clear, in those forty years, people individuals like
wrote papers being like I don't actually think it's real. Yeah,
but the giant scientific consensus had not come to that determination.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Well, it also seems like people in those forty years
were saying like, oh, this is something strange that we
don't know what it was, and it doesn't disprove our
theories of evolution. Yeah, they weren't saying someone is duping
us on purpose.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
That to me is the twist. Like scientists all the
time find stuff, don't know what it means. Some fringe
group is like it means there's aliens, and the scientific
community is like, no, it doesn't. That's not to say
we do know what it is, but we know it
doesn't mean there's aliens.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
And you know what people say all the time is, oh,
scientists are just making that up. Evolution isn't real.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Yeah it's like, well, okay, it is a theory, but
like it's real, it's real, But like it is still
a reveal that like, oh he did it on he
did it on purpose, Like I would have believed that
he found it and was just like just really wanted
to believe that these two things went together. Why did
he do that?
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Well here's the thing.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
But beyond racist pride, because like what poss like we bruh, we.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Don't actually know for a fact who did it. If
you're asking who did this hoax, the obvious answer is
Dawson the solicitor, who was like, hey, I found some
interesting things and the answer of why he would want
to do it is because he wanted the respect of
(29:39):
the geological society. He wanted the pride and prestige that
came from a once in a generation find. Okay, And
he was an amateur who wanted to be taken seriously.
He had a history of interesting finds and really wanted
to be validated by the establishment.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I guess I'm just stagging him up against the other
hoaxters that we've covered, who get so much more time
and effort into their hoaxes that I'm like, this one
is really sort of like pathetic to me. But like
he only did kind of the one thing, like I
know you said that he did another one. Well, but
(30:20):
like that other guy wrote like a whole Shakespeare.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Who Shakespeare, you know what I mean, just to impress he.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Was and he wrote like letters and poems, and he
had the tea bags and he was staining the thing,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
And this guy was using acid on his on his fossils.
He was filing down teeth, monkeys, teeth, a handful.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Of teeth like one time, Like I don't know, this
just seems really lazy to me.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Well, so people also think Okay, did he have an
accomplice did if it was Dawson, was Arthur Smith Woodward
either in on it or did he originate it? I
kind of think know that he was just like a
willing dupe, sure like it made his reputation, and I
think he decided not to look too critically at it.
I also think Arthur Smith Woodward was friends with Dawson
(31:06):
and he trusted him, So I don't think it doesn't
make sense for me when people are like, he was
probably in on it. To me, that doesn't quite line up.
You can't prove he wasn't, but it always rang a
little false for me that he would be willing to
put his reputation on the line that way. It's very
risky for him.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, if he was a professional who was making money
from like being a science man.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Stephen J. Gould like the famous popular historian, popular science writer,
professor at Harvard.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Once again our definition of famous is he.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Has said in two very famous essays famous to me
that he thinks that Jesuit priest Pierre Tilhard Desharin was
part of the conspiracy. He lays out some points about like,
well he was there, and I'm like it's possible, but
it's not like smoking gun evidence.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Like would he have done that for like Christians?
Speaker 1 (32:00):
No, just to like be in on the hoax. Oh okay,
just to like, I don't know the pride of discovery.
I think archaeologists, like I said, like, fossils are hard
to find, and I think they really want to feel
good about themselves. I mean, fossils are cool.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
I'm not going to deny it.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Well, here's the other theory. And this is the third
Arthur in our episode.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
I'm gonna say it again on the pod. England is
a silly place.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Well, Lizzie, would you believe me if I said this
episode's getting a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle cameo, all.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Right, number one drink if we mention them, Taylor Swift,
number two drink, if we mention them. P. T. Barnum,
number three drinker, if we mentioned them, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
People think Arthur Conan Doyle might have been the perpetrator
of the Piltdown hoax based on the fact he was
neighbors with Dawson, He's nearby, he played golf near the
Piltdown site. I'm convinced he was mad at the science
tivic establishment, humiliating. You know, his favorite spiritualists lived in
the area. People read his novel The Lost World, and
(33:09):
they think it's him doing a da Vinci code. He
was like leaving hints in it. I'm convinced what I
kind of find amazing about the it was Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle. Theory is, remember how I mentioned earlier that
this all started because Dawson wrote to his friend Arthur
sinth Woder was like, hey, I found something kind of interesting.
That letter began with some like hey, what's up, like
(33:31):
casual conversation, and he also is like, hey, you know
our mutual friend Arthur Conan Doyle, Like here his working
on a novel the you know, hidden the Lost World,
which in like a murder mystery. That is how you
set it up, that is rap it foreshadowing. The evidence
against Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is there is no actual
(33:53):
evidence that he's just the most famous guy nearby.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Uh, I'm convinced, you know he did it.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
But if he was trying to humiliate the scientific establishment,
when you have said at some point, hey, yeah, he
forgot to be forgotten the reveal he forgot to do
the reveal. But the thing is, we didn't have any
real smoking guns until the nineteen seventies. A trunk is
found in the Natural History Museum and they open it
(34:22):
and it was left by a zoologist named Martin Hinton
who had died ten years earlier. And they opened this
trunk and discover bones that are stained, just like the
pilt down man bones.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
What animals type? Who's bone?
Speaker 1 (34:41):
I think like bones he got legally. I don't think
he was more human bones.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
I don't know, Okay, but suspicious because I was suspicious
there he just left. Why would there be stained bones
sitting in this museum exactly? Why is your trunk filled
with stained bones? Okay, it's suspicious, but there's also like
it doesn't really seem like Hinton was the one who
did it. And people kind of explain that as like
(35:07):
maybe he was maybe he suspected a hoax and was
trying to find out figure out how they did it. Yeah,
maybe he was doing a little a little uh investigation.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Exactly like maybe he was doing like, well, I don't
want to embarrass anyone, but I want to like see
if I can also stay in these bones. I'm gonna
like just spoil everything and just be like it was Dawson.
