Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Amy Elizabeth Morrison asks, Besides Piltdown Man, what were other great hoaxes from history? How far back are there examples of people trying to fool the masses?

Absolutely. What was unique about Pitldown Man was that it was a scientific hoax. There weren’t a lot of them before, simply because science wasn’t that big of a deal.

However, there was an enormous amount of religious fraud. I haven’t done an episode on it yet, but many people peddled fake holy relics throughout the Middle Ages.

There was an obvious incentive for people to sell them, and there was an incentive for people to buy them. A church with a significant relic could draw pilgrims from far and wide to come and venerate them.

Of course, there isn’t a way to verify a relic unless it happens to have come from a local saint who had some association with the church.

On top of that, there are tons of stories and fables that were undoubtedly made up by people, that later became legends.