Piltdown Man: Dawson's Evolutionary Hoax

Charles Dawson, an amateur archaeologist, hailed the Piltdown Man as a groundbreaking discovery in 1912 while searching for the "missing link" between apes and humans in accordance with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Unearthed in Piltdown, Sussex, the fossils were initially celebrated but later revealed to be a hoax in 1953 when new dating techniques exposed inconsistencies. Subsequent analysis in 2009 implicated Charles Dawson as the likely mastermind behind the forgery, marking a significant deception in the history of human evolution research.