ANT210H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Confirmation Bias, Canine Tooth, The Technique
Document Summary
From 1912 to 1953 the piltdown forgery was considered by the most to be genuine. Meant to force scholars to see how the bones might fit together. They found pieces of parietal and frontal bones. They were relatively thick, but the thickness is was considered variable among individuals populations. They also looked at other proportions of the human body include the mandible and the molars as well as the canine tooth. After close examination they realized that the molars were from an orangutan and not from a human. The fragments they mimicked as the bone seems to be in the same of a cricket bat. They used fluorine absorption dating which shows the relatively modern age of the evidence pieces. The technique showed that the mandible and skull were firstly close to the modern age and also an important finding was that they were of different ages as well. So it is possible that all were planted there.
