It was an anthropologists dream. The head of the Phillipine agency for national minorities, Manuel Elizalde, announced to the world that a tribe of Stone Age people, never exposed to modern civilization, had been discovered in the jungle.
Wearing loincloths made of orchid leaves, the Tasaday, as they were called, lived in caves, subsisting on grubs, small aquatic life and wild fruits and vegatables. They did not farm and had no method for keeping time. They used no weapons and had no word for war.
The news excited scientists and journalists. A platform was built in the rain forest to help helicopters ferry observers in and out. The cave men became media darlings.
National Geographic (not again!!) devoted a cover story to the Tasaday, and NBC television offered Elizalde $50,000 to let them produce a documentary on the cave men. In the meantime, Phillipine President Ferdinand Marcos made the Tasaday region a government preserve.
It wasnt until 1986, when the Marcos regime was ousted, that a swiss journalist revisited the mysterious people. He was stunned to find the cave dwellers living in huts, dressed in t-shirts and shorts. The journalist was told by these people that they had been instructed to pretend to be cave men.
How could this have fooled so many people? Why did National Geographics experts not see right through this immediatly? Just one more example of science jumping to a conclusion if it backs their theories about early man.