modern humans, whereas many scientists considered Java Man as a primitive side branch of evolution not related to modern humans at all. In the 1930s Dubois made the claim that Pithecanthropus was built like a "giant gibbon", a much misinterpreted attempt by Dubois to prove that it was the "missing link". Eventually, similarities between Pithecanthropus erectus (Java Man) and Sinanthropus pekinensis (Peking Man) led Ernst Mayr to rename both Homo erectus in 1950, placing them directly in the human evolutionary tree
.
To distinguish Java Man from other Homo erectus populations, some scientists began to regard it as a subspecies, Homo erectus erectus, in the 1970s.
theory of evolution around the same time as Darwin. Because both Lyell and Wallace believed that humans were more closely related to gibbons or another great ape (the orangutans), they identified Southeast Asia as the cradle of humanity because this is where these apes lived. Dutch anatomist Eugène Dubois favored the latter theory, and sought to confirm it.[2]
The three main fossils of Java Man found in 1891–92: a skullcap, a molar, and a thighbone, each seen from two different angles.
In October 1887, Dubois abandoned his academic career and left for the
excavate caves in Sumatra.[5] Having quickly found abundant fossils of large mammals, Dubois was relieved of his military duties (March 1889), and the colonial government assigned two engineers and fifty convicts to help him with his excavations.[6] After he failed to find the fossils he was looking for on Sumatra, he moved on to Java in 1890.[7]
Again assisted by convict laborers and two army corporals, Dubois began searching along the
Siwalik Hills
in India in 1878 had been named Anthropopithecus, and because Dubois first assessed the cranium to have been about 700 cubic centimetres (43 cu in), closer to apes than to humans.
In August 1892, a year later, Dubois's team found a long
Pithecanthropus from Ernst Haeckel, who had coined it a few years earlier to refer to a supposed "missing link" between apes and humans.[12] This specimen has also been known as Pithecanthropus 1.[13]
After the discovery of Java Man, Berlin-born paleontologist
Java, including several skullcaps and cranial fragments.[17] In 1936, von Koenigswald discovered a juvenile skullcap known as the Mojokerto child in East Java.[18] Considering the Mojokerto child skull cap to be closely related to humans, von Koenigswald wanted to name it Pithecanthropus modjokertensis (after Dubois's specimen), but Dubois protested that Pithecanthropus was not a human but an "ape-man".[19]
Von Koenigswald also made several discoveries in
early humans. Dubois again refused to acknowledge the similarity. Ralph von Koenigswald and Franz Weidenreich compared the fossils from Java and Zhoukoudian and concluded that Java Man and Peking Man were closely related.[19] Dubois died in 1940, still refusing to recognize their conclusion,[19][21] and official reports remain critical of the Sangiran site's poor presentation and interpretation.[22]
Early interpretations
1922 reconstruction of a Java Man skull, due to Trinil 2 being only a cranium, Dubois who believed Java man was transitional between apes and humans, drew the reconstruction with an ape-like jaw but a brain larger than apes'
More than 50 years after Dubois's find,
Ralph von Koenigswald recollected that, "No other paleontological discovery has created such a sensation and led to such a variety of conflicting scientific opinions."[23] The Pithecanthropus fossils were so immediately controversial that by the end of the 1890s, almost 80 publications had already discussed them.[1]
Until the
great apes. The current consensus of anthropologists is that the direct ancestors of modern humans were African populations of Homo erectus (Homo ergaster), rather than the Asian populations of the same species exemplified by Java Man and Peking Man.[25]
Missing link theory
Dubois first published his find in 1894.
transitional form between apes and humans, a so-called "missing link".[27] Many disagreed. Some critics claimed that the bones were those of an upright walking ape, or that they belonged to a primitive human.[28] This judgment made sense at a time when an evolutionary view of humanity had not yet been widely accepted, and scientists tended to view hominid fossils as racial variants of modern humans rather than as ancestral forms.[29] After Dubois let a number of scientists examine the fossils in a series of conferences held in Europe in the 1890s, they started to agree that Java Man may be a transitional form after all, but most of them thought of it as "an extinct side branch" of the human tree that had indeed descended from apes, but not evolved into humans.[30] This interpretation eventually imposed itself and remained dominant until the 1940s.[31]
The gibbon's ability to stand and walk upright made Eugène Dubois believe it was closely related to humans. This is one of the reasons why he once claimed that Java Man looked like a "giant gibbon".
