Quick Quiz: Humans and Their Remains

Question: Which skeletal remains were one of the most successful hoaxes ever perpetrated in the sciences?

Answer: Piltdown man, also called Dawson’s dawn man, was a proposed species of extinct hominin whose fossil remains, discovered in England in 1910–12, were later proved to be fraudulent; it was one of the most successful hoaxes in the history of science. The fossils were sufficiently convincing to generate a scholarly controversy lasting more than 40 years. In 1953–54 an intensive scientific reexamination of the Piltdown remains identified them as the skillfully disguised fragments of a quite modern human cranium, the jaw and teeth of an orangutan, and the tooth probably of a chimpanzee. A reexamination of the Piltdown remains released in 2016, which included spectroscopy and DNA analysis, strongly suggested that the fabricated remains were made by combining the bones of a single orangutan and no fewer than two human specimens.

Question: The oldest intact human remains were discovered on an Alpine glacier in 1991. What is the name given to this traveler who was equipped with a fur robe, grass cape, bow and arrows, a dagger, and an ax?

Answer: Ötzi, also called the Iceman, is the oldest human body ever found intact. Radiocarbon-dated to 3300 BCE, the body is that of a man age 25 to 35. Ötzi was equipped with a small copper-bladed ax and a flint dagger, both with wooden handles; 14 arrows made of viburnum and dogwood, 2 of which had flint points and feathers; a fur arrow quiver and a bow made of yew; a grass net that may have served as a sack; a leather pouch; and a U-shaped wooden frame that apparently served as a backpack to carry this gear.

Question: In 1927 Canadian physician and physical anthropologist Davidson Black analyzed a single fossilized tooth and declared he had found evidence of what early human, now classified formally as a member of the species Homo erectus?

Answer: Peking man was identified as a new fossil human by Davidson Black in 1927 on the basis of a single tooth. Peking man, an extinct hominin of the species Homo erectus, is known from fossils found at Zhoukoudian near Beijing.

Question: Which interdisciplinary branch of anthropology is concerned with the origin and development of early humans?

Answer: Paleoanthropology, also called human paleontology, is an interdisciplinary branch of anthropology concerned with the origins and development of early humans.