It was Dawson who did the fake. Maybe Tomorrow was
ining on it with him, but it was one hundred
percent Dowson.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
And now Miles Russell, who's this British archaeologist and this
writer that I absolutely love because he's just like he's
the king of the haters in the best way. Like
if you watched any of the Diddy documentary, you know,
it's just like fifty cent.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Oh I love a hater.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Yeah, yeah, Miles Russell is the fifty cent of this story. Great,
I'm a big fan. He wrote this book called The
Piltdown Man Hoax Case Closed that was very helpful to
me in this episode. And he decides in exhaustive detail
to go through the dozens of Dawson's other earlier discoveries
(36:10):
and proves one by one that they all were fake.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
You know, there's always more. This is again like rappers
do have the best beefs. Yeah, it's Kendrick dropping one
after the other after the other after the other against Drake.
Give it to me, Give it to.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Me, and again Dawson has died decades before. Dawson is dead,
but he Miles Russell just goes next next, Yeah, thirty
eight times thirty you'd be like, well three you prove
you've proven it. He's yeah, faked. Three are no thirty
eight And in his words, to quote him, pilt Down
was not a one off hoax more they more the
(36:52):
accumulation of a life's work. Yeah, so that's it. He
was just like this amateur who wanted to be taken seriously.
So he was the Wizard of Sussex, but like in
a Wizard of ozway. Yeah. In twenty sixteen, Piltdown Man
came back into the news because there was this big
like one hundred year retrospective, massive review study that showed
(37:14):
that did like a real investigation, like a forensic analysis,
and they determined that it was only one actor. They
were like, it was only one guy like doing the
staining and the filing and all that, and it was Dawson. Yeah,
like it's all consistent with Dawson.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
So that's the Piltdown Man, which is a massive embarrassment
to the British scientific establishment but also kind of bad
for science as a whole because creationists cite it still
as proof that scientists are lying about evolution.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
But he wasn't a scientist. He was just some josh moo.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Yeah, but the scientist believed it and like wrote about
it and celebrated it. And it's like it reinforces the
thing of like, well, they just want to see what
they want to say. But I will say scientists were
also the people that were like, it's not real. That's true,
so you know, but unfortunately that's the hard part and
why it's like kind of a damaging hoax. And it's
(38:12):
also a damaging hoax because genuinely it held back knowledge
of evolutionary science for forty years, which is like that's
like a career. Yeah, and again, these data points are
relatively rare at this point. So if you are basing
your information on human evolution and you have this one
major data point, it affects how you think and how
(38:36):
you analyze other finds.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Yeah, if anyone out there is thinking of doing any
sort of archaeological hoax, can you do it on something
that's like settled science or something that doesn't matter?
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Yeah, you know, phish, something that I also think is
kind of random and fun. And I hope no one
gets mad at me for this, so please don't get
mad at me. If you're listening to this and you're
a scientologist, I just think it's funny. El Aron Hubbard
wrote this book Scientology, a History of Man, and he
that's like a book and talking about how like different
(39:13):
phases of human evolution you can like have trauma from
those phases. So it's like you can have subconscious trauma
from like your cavement era. And he specifically does call
out the pilt down phase as one of the phases
of human history where you can have subconscious trauma that
scientology could undo, Like if you're obsessed with biting or
(39:36):
have mouth issues because like the piltdown jaw was like
a monkey jaw, then scientology can help you undo that
past trauma. And that book was published in nineteen fifty two,
like before it was revealed as a fraud.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Well, and that was actually the only thing l Ron
Hubbard was ever wrong about exactly, and you're on the
record other than that he's correct about every.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Correct about everything was wrong. It was just one year
early wrong about that wrong thing. Or maybe Alron had
it figured out and there was a different phase of
evolution that we just don't know about.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
And goodness, everyone wants going clear scientology in the Prison
of Belief. It's a very good documentary and I will
just let it speak for itself.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
So that is the Piltdown Man hoax. It is one
of the most famous archaeology, if not the most famous
archaeological hoaxess in history. It's a fun Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle cameo. But I want everyone to listen to this podcast.
Everyone who listens to this podcast to do a public service,
which is if ever anyone brings up like, hey, I
(40:36):
heard it was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who did it?
You have to be this spoilsport who's like, oh, that's
so fun. But no he didn't.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
I don't think you have to be this sky I do,
but no.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
We need to present correct information.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
I think you have to plug this podcast. I think
you have to say I think.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
I heard about that.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
I can't remember where, Oh it was this podcast hoax,
And then you have to make them download this episode
even better.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
So find us online. If you like this show, leave
us a review, leave us a rating on wherever you
get your podcasts, tell your friends about it. If you
want to email us. I actually I read all the emails.
Hoax thepodcast at gmail dot com. Lizzie, where can we
find you on the Internet.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
You can find us also on Instagram at at Hoax
the Podcast. I'll respond to all the dms. Oh, one
last bit of hoaxkeeping. It doesn't really matter for the show,
but I just thought it was interesting in our first
episode because we were texting each other pictures.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
I think people in their heads in vision that we
were doing this on zoom.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
You have then kept that vision in their minds, and
I've talked to a few people who are like, you
do a really good banter. It really feels like you're
in the same room. Just so everybody knows we are
in the same room.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
All the time, or are we always the same broke
all of these episodes, we're in the same view we are.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
So please feel that you're in this room with us
as you rate, review and subscribe, and please please polks responsively.
