Replies

Whether Piltdwon was hoax, fraud or honest mistake is not as important as the fact that the the vast majority of the scientific community was duped by it. Granted there were a very few who questioned it almost immediately, but they got only a small podium in the 'scientific community'.

Coyote you need to quit obtaining your history sources from talk-origins, because it does not take a lot of digging at all to reveal that talk-origins on this (like most issues) is wrong.

Contrary to what you say, Piltdown was largely accepted and was considered a pivotal event at the time. Why? it was what they wanted to find, or rather an ancestor (fake) to fit their expectations. This event highlighted a great deep and vast weakness in this field and that is "More troubling, it is a case of scientific predisposition toward interpretations that validate contemporary ideas about evolutionary events. Once such ideas gain wide acceptance, they are sometimes judged by the strength of opinion, not strength of evidence."

The following are quotes from various major news sources contemporaneous with that period.

Most English scientists subscribed to theory that Eoanthropus dawsoni was a

legitimate hominid fossil, and most of the English and U. S. press agreed with that.

:

British 1912-1917

Manchester Guardian: The Earliest Man? REMARKABLE DISCOVERY IN SUSSEX.

A Skull "Millions of Years" Old Manchester Guardian (November 21, 1912)

The Earliest Known Man. Manchester Guardian (November 21, 1912)

The Earliest Skull. "A HITHERTO UNKNOWN SPECIES."

STORY OF THE SUSSEX DISCOVERY. Manchester Guardian (December 10, 1912)

Paleolithic Skull Is a

Missing Link

Human Remains

Found in

England Similar in

Some Details to

Bones of Chimpanzee

FAR OLDER THAN

CAVEMEN

Bones Probably That of a

Direct Ancestor of Modern

Man, While Cavemen

Died Out.

Special Cable to

THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Darwin Theory Is Proved True

English Scientists Say the Skull

Found in Sussex Establishes Human Descent from Apes.

THOUGHT TO BE A WOMAN'S

Bones Illustrate a Stage of Evolution Which has Only Been

Imagined Before.

CREATURE COULD NOT TALK

Probably Lived at a Time When Other Species of Human Had

Developed Further Elsewhere

Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES December 22, 1913

LONDON. Dec. 21.–A race of ape-like and speechless man, inhabiting England hundreds of thousands of years ago, when they had for their neighbors the mastodon and other animals now extinct is the missing link in the chain in man's evolution, which leading scientists say they have discovered in what is generally described as "the Sussex skull." To this Dr. Woodward proposes to give the name of "eoanthropus," or "man of dawn."

Prof. Arthur Keith says that the discovery marks by far the most remarkable advance in the knowledge of the ancestry of man ever made in England and supports the view that man was derived not from a single genus or species, but from several different genera. He goes on:

"It gives us a stage in the evolution of man which we have only imagined since Darwin propounded the theory."

Prof. Keith expresses the opinion that the skull is what anthropologists have been seeking for forty years, namely, a tertiary man, mankind of the pliocene age, which was the beginning of the first great glacial period.

"There is no doubt at all," he said, "that this is the most important discovery concerning ancient man ever made in England. It is one of the three most important discoveries of the sort ever made in the world. The other two were the discovery of the individual known as Pithecanthropus, made in Java in 1802 by Prof. Eugene Dubois. The other, which equals it in instructiveness and importance, is the skull discovered at Heidelberg six years ago.

W.

For those that would like the full story from which this highly selective quote mined cut and paste job was done, see the following. Follow the links forward and backward to get the whole story.

The reader should note that these are university sources and the sources are manifestly NOT anti-evolution.

The following link was used for the More troubling, it is a case of scientific predisposition toward interpretations that validate contemporary ideas about evolutionary events. Once such ideas gain wide acceptance, they are sometimes judged by the strength of opinion, not strength of evidence. quote.

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~bramblet/ant301/twelve.htm

The following link is to a slide show that leads to the other links from which the quotes were extracted.

http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/

There are many other quotes which can be mined from this source. Like this, for instance..

This program offers a cornucopia of sources commenting on, developing and demolishing Piltdown Man.

http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_receptionfav/receptionfav_lvl1.html

http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_receptionfav/darwintheoryproved.html

http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_receptionfav/palskullmissinglink.html

Darned if you do, darned if you don't. Don't provide sources and you're credibility is suspect, at least; do provide it and you're quote mining.... Sheesh. Heads I win, tails you lose.

Looks like they've had their hopeful "proof" and "a consensus of scientists" more than just a few times before. Case closed. And then whoops... Case dismissed. LOL

"Whether Piltdwon was hoax, fraud or honest mistake"

A 1000 year old human skull with a moderm orangutan jaw bone glued to it, is hardly an honest mistake. And as you say, the "scietific" community (all the atheists, anyway) was salavating, not questioning. Of course, anyone who questions the tenents of darwinism is ostracized or fired.