[BaBaStooey]

Charles Dawson claimed to have been given a fragment of the skull in 1908 by a workman at the Piltdown gravel pit. According to Dawson, workmen at the site had discovered the skull shortly before his visit and had broken it up. Revisiting the site on several occasions, Dawson found further fragments of the skull and took them to Arthur Smith Woodward, keeper of the Geological Department at the British Museum.

Woodward proposed that Piltdown man represented an evolutionary missing link between ape and man, since the combination of a human-like cranium with an ape-like jaw tended to support the notion then prevailing in England that human evolution was brain-led.

So it is clear that at the time, leading evolutionists such as Woodward championed the discovery of Piltdown man as evidence of the theory of evolution being right.

The facts are that the skull was studied, and was proven to be a hoax because:

(1) Piltdown Man was shown to be a composite forgery, part-ape and part-man. It consisted of a human skull of medieval age, the 500-year-old lower jaw of a Sarawak orangutan and chimpanzee fossil teeth.

(2) The appearance of age had been created by staining the bones with an iron solution and chromic acid.

(3) The area where the jaw joined the skull posed problems that were overcome by the simple expedient of breaking off the terminals of the jaw. The teeth in the jaw had been filed to make them fit and it was this filing that led to doubts about the veracity of the whole specimen, when, by chance, it was noticed that the top of one of the molars sloped at a very different angle to the other teeth.

(4) An "artifact" near the bones which was believed by the scientists to be a tool or a part of the skeleton, but was actually a cricket bat.

The story of the revisionist historians was that Piltdown Man sent evolutionists down the wrong track. (I found that explanation courtesy of everyone's favorite liberal network PBS.) Only after it was revealed to be a fake did evolutionists say, Oh, we knew it was a fake all along. It, uh, yeah, was inconsistent with our theory.

The truth is that it was just like the Texas Air National Guard forgery that fell into the laps of the people at CBS News. Hey, this confirms what we knew all along! There's no way this could possibly be phony!

[js1138]

Piltdown Man was shown to be a composite forgery, part-ape and part-man.

That is an argument based on evolution as a fact. Creationists do not agree with each other as to which fossil skulls belong to apes and which to humans. On what basis would a creationist suspect that Piltdown is a composite.

The staining is evidence of an alteration, but on what basis would a creationist think to check? Piltdown was around for a long time and no creationist thought to look. It was only checked when Piltdown became a problem for evolution.

On what basis would a creationist argue that a skull in a series belongs to a human or an ape?

[Stultis]

So it is clear that at the time, leading evolutionists such as Woodward championed the discovery of Piltdown man as evidence of the theory of evolution being right.

This statement is misleading by the implication that "leading evolutionists" means either all evolutionists, or some consensus thereof. This seems to be the implication that you'd like people to draw, but it's not correct. At least not prior to the discovery of Piltdown II.

The fact is that there was initially NOT a consensus such as you describe. Many scientists remained agnostic or otherwise refrained from comment, and others (incl for instance Marcellin Boule, probably the single most important physical anthropologist of the day) came out against the reality of Piltdown, arguing that it was just a fortuitous association of a human skull and an ape's jaw.

If anything a consensus was threatening to develop against Piltdown. So the hoaxer was compelled to use leftover materials and engineer a second find (Piltdown II) which supported the association of the skull and the jaw in order to silence or convert the critics.

The story of the revisionist historians was that Piltdown Man sent evolutionists down the wrong track. (I found that explanation courtesy of everyone's favorite liberal network PBS.) Only after it was revealed to be a fake did evolutionists say, Oh, we knew it was a fake all along. It, uh, yeah, was inconsistent with our theory.

That's not "revision". It's accurate, at least after genuine hominid fossils began to accumulate from Asia and Africa. The real fossils all showed the pattern of jaws becoming more human first with brains remaining apelike longer, exactly the opposite pattern from Piltdown. As a result Piltdown was indeed progressively ignored, shunted off to the side, included in phylogenies as a side branch not ancestral to human, and etc.

[Virginia-American]

...since the combination of a human-like cranium with an ape-like jaw tended to support the notion then prevailing in England that human evolution was brain-led.

So it is clear that at the time, leading evolutionists such as Woodward championed the discovery of Piltdown man as evidence of the theory of evolution being right.

No, it was supposed to be evidence for the highlighted theory about human origins. The ToE itself was not in question.