Hi Hoax is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our hosts
(42:26):
are Danish Schwortz and Lizzie Logan. Our executive producers are
Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer Rima L.
K Ali and producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk. Our
theme music was composed by Laine Montgomery. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.
You're listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Folks, it's a hugo. No, I haven't.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Seen when us see the Welcome to Hoax, a podcast
about the lies we wish were true.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
And truths that sound like lies. I'm the ghost of
Danish Sports and I'm the evil twin of Lizzie Logan.
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Lizzie. Are you a biology person? Did you like biology
in school? I liked it? Okay.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. I mean, that's
really all we need for this episode. I'll get you
to college. I love biology. I was a big I
was pre met in college. This is in fact I
remember from your memoir. This is a fact we know.
I worked at the Adler Planetarium when I was in
high school.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Not just the shock Chicago's Planitarium. Is that biology that's
planning it's planets.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
But I did also almost get a summer internship at
the Field Museum back in my pre mid day.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I'm almost proud of you.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
I thank you. I instead made the decision to get
take an internship at Conan and move out to Los
Angeles and do an entirely different career path. So that
was really a moment that could have been. But I'm
much happier now.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
And now you know me.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
That's true. But I am someone who really likes biology
and evolutionary biology, and so this is a story I
have known about for a very long time, and I'm
excited to sort of dive into it.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Wait is this Am I about to find out that
the hoax is evolution?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Ohzy?
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Because God created the world in six days and then
on the seventh thing he rested.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yeah, he made men perfectly exactly as we are, We've
never changed.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
And then he made woman out of a rib.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yeah. Oh okay, No, but it is a hoax. That
is a pretty popular hoax. But I was very excited
as I dove into it to find layers about why
it maintained for so long and sort of understand the
historical context around it. So with that, Lizzie, do you
(02:14):
know the phrase missing link?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yes, So it's the proverbial or like mythical step between
like not apes, but like the prehistoric ancestor that we
share in common with apes and cavemen.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
And I think there's a joke about this in the
TV show like The Wild Thornberry's maybe where like they
maybe adopt a kid who's the missing link and he's
like very wild.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Donny.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, I think there's a joke about that, but I
might feel like confusing different things from my childhood, but
like that that's what I know it.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
You're exactly right. Oh, but what I mean say is
the term missing link isn't actually really useful, and it's
considered in biology an outdated term because there's a very
sort of primitive view of evolution that's like can you
picture in your mind's eye that like diagram of like
a fish and then it like starts walking on it's
(03:22):
a man. So that's sort of a view of evolution
that's known as orthogenesis, which is like a very linear
model of evolution, which is just like one, two, three,
blah blah blah, that like march. That image is called
the march of progress, and it sort of is a
version of evolution that kind of has like religious overtones
because it's like we're being perfected, We're going from simple
(03:43):
organisms to complex organisms.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Intelligent design vibes.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
A little bit like even though it is still evolution,
it's a very basic understanding of evolution, and it's just
not right, Like we don't go from worse to better species.
That's just not how works. Orthogenesis is like one after another.
And then the idea was something called phylogeny, which is
like a evolution that's like a branching tree. That's like
(04:09):
we and apes have a common ancest yes, And so
you're like, okay, that's pretty complicated, but you know apes
seven anywhere from seven to thirteen million years ago, we
diverged from apes and then became different species. But now
evolutionary historians refer to evolution as a braided stream because
(04:29):
it turns out there are like a ton of early
human versions that then interacted and bred together and intermingled,
like there's Neanderthal DNA in Homo sapiens and vice versa.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Like you're using a lot of euphemisms for like early man,
fucking apes, early like fucking ape type people.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
So we're back and forth. Like if you actually look
at a diagram of like all the different subversions of
humans that exist, did you know millions of years ago,
it's like a very dense tree or like a bush
with branches going back and forth. So missing link doesn't
really make sense because there would be like so many
(05:14):
missing links because you can just be like, Okay, well
where on this point does that fossil go, And it
could be anywhere on that map. That's not just like
one linear progression where we're actually missing anything because we
do have all those fossil records, but we don't have
a lot of fossils. When you know, people are like, oh,
(05:35):
do you have every single fossil? Like no, and they
did not have a lot of fossils, you know, one
hundred years ago they had even fewer because finding fossils
is hard.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, I mean when you were like that, do we
have every fossil, I'm like, I would say, we probably
have almost none of the fossils.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah, only a tiny percentage of living organisms become fossils.
Like if you die and you're buried, you don't become
a fossil. There has to be like a very specific
geo process like the Librea tarpits, you know, being buried
under sediment or like specific weather conditions like a really
dry desert. So like fossils are really rare. But after
(06:16):
Darwin published on the Origin of Species in eighteen fifty nine,
people wanted fossils to go prove what he was talking about.
Particularly at that time, they wanted the missing link, which
would be ideal. But again, we now know there are
millions of missing links. It doesn't actually matter, But back
then it would be like the find of a lifetime.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Cool. Can I ask a question that probably were going
to cut, Yes, but I'm just curious, Yeah, is anyone
looking for like a racial missing link?
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yeah, that is actually a really big and important question
that we should not cut because we get to it
in this.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Episode, Okay, because like I don't know if that was
like just like I just don't want to sound super ignorant,
because I'm like, we all come from an ancestor. But
I know that genotypically, which is what's on the inside,
all of humankind is one race, the human race, But phenotypically,
(07:14):
which is what's on the outside, there are clear categories
of people based on where your ancestors are from. Like, Yeah,
all the people from one part of the world look
really alike in one certain way, and all the people
from another part of the world look really alike in
another certain way. And I'm like, clearly, somewhere in the
family tree, there's gotta be someone who looks halfway between
(07:35):
these people, right, And at some point one brother went
to one part and one brother went to a different part,
and then they ended up looking different. And I'm like,
how did this happen?
