Piltdown Man (Noun)
Meaning
A supposedly primitive man later proven to be a hoax.
Classification
Nouns denoting people.
Examples
- The discovery of Piltdown Man in 1912 was hailed as one of the most significant archaeological finds of the century, but it was later revealed to be a forgery.
- Piltdown Man was presented as the missing link between humans and apes, but its authenticity was disputed from the start by many experts.
- The Piltdown Man hoax was perpetrated by Charles Dawson, a British lawyer and amateur archaeologist, who planted fake fossils in a gravel pit in Sussex.
- The Piltdown Man scandal was a major embarrassment for the scientific community, which had eagerly accepted the discovery as proof of human evolution.
- In 1953, the Piltdown Man was officially declared a forgery, and the scientific community was left to wonder how such a blatant hoax had been perpetrated.