00:00.00
kinkella
Hello and welcome back to the pseudo archeology podcast episode 134 and we have been talking about the famous pilt down man fraud and when we last left off Charles Dawson who is the perpetrator ah has kind of. Gotten this other guy Arthur Smith Woodward who is kind of the head of geology from the british museum on his side and the duo are now going to start to dig for some more fossils right? and we must realize that nobody realizes this is a fraud right. Everyone thinks this is real. Although of course there are some people who don't quite believe it. But nobody's thinking. It's a fraud. They're just thinking that oh something doesn't quite add up that pill down man things a little bit weird so they go and and continue their excavations now. Originally this comes to light in 1912 but they go back. Ah for a couple years. They go back in 1915 and by this time the um find has its own latin name right? It's not pilt down man. Ah, that's just for the plebes man. The real name is. eanthropus dow Soni right? It's a real oh man so they look for more examples of eanthropist da soni and I know you're going to be shocked at what I'm about to tell you.

01:34.77
kinkella
But they find some more as if by magic now an interesting bit here is it's always dawson that finds the fossil. So when the pair goes out and I'm sure other people help from time to time. Nobody else finds anything. It's always Dawson who finds the stuff right? and they find like a second skull referred to as pilt down too. They find um, some more teeth that seem to be similar to the. Teeth that were in the jaw of the first one and they find even more um artifacts like stone tools and this kind of thing they even find like a ah big elephant bone fossil that's been kind of whittled out into some sort of. Basic tool now. They have this like big group of fossils and associated artifacts right? and because they went back even some of the people who were. Really not too sure about the whole pill down thing some of them went over to the pilt downside after that they were like well we were kind of not into it at first but they found more and actually a lot of this later stuff was found at a different site.

03:01.71
kinkella
Two miles away from the first site right? So you're like oh if stuff's coming up at 2 different sites. Well okay, maybe it's real after all now the next year Nineteen Sixteen Charles Dawson dies and he dies man you guys I had to look this up because I was like I bet he died from one of those like 1920 s diseases that nobody gets anymore. You know that they usually start with the you know um like the gout you know the plury um and he did he died of pernicious anemia which I think we should call the pernicious anemia. Well he was all right until his bout with the pernicious anemia and um. Just as a public service announcement I'm here to tell you take your vitamin b twelve my friends now I even looked up pernicious and anemia and it really is one of those things that like nobody dies you know it's just one of those things where it's like if you go to your doctor like oh you're kind of low on this but in a perfect storm situation. It. As we see with Charles Dawson it can kill you so he dies in 1916 and the of course the excavations for pilt down and all that stop. They? Um, shockingly don't find any more artifacts from pilt down now it just ends.

04:36.93
kinkella
After after 1915 but you know if if people were looking at this with more of a critical eye There were a couple things that were really starting to angle towards like hey this is a fake. Not only is it a little too perfect in terms of what's being found. Oh it just matches just right? Um, some of the stone tools that we'll that we'll talk about in in a minute really seem to well as we'll see they're they're almost a cry for help. I think um, these are it's it's it's tough to say now it in the intervening years. Um, it wasn't figured out until 1953 right? So it comes online in 1912 and you got to realize world war one happens right? after then then you have the roaring 20 s you have the depression era of the 30 s you have world war ii that whole time. The scientific community has taken piltdown man as reality right? you get into the 1950 s and finally, they figure it out for sure in 1953? How did they do it. They use a dating method. They use a dating method called florine dating which is really basic. Um, it's not used. You know so much these days it's not because it's terrible. It's just because we have better dating methods.

06:08.45
kinkella
Fluorine dating simply you can analyze bones and the bones will um, absorb fluorine from the soil and so the longer the bone has been in the soil the more fluorine it absorbs. And so they tested these bones for fluorine and they realized had like barely any fluorine in it at all meaning for sure these bones were recent right? So yes, indeed the pilt down man was a fraud what the main skull was is it was a human skull likely less than one hundred years old and. An orangutan jaw that what might have been several hundred years old but they were just sort of crudely shoved together and filed down so they fit right? It really was is simply a human skull and a. Orangutan jaw and of course if you break it a few times so the pieces don't quite fit together then anybody else trying to check it out. They can't quite tell for sure yet and especially if you double down on your lie and angle them away from the truth. They might not try enough to make it look like a modern human which it is. So. That's what it is and then why did it look older because he died them Dawson died the actual um, the ah fossils and then he used I believe it's Dennis Putty it's it's you know super sticky putty stuff.

