You can decide Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

You can decide - Essay Example Smith Woodward is the Keeper of Geology. He has joined Dawson in carrying out excavations at the Piltdown site at the end of May and during June 1912. Dawson and Woodward found remains of a fossil man dating from early Ice Age with ape-like jawbone with two teeth, more bits of skull, and several fossil animal teeth, bones, and flint tools. Disbelief was the first reaction of the scientific community, especially among Professor David Waterston of King’s College London, Dr. Gerrit Miller in America, and Professor Boule in France. According to them, anatomically speaking, the jaw could not have worked as a part of human skull when it is constructed in a different way. They also questioned the extraordinary wear of the teeth and the coincidence of finding all the fragments or specimen together. Weiner learned that the Piltdown man’s fragments were faked – the teeth had been chiseled down to resemble a human-like chewing pattern and stained with ordinary house paint to look like patina of age and ancient elephant and hippopotamus teeth were planted to the site. The same goes through for the Paleolithic tools, skull, and jaw fragments. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is the man behind Sherlock Holmes. His possible involvement pointed out to the reasons that he lived near the Piltdown discovery site and had plenty of access to the fossils. In addition, majority of his works of fiction include familiarity with archeology and paleontology. His motive includes obsession to spiritualism and resentment towards scientists who mocked spiritualism. Aside from being the first person to discover the Piltdown man, Dawson’s involvement to the hoax was closely rooted to his personality. Dawson was ambitious and desperate to have a place in the scientific elite in the Royal Society. He has records of frauds in the field of archeology and his writings showed plagiarized content. Woodward has been considered a