Talk:Piltdown Man

The horror...the horror... &mdash; Unsigned, by: Kels / talk / contribs

It was the aptest picture I could come up with to illustrate the topic. Fraud. human be in 00:00, 11 June 2007 (CDT)
 * Trent asked if could "make a real article here", and, while I'm sure we could, I kind of like the snarky comments I wrote. How about, a good paragrpah telling the story, a good link to TO or some such for more detail, followed by a snark section?  This is a good place for humor, since cretinists still insist on bringing him, er, it up as an example of why, you know, evolution can;t possibly be true. human be in 15:35, 21 June 2007 (CDT)

Out of Africa controversy is about the late part, not the early part.
The article implies that multiregionalists deny that humans have african ancestors. That is bullshit because multiregionalists agree that early genus Homo are from Africa. The controversy is about if the evolution from early Homo to modern humans happened exclusively in Africa or more broadly. The opposite of multiregionalism should be called (and are often called) recent african origin. Personally I used to believe in recent african origin, but when I considered the fact that most humans are susceptible to indoctrination I realized that modern humans must have evolved in the absence of motifs for deception, and since replacement implies competition (which ALWAYS creates motifs for deception) I "converted" to multiregional evolution. The truth is that if everyone was as sceptic-minded as me and dogmatic nuts did not exist, I would still have believed in recent african origin. 95.209.67.166 (talk) 15:51, 30 September 2011 (UTC)Martin J Sallberg
 * The article doesn't seem to imply that at all. ADK ...I'll soak your contraband! 16:14, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes it clearly does, the article says: "By 1930 a large number of other finds were pointing to what is now referred to as the out-of-Africa theory, (or hypothesis if you support multi-regionalism)". It is that part that must be modified, e.g. by removing the reference to multi-regionalism and clarify that those finds were about the evolution of early, not modern, humans. 79.138.201.111 (talk) 10:38, 16 October 2011 (UTC)Martin J Sallberg
 * I think you're reading far too much into a single throwaway sentence, it doesn't imply or suggest even a fraction of what you think it does, so put the Kool-Aid down. Or, just rewrite it to what you want it to say. ADK ...I'll fly your Furby! 11:42, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Question
To what extent were scientists of the time operating on the basis of the information/ideas they had at the time - so Piltdown Man was seen as a possible line of evolution in good faith (at least initially) - overenthusiastic acceptance of a possible line of development (even if there was a mixture of jingoism). The science of human evolution was in its early stages of evolution after all (and the first Neanderthal to be discovered was an atypical example as well so the therefrom extrapolations were wrong). Anna Livia (talk) 00:28, 22 January 2019 (UTC)


 * In James Burke's "Worlds Without End" (Day the Universe Changed series) it is pointed one of the reasons the Piltdown hoax lasted as long at it did was it fitted the then prevalent structure of finding a human like skull with an ape-like face. In fact, in 1913, David Waterston of King's College London stated in Nature that the find and an ape mandible and human skull (Gould, Stephen J. (1980). The Panda's Thumb. W. W. Norton and Co., pp. 108–124, ISBN 0-393-01380-4) and French paleontologist Marcellin Boule said the same thing in 1915.  In 1923 Franz Weidenreich stated after careful examination that the Piltdown find was a modern human cranium and an orangutan jaw with filed-down teeth (MacRitchie, Finlay (2011). Scientific Research as a Career. CRC Press. p. 30. ISBN 1439869650.) but because Piltdown fit the structure so well other scientists let the model drive their thinking rather than the evidence itself.


 * The file marks can be seen with the magnifiers available in 1912 so it was a classic cases of consensus seeing what it wanted to see ala the quality of a recognizable historical Jesus being said to be good when in reality much of it is questionable quality...when it isn't total crap such as Thallus. The Historical Method is badly used in Biblical studies that a handful within the fields, such as Hector Avalos, have implied the field in its current state needs be effectively nuked from orbit and restarted from scratch.--BruceGrubb (talk) 09:43, 8 April 2020 (UTC)