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Well, Lizzie, I am gonna blow your mind and say,
if you believe it. In the early twentieth century, people
were really fixated on why different people look differently.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah, I believe it, and I don't want to be
I don't want to I don't want anyone to think
that I am fixated on that.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
No, it's interesting. It's a question that side.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Don't take that your race is the most important thing
about you. I'm not fixated on race as a person,
but I am fascinated by humans.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
The spoiler alert answer, which is not a spoiler alert
because it's science, is it turns out we evolved separately
much later than people think, like less than one hundred
thousand years ago, and at the time, what was a
theory called like the out of Africa theory is correct.
We all evolved in Africa, and then more recently than
(08:34):
they believed at the time, the different you know, racist
and ethnicities formed, but they didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
It's just like green eye people just kind of showed
up in a couple spots.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Okay, but we're in the early twentieth century right now.
We're going to start our story in nineteen twelve when
a man named Charles Dawson, not Charles Darwin, unrelated.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
And not Charles Dickens and not Charles Dickens are main character.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Charles Dawson is a solicitor from Sussex. He's a lawyer, okay,
but he's also an amateur geologist and archaeologist who just
does it as a hobby. Loves it for the love
of the game. He wants to get it, you know.
He loves the geographical society and wants to rub elbows
with them. But he's not a professional.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
He is paleontologist, like a job at this point.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah, I mean, well, he's friends with a man named
Arthur Smith Woodward, who is the keeper of geology at
the then the British Museum of Natural History. Now it's
a separate museum known as the Natural History Museum. So
that guy's a professional. Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Charles Dawson writes to this professional and says, I found
something that might be kind of interesting. According to Charles Dawson.
A few years back he had seen workmen digging in
the pilt down gravel pit near where he lived, and
one of them, one of the workmen had mentioned that
he found something that he thought was a fossilized coconut,
(09:59):
and Dawson went to investigate. And it turns out this coconut,
what looked like a coconut, was just like a dark
brown stained skull, and it was dark brown because it
was incredibly incredibly old. So then Dawson goes back to
like the scrap piles of this gravel pit and finds
the rest of this skull, and he's writing to Arthur
(10:21):
Smith Woodward and saying this might be interesting. Do you
want to come take a look. Yeah, So a bit
about Dawson before we introduce Smith Woodward. Even though Dawson
is not a professional, he has made several pretty impressive fines.
He's like found teeth of early mammals, he found a
(10:42):
stone axe, he found bricks from Roman Britain, this hybrid
iron Roman statuette. So things that aren't like, you know,
we don't know about them today. But for an amateur
geologist in Sussex, he's doing really well. People actually call
him the Wizard of Sussex. So he's someone that Arthur
Smith Woodward considers a friend. Arthur Smith Woodward, first of
(11:05):
many Arthur's in this episode, comes to the site to
dig because if you find an old skull, you might
find more things. And they dig together June through September
in nineteen twelve, and they find more skull fragments, a jawbone,
and a set of teeth. There's also I just want
to plant this cameo, this French Jesuit geologist Pierre Tilhard Deschardin,
(11:28):
who also stops by and he actually is just like
I want to see what's what, and he finds some
of the teeth.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
And this is in a local tar pit.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
This is in a gravel pit.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Is in a gravel pit in Sussex, which is nobody
cares what they're doing in the gravel pit, Like it
doesn't belong to anybody.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
No, it's workmen who are digging out gravel to like
pave things.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Oh okay, I'm just saying, like this isn't somebody's property.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
No, I don't think anyone cares about.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
It, okay, Like they're not getting in anybody's way.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
They're also they're going through the scrap piles. Oh, they're
going through the men the workers that also EXCA had
already excavated and they're going through the piles.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
So Woodward again, the professional here reconstructs these fragments that
they found, the jaw, the skull, and he discovers something
kind of amazing, which is that the skull looks like
it's human, but from five hundred thousand years ago, which
you know, for context, archaic Homo sapiens are about three
(12:29):
hundred thousand years old. More modern Homo sapiens are about
one hundred and sixty thousand years old. So a five
hundred thousand year old like humanoid skull is amazing.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
How is he getting that number? Because I don't you're
not carbon dating and you are now nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
I think you are estimating from the best of your
ability based on the stain, Like the coloring of it
means like how long it's been in the earth, and
he's and the size of the skull because human brains
have gotten bigger over the time.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
And he also and it was just like in some gravel,
what like six feet down in Sussex, Yeah, sus speaking,
putting the sus in Sussex.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Well, here i'must say, here's the even more amazing part.
And I think what helped him date it?
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Also, if it was small, couldn't it just be like
a child.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Maybe. But here's the kind of amazing part. Well, I
actually I don't think it's I think they know sort
of what size human scholars like.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
But science, the jaw.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Does not look like a human jaw. It looks like
a primate jaw. And that's even more amazing because it's
a human skull with a primate jaw. But you'd think, oh,
it's just a monkey jaw that somehow fell into this
gravel with it a pet monkey. But the teeth were
mold they had wear patterns that looked like human teeth. Interesting,
(13:51):
So that's very exciting for a few reasons. First, because
this big debate was going on at the time whether
early you know, pre humans developed their brains first or
their human diet first, And this was showing pretty clearly
that they developed their brains first, because it was a
(14:11):
big skull and an ape like jaw.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
That is so convenient that they were having this debate.
