The Case of the Most Famous Fake Human Fossil
Eons: Surviving Deep Time
PBS
4.9 • 853 Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2022
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode is a mystery in the most classic literary sense of the word. It’s a whodunit detective story that spans more than a century - the saga of the Piltdown Man Hoax. From a gravel pit in Sussex, we follow the faked fossils through history, to what’s now the Natural History Museum in London, where scientists are using new technologies to try to unravel the identity of the fraudster, and explore how this hoax impacted the study of human origins.
Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.
© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you're enjoying this podcast, we would love to tell you about Common Descent. |
| 0:04.0 | Common Descent is a podcast about paleontology, evolution, and the history of life on Earth, |
| 0:09.0 | hosted by two paleontologists with an unending enthusiasm for the wonders of the world. |
| 0:14.0 | Each episode cover science news, followed by a deep dive into a main topic requested by the audience. |
| 0:19.6 | Recent episodes of feature topics like eels, hibernation, and fungi. |
| 0:23.5 | In addition to the main series, Common Descent also features side projects that explore science and pop culture, |
| 0:28.7 | where the host examined the science and movies or speculate on the hypothetical evolution of fictional monsters. |
| 0:34.4 | Listen to Common Descent on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:44.1 | It's 1908 or maybe 1909, and you're walking down a farm road somewhere in southeast England. |
| 0:52.0 | You notice that the road has recently been repaired with chips of a brownish rock that seem |
| 0:57.8 | out of place. |
| 0:59.4 | You've studied a little geology, so you ask around in the nearby village to find out |
| 1:03.8 | where the rock came from. |
| 1:06.5 | It turns out that it came from a gravel pit on a farm, close to where you'd been walking. |
| 1:11.6 | You decide to head back out there and visit the pit, and when you arrive, there are two workers digging out more gravel for road repairs. |
| 1:19.6 | You make conversation, asking them if they found anything interesting. |
| 1:23.6 | You're also a bit of an amateur archaeologist, and you want to know if they've encountered |
| 1:28.7 | bones or fossils and if they'll hang on to them for you if they do. |
| 1:32.9 | They don't have anything for you this time. |
| 1:36.8 | But you keep visiting, hoping something will turn up. |
| 1:40.3 | And eventually, something does. |
| 1:42.5 | One of the workmen shows you what appears to be a piece of human skull. |
... |
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