Dubois was bitter about this and locked the fossil up in a trunk until 1923 when he showed it to Ales Hrdlicka from the Smithsonian Institution.
brain-to-body ratio on each leap.[35] To prove that Java Man was the "missing link" between apes and humans, he therefore had to show that its brain-to-body ratio was double that of apes and half that of humans. The problem was that Java Man's cranial capacity was 900 cubic centimeters, about two-thirds of modern humans'.[36]
Like many scientists who believed that modern humans evolved "Out of Asia", Dubois thought that gibbons were closest to humans among the great apes.[37] To preserve the proportions predicted by his theory of brain evolution, Dubois argued that Java Man was shaped more like a gibbon than a human. Imagined "with longer arms and a greatly expanded chest and upper body", the Trinil creature became a gigantic ape of about 100 kilograms (220 lb), but "double cephalization of the anthropoid apes in general and half that of man".[38] It was therefore halfway on the path to becoming a modern human.[39] As Dubois concluded his 1932 paper: "I still believe, now more firmly than ever, that the Pithecanthropus of Trinil is the real 'missing link.'"[40]
Based on Weidenreich's work and on his suggestion that Pithecanthropus erectus and Sinanthropus pekinensis were connected through a series of
Cold Spring Harbor Symposium in 1950,[42] and this resulted in Dubois's erectus species being reclassified under the genusHomo. As part of the reclassification, Mayr included not only Sinanthropus and Pithecanthropus, but also Plesianthropus, Paranthropus, Javanthropus, and several other genera as synonyms, arguing that all human ancestors were part of a single genus (Homo), and that "never one more than one species of man existed on the earth at any one time".[43] A "revolution in taxonomy", Mayr's single-species approach to human evolution was quickly accepted.[44] It shaped paleoanthropology in the 1950s and lasted into the 1970s, when the African genus Australopithecus was accepted into the human evolutionary tree.[45]
In the 1970s a tendency developed to regard the Javanese variety of H. erectus as a subspecies, Homo erectus erectus, with the Chinese variety being referred to as Homo erectus pekinensis.[46]
The locality of the Pithecanthropus find, on the Solo River, near Trinil, Java. The two white squares show where the femur (left) and the skullcap (right) were discovered. Their discovery near flowing water was one of the many sources of controversy that surrounded the fossils.Pseudodon shell DUB1006-fL, found near the Java Man and dated to circa 500,000 BP, contains the earliest known geometric engravings. From Trinil, Java. Now in the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Netherlands.[47]
Dubois's complete collection of fossils were transferred between 1895 and 1900 to what is now known as
Though this view is still widely accepted, in the 1980s a group of Dutch paleontologists used Dubois's collection of more than 20,000 animal fossils to reassess the date of the layer in which Java Man was found.[51] Using only fossils from Trinil, they called that new faunal assemblage the Trinil H. K. Fauna, in which H. K. stands for Haupt Knochenschicht, or "main fossil-bearing layer".[52] This assessment dates the fossils of Java Man to between 900,000 and 1,000,000 years old.[53] On the other hand, work published in 2014 gives a "maximum age of 0.54 ± 0.10 million years and a minimum age of 0.43 ± 0.05 million years" for Ar-Ar and luminescence dating of sediment in human-predated shell material from Trinil.[54] Work continues on assessing the dating of this complex site.
Other fossils attest to the even earlier presence of H. erectus in Java.
Ma (million years). The controversial Mojokerto child, which Carl C. Swisher and Garniss Curtis once dated to 1.81 ± 0.04 Ma, has now been convincingly re-dated to a maximum age of 1.49 ± 0.13 Ma, that is, 1.49 million years with a margin of error of plus or minus 130,000 years.[55]
Type specimen
The fossils found in Java are considered the
reworked fossil", that is, a relatively young fossil that was deposited into an older layer after its own layer had been eroded. For this reason, there is still dissent about whether all the Trinil fossils represent the same species.[59]
Physical characteristics
A 1922 reconstruction of the skull of Java Man (based on Trinil 2).
