The Piltdown Man was a paleoanthropological fraud in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. Although there were doubts about its authenticity virtually from its announcement in 1912, the remains were still broadly accepted for many years, and the falsity of the hoax was only definitively demonstrated in 1953. An extensive scientific review in 2016 established that amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson was responsible for the fraudulent evidence. Charles Dawson's motivations for his archaeological finds was to gain recognition from other members in the archaeological community.
In 1912, Dawson claimed that he had discovered the "missing link" between early apes and humans. If the Piltdown Man was found to be legitimate, it would have been a crucial transitional form between the two species. In February 1912, Dawson contacted Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum, stating he had found a section of a human-like skull in Pleistocene gravel beds near Piltdown, East Sussex. The find of the Piltdown Man, and the claims that Dawson was making were taken seriously due to Dawson's reputation in the archaeology community and for other local archaeological "discoveries". These "discoveries" were later found to also be false. That summer, Dawson and Woodward purportedly discovered more bones and artifacts at the site, which they connected to the same individual. These finds included a jawbone, more skull fragments, a set of teeth, and primitive tools. The fragments of the cranium that Dawson had originally found had human like features, whereas the lower jawbone that they found had resembled a jawbone of an ape. He also claimed that the stone tools and animal fossils were found in the same layer of Earth that the cranium and jawbone were found. These finds appeared to support a Eurocentric model of human evolution. The Eurocentric model says that early human evolution started in Britain instead of Africa. This model was popular at the time due to the colonial assumptions that the European ancestry was superior to other races. Dawson used specific fossils to make it appear this way. There was a lot of debate around if humans developed their brains first or if they developed as bipedal first. The fossils also fit the hypothesis at the time, that the brain developed first. Then due to the brain growth other aspects of human evolution happened. The belief in Piltdown Man and his large brain caused this hypothesis to perpetuate in the anthropology field for many decades.