And then they happened to find some evidence they exactly
answered this debate that answered this to great question, what
a lucky fine.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
So it's an amazing fine, and you know what else
is lucky. It's found in England. What was really exciting
is because it's so helpful. So there had been a
fine in Germany and I'm going to mispronounce this because
it's Latin, but they call it Homo Heidelbergens and it
was basically a pre human that was found in Heidelberg, Germany,
and that was very exciting for the Germans. But now
(14:48):
it's you know, about to be World War one in
a few years, and we don't want Germany to have
a more impressive fine than England. So it is pretty
exciting that we found, you know, wording to the Atlanta
Georgian magazine at the time, quote natives of Great Britain
can trace their ancestry further back than any other people's
(15:08):
on the face of the earth, which is amazing. And also,
as we were talking about with racism, that fun thing.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
This podcast's bailiwick.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah, racism. Finding this skull and jobbone really reinforces a
Eurocentric model of evolution that shows that the races were
developing separately a very very long time ago, years ago,
so it's differentiating the races, and it's like showing that, like, well,
a lot of evolution happened to lead to the superiority
(15:43):
of white European people, and it just happened to be
happening on the island of Great Britain. You know how
it would make sense that all this evolution would be
happening on this little island.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Yeah, on this little island with like bad weather and
not that many different types of crops and you know, yeah,
a pretty genetically similar population. It makes total sense.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
And then again, just to reiterate, racists did not separate
five hundred thousand years ago. It happened much much more
recently because those changes, those developmental changes, are minuscule in
the scheme of evolution. But they didn't know that at
the time. Another thing that was pretty exciting for them,
and the press had a lot of fun with this,
and like when you're reading articles about it, it's like
cute because it feels like everyone had an inside doke.
(16:29):
They also found this carved fossilized elephant thone that had
been flattened like use is like a decorative object or
a tool, but it kind of looked like a cricket bet.
So this guy had a cricket bet, which they liked.
So Arthur smith Wood where this is the find of
(16:52):
his career. He announces the discovery at the Geological Society,
and he named it again apologies for the Latin anthropists
Dawson I or Dawson's dawn Man. And right away people
are a little you know, suspicious or at least just curious,
and they challenge the reconstruction because this isn't a full
(17:14):
skull they found. It's fragments. And if you've ever tried
to like put things together, you know that he was
like making an argument about the size of the brain, right,
But it's like if you put them together a little
more down, then the brain could be way smaller, right.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
And if you put them together really far apart, then
you have two skulls.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yeah exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
I mean I'm saying like, if you have like six fragments,
like okay, maybe you have three fragments each from two skulls,
so like you can the evidence can line up however
you want it.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
That's it. So people are looking at these fragments being like,
these fragments are interesting, but the way you're putting them together.
I'm taking issue with one of the biggest anthropologists who
took issue with it was our second Arthur of the episode,
a man named Arthur Keith, who's another anthropologist, and he
is looking at the way that Smith Woodward reconstructed it
(18:06):
with certain teeth, like a reconstruction. He like drew in, like, oh,
and these type of teeth would go here, teeth that
they didn't find. And he did it with ape like canines.
Your canines are like the long pointy teeth. And Smith
Woodward imagine that this, you know, Dawn Man had ape
like canines, and Arthur Keith is like, but those other
(18:27):
molars look pretty humanoid. And if they were doing side
to side chewing, how would they have ape like canines.
That doesn't make sense. And the two of them were
so misaligned on this possible model that these lifelong friends
literally and their friendship.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, the Arthur's come apart because of the fake teeth,
the imagined teeth in this model.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Can I just say it is I mean, granted, you know,
we have the benefit of hindsight, and these people were scientists,
and they believed what they believe based on the evidence
they had at the time. But yes, looking back, it
is a little bit silly to me that they thought that, like,
you know, the absolute peak of human evolution could only
(19:13):
have come out of Great Britain. Well, you know, an
island that can only produce people named Arthur.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Apparently, I don't think of that one.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
You don't even have diversity of name.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
I don't think they thought that the only high fossils
were in England. I think no, again, because they had
found these fossils in Germany. But I think they were
excited that they finally had their own. Some people, if
you can believe it, were saying that, like, it actually
looks like an ape jaw with a human skull. It
just doesn't look like it's one being one person. Yeah,
(19:47):
that they just found an ape jaw and found a
human skull.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Right, why are you putting them together?
Speaker 1 (19:52):
So there are published people like in nineteen thirteen, a
man named David Watterson publishes in a journal that he's like,
this just looks like an ape jaw and human skull
to me, but don't go together. Don't go together. And
they were like, these things could have just ended up
in a heap together.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah, And they're maybe not even from the same time period.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
But here's the thing. In nineteen fifteen, Dawson says, in
another site two miles away, he found fragments of a
second skull, also with this same jaw that looks like
an ape like jaw. So this find is known as
pilt Down two. People don't talk about pilt Down two
as much because we didn't get a ton of detail
(20:36):
about it. We don't even know where the exact site
is because Dawson didn't write it down. And then in
nineteen sixteen Dawson dies, Oh rip he dies. He's only
fifty two.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Did he become a fossil?
