What is the piltdown man hoax? and what happened?

Answer 1

The piltdown man was a skeleton that was found and labeled as the "missing link" in evolution. The skull had a human like skull, and an ape like jaw, which is what the scholars predicted the "missing link" would have. In evolution humans and non-human primates shared a common ancestor. This ancestor was more apelike than human like...as evolution happen they became more human like with big heads, and walking upright...etc.... So in order to fill in the gaps that evolution had, the "missing link" would have both human and ape features in his skeleton.
So this skeleton that was found, fit perfectly...BUT...the hoax came in when it was discovered that the ape jaw was placed with the human skull, and it's teeth were filed down to make it look more real...there was a special kind of dye to make is look old, etc.... so piltdown man..."the so called missing link" was a hoax because it never existed two men "made it up"

Answer 2

I had to do an essay on this subject while I was at university. It was quite interesting.

Back then, the fossil record was not as extensive as it is now. Ape-like human ancestors had been found, and modern man. A debate raged about which features changed and when. The ape-like ancestor had a small cranium and a protruding jaw, while we have a large cranium and a flat jaw. The debate centred around which came first, and opinion was more or less equally divided.

Then it was reported that fragments of a skull had been found near Piltdown in Sussex which seemed to belong to a human-like creature that had a large cranium with an ape-like protruding jaw. The missing link?

For a long time it was hailed as the missing link in human evolution, but over the next few decades various things uncovered that it was a fraud. The jaw resembled that of an orang-utan. It turned out that that was because that's what it was. Whoever perpetrated the hoax knew what they were doing because they had filed down the teeth and broken off a section of the jaw that would have easily identified it as an orang-utan jawbone. The skull fragments were from a modern human.

Why did it take so long to uncover? Chemical dating techniques had not been discovered at the time. The fossil record was less complete, and only when other hominids started to be discovered was it realised that Piltdown Man just did not fit into the scheme of human evolution that was emerging. Finally it was found that it was just modern bones dyed and caefully weathered to make them appear older.

A clever hoax for the time, but not one that would last five minutes today.

Answer 3

He is a paleontological man who never actually existed. Here is probably more information than you need.

http://www.unmuseum.org/piltdown.htm
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/piltdown.html