07:40.30
kinkella
In order to kind of shove certain bits together and get the gravel from the actual gravel pit and shove some of that in there too right? So it looks like it's been there for a long time. It looks like the gravel itself is kind of concreteed onto the bone. So this is a full on forgery and what came out. Um. As the years went on even past that is that dawson just like forged all kinds of stuff he had. He had something like 38 forgeries. He plagiarized a bunch of stuff. He's just but his whole career was a total sham and a lie and speaking of career. Didn't really have a career and that's what gets down to why did Dawson do this right? Why would you do this in the first place. Why would you go through all the trouble. Um, and it's because he wasn't really a scientist. He was like an amateur. And he wanted the scientific community to take him seriously so he just started making this fake stuff and then he realized it worked really well for him so he just kept making fake stuff and so pilltown men wasn't his first fake it was like his like crowning fake achievement you know he'd had years of practice years of dying stuff and right years of breaking stuff sticking it together. Oh this dentist putty stuff works pretty good right? He had this whole like mini lab of fakery.

09:14.94
kinkella
And he's going to have access from like the the museum. You know the back the storage area the museum he could find old skulls and stuff and just kind of find some old stone tools laying around kind of s sprinkle them around. Um that's that's how it's That's that's how you do it make a fake.

09:34.11
kinkella
Now I had hinted earlier about the cry for help. This is a gas by me, you guys. This is a total guess. Ah, but it has to do with that elephant bone fossil that was kind of shaped into like this crude big sort of. Bat looking tool if you look at an image of it. It looks hilariously similar to a cricket bat right? That's the of course the british sport of cricket if it was in the United States it would look super crazy similar to a baseball bat. Right? So it's this elephant bone that has been crudely shaped to look a lot like a cricket bat now and that was found with sort of the second coming of the fossils right? It was found in like 1915 to me. Um I I'm curious if Charles Dawson was feeling the heat too much and tried to make something so outlandish. Yeah, in order to take a dive and what I mean by that. Is. It reminds me of I was on a comedy team for a couple years when ah when I was younger I like in college right? right? The end of college and it was an improv comedy team and sometimes we we would have these these.

11:05.47
kinkella
Show we would have these shows. We'd have these little scenes right? These little skits and stuff where it was audience participation and let's say it was some scene where you had to rhyme words right? They give you the word fat and you rhyme it with Cat Matt and bat and this kind of stuff. If you run out of stuff to rhyme. We would sometimes do what's called take a dive which would be do something outlandish just to get out right now in reality I might have been able to. Kind of rhyme one more word. It's like oh bat Matt and fat have all been taken and I'm trying to think of another word and I go grab but that makes the scene suck if I'm trying to rhyme with the word fat. And they come to me and I just go obese that has its own joke and at its own moment right? And then I take a dive because I'm not being dishonest to the audience. But I'm just doing it to get out cleanly. If that makes sense. The reason why I tell that story is because I think Charles Dawson is doing the same thing in forgery world. What he's doing is he's like I'm going to make this elephant fossil.

12:32.10
kinkella
Into a cricket bat and make it look so hilarious that the people who are looking into this will think that I've just found something totally fake and will um. Tell me that it must be fake but I'm not blame for it. You get what I mean it's a way to take a dive without the sort of extra step of like oh and this was actually faked by Charles Dawson no ah Charles could flip it around and just be like. Jeez I'm sorry I've been I was looking in this area and I found all this stuff and I thought was real but I guess not yeah, it's it's a way to get out clean and some other people have thought that maybe there was a second conspirator and you know that goes with this but um, it's It's a tough call I could be wrong on this I'm I'm reaching out on the ledge a little bit so that little story take with a serious grain of salt but I just find it I find it super odd because if I'm Charles Dawson and I'm trying to fake you out. I'm not going to take an elephant fossil and make it into a cricket bat. You know what? I mean um, it's it's that's a serious red flag when we come back why this worked for so long.