Speaker 1 (20:50):
I don't know. I hope I bet he wishes me.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
I hope, I bet I bet he tried.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
But basically he had found what is known as pilt
Down too sort of left it to Arthur Smith Woodward,
who presents the finds to the Geographic Society and kind
of like dances around the fact that he doesn't actually
know where it came from. But this one is a
frontal bone, an occipital fragment, a lower molar that is
the same species as the original find. So it's like
(21:18):
if an ape jaw just happened to be in a
heap pile with a human skull, and that was just
like a weird coincidence. Why would it happen twice? So
for the next few decades it sort of remains an
interesting find and a source of national English pride, but
it's kind of overshadowed by other exciting finds all over
(21:41):
the world, and it kind of runs contradictory to other
evidence that starts coming out about evolution, namely that it
seems that the human jaw developed before the human brain.
So every other fossil that they're finding around the world
in the next few decades seems to prove that one.
(22:01):
So it's like, well, the piltdown Man is kind of
this unusual aberition. And then in the early nineteen fifties,
a man named Joseph Weiner who works at the British
Museum basically goes to his boss, Kenneth Oakley and is like, hey,
no one's actually really looked at those piltdown fragments for
a while, right, And it's true they had been like
(22:22):
put away for safe keeping and people had examined like
molds and photos, but not the actual artifacts. So they
get the team together. Oakley is the leader of this group,
and they basically are like, well, now it's the nineteen fifties.
We have all these new tools at our disposal. They
are able to do nitrogen dating and florine absorption tests.
(22:43):
And a florin absorption test is basically like, if a
fossil has been in the earth for a long time,
it absorbs more florine, so you can tell how long
it's been down there by how much florine.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
See, that is more sciencey to me than what color
is it?
Speaker 1 (22:59):
And it out that they were much more recent fossils
than had been specified.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
That makes sense to me again because they were dug
up by some guys going through gravel.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
And they also prove that the jaw and the skull
are different ages.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Again, that makes sense to me because it would be
a hell of a coincidence if they were from the
same body.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Here's the Also, the thing they realized by looking pretty
close and taking X ray photographs of the teeth, because
they realized that these teeth with these sort of human molars,
it doesn't really look like human chewing patterns. And so
they were like, okay, what we can do is we
can take an X ray and if those molars had
(23:43):
been ground down when this person had been alive, it
would show signs of healing, because it's like if you
damage your body, it will heel a little bit. So
they take to teeth heel, I guess, yeah, or just
like enough enamel. I don't that's what they say, Lizzie
learns things live on the pad. It says that they
were taking X ray photographs to look for signs of healing.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Fascinating.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
And here's the crazy part. Oh yeah, new dentine. So
that's what's being reposed. I don't know what denteine. I
guess is just a part of a tooth that can
grow back.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Fascinating.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
It turns out that no new denteine had grown. This
had not happened while the subject was alive. It was
just post mortem tooth damage. Lizzie, would you believe it
if I told you that these teeth had just been
filed down with a file. And here's what else they discover,
all for.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
A little bit of geologist glory.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
A little bit of geologist not even any money. So
here's also the crazy thing is, remember how I told
you it's like dark, It's like the color of a coconut. Yeah.
So it turns out if that was authentic, it would
go all the way into the bone, right, But if
you cut it open just a little bit, it's white underneath.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Baby, there's just like some teeth he found at the
local butcher.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
He stained these fossils with iron and chromic acid to
make them look older. It was a surface level stain,
like it's a it's a bad hoax. There's also there's
also dental putty.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
I mean, at this point, I'm thinking, like, were they
like cardboard cutouts of teeth?
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Like? Well, So, November nineteen fifty three, Time magazine publishes
evidence proving that it was definitely a forgery, this big
expose led by Kenneth Oakley. They proved that the skull
was only a few hundred years old, like it was
a medieval skull, and it was a lower jaw of
an orangutan, And there were chimp teeth that were literally
(25:40):
filed down, which again is like people should have known that.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah, that seems like something you could test for in
nineteen twelve. Well, so the question then is why did
it take so long to discover the hoax? And there's
a few reason and what's the point of the hoax.
But I assume we'll get to that laser. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
But why did it.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Take so long for them to discover I mean, first,
to be fair, chemical dating techniques were pretty primitive in
the nineteen tens. Yeah. Yeah. The big reason though is
I also think people were kind of distracted arguing how
to interpret the find that they didn't even ask the
bigger question of is it even real? Because you have
(26:23):
these skull fragments and so you're all debating like, okay,
well which way do they fit together? Which way do
these teeth go? How should these teeth look that you're
not asking the bigger question. Yes, it's like a magician
like sleight of hand situation.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
And then I mean the big answer is like like
ring a little bell, like racism, Like it reinforced something
people wanted to believe. They wanted to believe that there
was this major find in England. You know, there had
been discoveries in France and Germany, and England was feeling
a little bad about themselves. And you know when there
(26:58):
were other discoveries in Africa that contradicted the piltdown man,
they were just like, well that's a different branch of evolution,
you know, and like confirmation bias. I mean that's how
science works. Whereas you look at information and things don't
make sense, you come up with a reason for it.
And if you want to believe that the data is true,
your first instinct isn't like, well the data's wrong, You're like, well,
(27:20):
how do I explain this? Yes, because they didn't understand
evolution fully back then the way we do now, especially
the divergence of human evoration. And like I said, like racism,
like the Piltdown Man was also really upheld and celebrated
by racist people because it proved something they wanted to believe.
