Piltdown Man, the Fake Missing Link: If you're an anthropology buff (and who isn't?), then hoaxes don't get much bigger than Piltdown Man. It was a skull that purported to be proof of evolution's "missing link" between apes and humans, and was celebrated as one of the most important cultural discoveries in history. For a full 40 years, Piltdown Man was regarded as fact, until it was exposed as a forgery in 1953. For single-handedly setting the evolution debate back an entire generation, we'll say this to Piltdown Man's "discoverer," Charles Dawson: not cool, dude.