One hundred years ago, the history of human evolution was marked by the announcement of what will have been the greatest fraud committed in this science. The first man was introduced, who was not only European but English.
It was the icing on the cake for the Eurocentrists who managed the incredible feat of making the Piltdown man prevail as the first man for 41 years. Effectively, it was not until 1953 that the fraud was unmasked: it was an orangutan's jaw carefully adapted to articulate in a modern human skull.
The creators of the fraud managed to mitigate their responsibility to the point that even today it is said that it is not known exactly who was behind that well-orchestrated montage. In any case there are names, like C. Dawson and A. Woodward, that have been irreversibly tarnished. Piltdown is an undoubted milestone in the history of paleoanthropology and perhaps one of the most enduring scientific frauds.
Of the various lessons we can draw from it, I would highlight the enormous and dangerous influence of nationalist tendencies and how fallacious it is to see in the alleged discoveries evidence of theories conceived without any underlying evidence. It was created and it was wanted that the first man already had a big brain and that's how it was. That was the idea of the perpetrators of fraud: brain development would have preceded bipedalism. The acceptance of this false dogma constituted a barrier to the acceptance of indisputably crucial African fossils. The child from Taung, South Africa, announced to the scientific community by R. Dart in 1925, had to wait decades to be accepted as the oldest fossil of mankind at the time (over 2 million years old).
Dart and yours australopithecus africanus, who was actually the first member of this species to be discovered, had, because of the Piltdown man, to wait decades to be recognized. It was also the first time that the name Australopithecus was used, which today is a genus that includes several species.
Today Taung's boy, who was already bipedal but with a small cranial capacity, continues to play an essential role in human evolution, proving the enormous vision of his discoverer.
Conversely, Piltdown and its alleged authors are mentioned as a bad example of what can happen in science. It is not intended, therefore, to commemorate an ephemeris, as Piltdown is absolutely unworthy (despite having been entitled to a memorial, in 1938, in England, a regrettable feat!).
The purpose of this chronicle is to jog the memory of how easily fraud can happen. One hundred years later, the fever of finding "the first", be it the 1st man or the 1st anatomically modern man to arrive in Europe, or the 1st art studio, the 1st mattress, mentioning here just a few of the discoveries that were considered the Top 10 of 2011 Paleoanthropological Findings by the Smithsonian Institution.
It is undeniable that there will be greater notoriety, greater disclosure, if discovery is the first of anything. It will therefore be worth it for some to take the risk and announce surprising discoveries even at a time when their acceptance necessarily goes through an allegedly tight scientific scrutiny.
Nature and Science tend to function like these sieves, but they will not always be completely free from other influences. Therefore, a good dose of skepticism, qb, remains essential when the big scientific news about our natural history is released.
Author: Eugénia Cunha is Full Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Life Sciences of the University of Coimbra
Science in the Regional Press – Ciência Viva
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