But the crazy thing, I think the reason that the
(27:43):
Piltdown Man is one of the famous, most famous scientific
hoaxes in history is because it took forty years for
it to be fully revealed. And again, I want to
make it clear, in those forty years, people individuals like
wrote papers being like I don't actually think it's real. Yeah,
but the giant scientific consensus had not come to that determination.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Well, it also seems like people in those forty years
were saying like, oh, this is something strange that we
don't know what it was, and it doesn't disprove our
theories of evolution. Yeah, they weren't saying someone is duping
us on purpose.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
That to me is the twist. Like scientists all the
time find stuff, don't know what it means. Some fringe
group is like it means there's aliens, and the scientific
community is like, no, it doesn't. That's not to say
we do know what it is, but we know it
doesn't mean there's aliens.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
And you know what people say all the time is, oh,
scientists are just making that up. Evolution isn't real.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Yeah it's like, well, okay, it is a theory, but
like it's real, it's real, But like it is still
a reveal that like, oh he did it on he
did it on purpose, Like I would have believed that
he found it and was just like just really wanted
to believe that these two things went together. Why did
he do that?
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Well here's the thing.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
But beyond racist pride, because like what poss like we bruh, we.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Don't actually know for a fact who did it. If
you're asking who did this hoax, the obvious answer is
Dawson the solicitor, who was like, hey, I found some
interesting things and the answer of why he would want
to do it is because he wanted the respect of
(29:39):
the geological society. He wanted the pride and prestige that
came from a once in a generation find. Okay, And
he was an amateur who wanted to be taken seriously.
He had a history of interesting finds and really wanted
to be validated by the establishment.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I guess I'm just stagging him up against the other
hoaxters that we've covered, who get so much more time
and effort into their hoaxes that I'm like, this one
is really sort of like pathetic to me. But like
he only did kind of the one thing, like I
know you said that he did another one. Well, but
(30:20):
like that other guy wrote like a whole Shakespeare.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Who Shakespeare, you know what I mean, just to impress he.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Was and he wrote like letters and poems, and he
had the tea bags and he was staining the thing,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
And this guy was using acid on his on his fossils.
He was filing down teeth, monkeys, teeth, a handful.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Of teeth like one time, Like I don't know, this
just seems really lazy to me.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Well, so people also think Okay, did he have an
accomplice did if it was Dawson, was Arthur Smith Woodward
either in on it or did he originate it? I
kind of think know that he was just like a
willing dupe, sure like it made his reputation, and I
think he decided not to look too critically at it.
I also think Arthur Smith Woodward was friends with Dawson
(31:06):
and he trusted him, So I don't think it doesn't
make sense for me when people are like, he was
probably in on it. To me, that doesn't quite line up.
You can't prove he wasn't, but it always rang a
little false for me that he would be willing to
put his reputation on the line that way. It's very
risky for him.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, if he was a professional who was making money
from like being a science man.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Stephen J. Gould like the famous popular historian, popular science writer,
professor at Harvard.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Once again our definition of famous is he.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Has said in two very famous essays famous to me
that he thinks that Jesuit priest Pierre Tilhard Desharin was
part of the conspiracy. He lays out some points about like,
well he was there, and I'm like it's possible, but
it's not like smoking gun evidence.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Like would he have done that for like Christians?
Speaker 1 (32:00):
No, just to like be in on the hoax. Oh okay,
just to like, I don't know the pride of discovery.
I think archaeologists, like I said, like, fossils are hard
to find, and I think they really want to feel
good about themselves. I mean, fossils are cool.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
I'm not going to deny it.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Well, here's the other theory. And this is the third
Arthur in our episode.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
I'm gonna say it again on the pod. England is
a silly place.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Well, Lizzie, would you believe me if I said this
episode's getting a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle cameo, all.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Right, number one drink if we mention them, Taylor Swift,
number two drink, if we mention them. P. T. Barnum,
number three drinker, if we mentioned them, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
People think Arthur Conan Doyle might have been the perpetrator
of the Piltdown hoax based on the fact he was
neighbors with Dawson, He's nearby, he played golf near the
Piltdown site. I'm convinced he was mad at the science
tivic establishment, humiliating. You know, his favorite spiritualists lived in
the area. People read his novel The Lost World, and
(33:09):
they think it's him doing a da Vinci code. He
was like leaving hints in it. I'm convinced what I
kind of find amazing about the it was Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle. Theory is, remember how I mentioned earlier that
this all started because Dawson wrote to his friend Arthur
sinth Woder was like, hey, I found something kind of interesting.
That letter began with some like hey, what's up, like
(33:31):
casual conversation, and he also is like, hey, you know
our mutual friend Arthur Conan Doyle, Like here his working
on a novel the you know, hidden the Lost World,
which in like a murder mystery. That is how you
set it up, that is rap it foreshadowing. The evidence
against Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is there is no actual
(33:53):
evidence that he's just the most famous guy nearby.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Uh, I'm convinced, you know he did it.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
But if he was trying to humiliate the scientific establishment,
when you have said at some point, hey, yeah, he
forgot to be forgotten the reveal he forgot to do
the reveal. But the thing is, we didn't have any
real smoking guns until the nineteen seventies. A trunk is
found in the Natural History Museum and they open it
(34:22):
and it was left by a zoologist named Martin Hinton
who had died ten years earlier. And they opened this
trunk and discover bones that are stained, just like the
pilt down man bones.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
What animals type? Who's bone?
Speaker 1 (34:41):
I think like bones he got legally. I don't think
he was more human bones.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
I don't know, Okay, but suspicious because I was suspicious
there he just left. Why would there be stained bones
sitting in this museum exactly? Why is your trunk filled
with stained bones? Okay, it's suspicious, but there's also like
it doesn't really seem like Hinton was the one who
did it. And people kind of explain that as like
(35:07):
maybe he was maybe he suspected a hoax and was
trying to find out figure out how they did it. Yeah,
maybe he was doing a little a little uh investigation.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Exactly like maybe he was doing like, well, I don't
want to embarrass anyone, but I want to like see
if I can also stay in these bones. I'm gonna
like just spoil everything and just be like it was Dawson.
