Number: 403 (Read 0 times)              Date: 25 Feb 94  21:45:30
   From: Gene C. Miller
     To: All
Subject: Axioms of Creation

From: sassociation@worldbank.org (Gene C. Miller)
Organization: worldbank.org

In article <2keqor$lu7@longwood.cs.ucf.edu>, schnitzi@longwood.cs.ucf.edu
(Mark Schnitzius) wrote:

[deletions re: Piltdown Man]

> You aren't wrong.  This is from an article I read recently ("Piltdown
> Unmasked" -- _The Sciences_, Feb. 94).  What surprised me most was that
> the hoax was quite a bit more elaborate than I had first supposed.
>
> 	"The Piltdown forgery was conceived, planned and executed sometime
> 	between 1907 and 1911.  The faux hominid skull was constructed from
> 	the remains of a recent human cranium, later shown to have been
> 	thickened by disease during the subject's lifetime -- thus, at first
> 	blush, the primitive look; half the lower jaw of an orangutan from
> 	which telltale parts had been removed and whose teeth had been filed
> 	to resemble worn human teeth; and a doctored canine tooth, probably
> 	from the same lower  jaw.  In addition, artifacts and stone tools,
> 	supposedly of two epochs, and extinct mammal bones of two phases
> 	of antiquity were planted in the gravel layers exposed in the wall
> 	of  the Piltdown pit.  In all, thirty-seven pieces of bone and
> 	stone were involved, each carefully selected for a specific purpose,
> 	each altered and stained so as to match the coloration of the gravel
> 	itself.  What is more, another ten fragments of human skulls and
> 	human and animal teeth were similarly prepared and planted in two
> 	other gravel exposures in the vicinity of Piltdown." ['Piltdown
> 	Unmasked', _The Sciences_ Feb '94].
>
> It goes on to say that some thought that the site contained both
> hominid *and* ape fossils, but no one really doubted that the Piltdown
> finds were genuine fossils of creatuures that had lived there in
> ancient times, so I don't think it could have been an "obvious" hoax.

And I seem to remember seeing somewhere recently that Teilhard de Chardin,
who later went on to some eminence as a Jesuit theologian, was deeply
involved in perpetrating this bit of business...Gene