It was Dawson who did the fake. Maybe Tomorrow was
ining on it with him, but it was one hundred
percent Dowson.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
And now Miles Russell, who's this British archaeologist and this
writer that I absolutely love because he's just like he's
the king of the haters in the best way. Like
if you watched any of the Diddy documentary, you know,
it's just like fifty cent.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Oh I love a hater.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Yeah, yeah, Miles Russell is the fifty cent of this story. Great,
I'm a big fan. He wrote this book called The
Piltdown Man Hoax Case Closed that was very helpful to
me in this episode. And he decides in exhaustive detail
to go through the dozens of Dawson's other earlier discoveries
(36:10):
and proves one by one that they all were fake.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
You know, there's always more. This is again like rappers
do have the best beefs. Yeah, it's Kendrick dropping one
after the other after the other after the other against Drake.
Give it to me, Give it to.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Me, and again Dawson has died decades before. Dawson is dead,
but he Miles Russell just goes next next, Yeah, thirty
eight times thirty you'd be like, well three you prove
you've proven it. He's yeah, faked. Three are no thirty
eight And in his words, to quote him, pilt Down
was not a one off hoax more they more the
(36:52):
accumulation of a life's work. Yeah, so that's it. He
was just like this amateur who wanted to be taken seriously.
So he was the Wizard of Sussex, but like in
a Wizard of ozway. Yeah. In twenty sixteen, Piltdown Man
came back into the news because there was this big
like one hundred year retrospective, massive review study that showed
(37:14):
that did like a real investigation, like a forensic analysis,
and they determined that it was only one actor. They
were like, it was only one guy like doing the
staining and the filing and all that, and it was Dawson. Yeah,
like it's all consistent with Dawson.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
So that's the Piltdown Man, which is a massive embarrassment
to the British scientific establishment but also kind of bad
for science as a whole because creationists cite it still
as proof that scientists are lying about evolution.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
But he wasn't a scientist. He was just some josh moo.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Yeah, but the scientist believed it and like wrote about
it and celebrated it. And it's like it reinforces the
thing of like, well, they just want to see what
they want to say. But I will say scientists were
also the people that were like, it's not real. That's true,
so you know, but unfortunately that's the hard part and
why it's like kind of a damaging hoax. And it's
(38:12):
also a damaging hoax because genuinely it held back knowledge
of evolutionary science for forty years, which is like that's
like a career. Yeah, and again, these data points are
relatively rare at this point. So if you are basing
your information on human evolution and you have this one
major data point, it affects how you think and how
(38:36):
you analyze other finds.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Yeah, if anyone out there is thinking of doing any
sort of archaeological hoax, can you do it on something
that's like settled science or something that doesn't matter?
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Yeah, you know, phish, something that I also think is
kind of random and fun. And I hope no one
gets mad at me for this, so please don't get
mad at me. If you're listening to this and you're
a scientologist, I just think it's funny. El Aron Hubbard
wrote this book Scientology, a History of Man, and he
that's like a book and talking about how like different
(39:13):
phases of human evolution you can like have trauma from
those phases. So it's like you can have subconscious trauma
from like your cavement era. And he specifically does call
out the pilt down phase as one of the phases
of human history where you can have subconscious trauma that
scientology could undo, Like if you're obsessed with biting or
(39:36):
have mouth issues because like the piltdown jaw was like
a monkey jaw, then scientology can help you undo that
past trauma. And that book was published in nineteen fifty two,
like before it was revealed as a fraud.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Well, and that was actually the only thing l Ron
Hubbard was ever wrong about exactly, and you're on the
record other than that he's correct about every.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Correct about everything was wrong. It was just one year
early wrong about that wrong thing. Or maybe Alron had
it figured out and there was a different phase of
evolution that we just don't know about.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
And goodness, everyone wants going clear scientology in the Prison
of Belief. It's a very good documentary and I will
just let it speak for itself.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
So that is the Piltdown Man hoax. It is one
of the most famous archaeology, if not the most famous
archaeological hoaxess in history. It's a fun Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle cameo. But I want everyone to listen to this podcast.
Everyone who listens to this podcast to do a public service,
which is if ever anyone brings up like, hey, I
(40:36):
heard it was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who did it?
You have to be this spoilsport who's like, oh, that's
so fun. But no he didn't.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
I don't think you have to be this sky I do,
but no.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
We need to present correct information.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
I think you have to plug this podcast. I think
you have to say I think.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
I heard about that.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
I can't remember where, Oh it was this podcast hoax,
And then you have to make them download this episode
even better.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
So find us online. If you like this show, leave
us a review, leave us a rating on wherever you
get your podcasts, tell your friends about it. If you
want to email us. I actually I read all the emails.
Hoax thepodcast at gmail dot com. Lizzie, where can we
find you on the Internet.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
You can find us also on Instagram at at Hoax
the Podcast. I'll respond to all the dms. Oh, one
last bit of hoaxkeeping. It doesn't really matter for the show,
but I just thought it was interesting in our first
episode because we were texting each other pictures.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
I think people in their heads in vision that we
were doing this on zoom.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
You have then kept that vision in their minds, and
I've talked to a few people who are like, you
do a really good banter. It really feels like you're
in the same room. Just so everybody knows we are
in the same room.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
All the time, or are we always the same broke
all of these episodes, we're in the same view we are.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
So please feel that you're in this room with us
as you rate, review and subscribe, and please please polks responsively.
Hi Hoax is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our hosts
(42:26):
are Danish Schwortz and Lizzie Logan. Our executive producers are
Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer Rima L.
K Ali and producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk. Our
theme music was composed by Laine Montgomery. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.
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