Java Man was about 173 cm (5 ft 8 in) tall and his thighbones show that he
browridges were straight and massive. At 900 cm3, his cranial capacity was smaller than that of later H. erectus specimens. However, he had humanlike teeth with large canines.[8]
Judging from anatomical and archeological aspects as well as Java Man's ecological role, meat from vertebrates was likely an important part of their diet. Java Man, like other Homo erectus, was probably a rare species.[60] There is evidence that Java Man used shell tools to cut meat.[61] Java Man's dispersal through Southeast Asia coincides with the extirpation of the giant turtle Megalochelys, possibly due to overhunting as the turtle would have been an easy, slow-moving target which could have been stored for quite some time.[62]
Material culture
H. erectus arrived in Eurasia approximately 1.8 million years ago, in an event considered to be the first African exodus.
savannah, but was likely regularly inundated ("hydromorphic savanna"). The plants found at the Trinil excavation site included grass (Poaceae), ferns, Ficus, and Indigofera, which are typical of lowland rainforest.[64]
Control of fire
The control of fire by Homo erectus is generally accepted by archaeologists to have begun some 400,000 years ago,[65] with claims regarding earlier evidence finding increasing scientific support.[66][67] Burned wood has been found in layers that carried the Java Man fossils in Trinil, dating to around from 500,000 to 830,000 BP. However, because Central Java is a volcanic region, the charring may have resulted from natural fires, and there is no conclusive proof that Homo erectus in Java controlled fire.[65] It has been proposed that Java Man was aware of the use of fire,[68] and that the frequent presence of natural fires may have allowed Java Man "opportunistic use [... that] did not create an archeologically visible pattern".[69]
^Swisher, Curtis & Lewin 2000, p. 59 ["unorthodox" venture; was refused government funding; hired as medical officer] and 61 ["he was the first person to set out on a deliberate search for fossils of human ancestors"].
^Schwartz, Jeffrey H.; Tattersall, Ian (2005). The Human Fossil Record, Craniodental Morphology of Genus Homo (Africa and Asia). John Wiley & Sons. p. 450.
^de Vos 2004, pp. 272–73 ["extinct side branch of human evolution"].
^Schmalzer 2008, p. 258 ["While at the turn of the century a linear model of human evolution was widely accepted, from around 1910 to the 1940s, the dominant model placed fossil hominids like Java Man, Peking Man, and the Neanderthals on side branches of the family tree. These 'cousins' were understood to have become extinct, replaced by our unknown direct ancestors."].
^Theunissen 1989, pp. 152–56; Swisher, Curtis & Lewin 2000, p. 68 ["The second popular and persistent myth about Dubois and his supposed reaction to the anthropological world's largely negative assessment of Pithecanthropus as a putative missing link.... It is true... that Dubois's proposition found little support among professional anthropologists ... But the rest of the story, about Dubois's supposed withdrawal and craziness, is apocryphal..."]; Gould 1993, p. 134 ["And now... I may finally correct the last and most insidious claim of the standard legend—[that] Dubois... redesignates his once-proud ancestor as nothing but a giant gibbon."].
^Gould 1993, p. 136 ["Dubois's ingenious attempt to retain Pithecanthropus as a direct human ancestor has been widely misread in a precisely opposite manner as an ultimate surrender, almost comical in its transmogrification of a human forebear into a giant gibbon."].
^Gould 1993, p. 135 ["Dubois desperately wanted Pithecanthropus as a direct ancestor under his evolutionary view. But the brain of Java Man ranked with embarrassing bulk at some 900 cm3, or two-thirds human volume."].
^Swisher, Curtis & Lewin 2000, p. 74 ["In common with other anthropologists of the time, Dubois believed that the human stock was rooted in some kind of gibbonlike ancestor."].
^Gould 1993, p. 135 [the second citation is from Dubois's paper].
^Theunissen 1989, pp. 152–156; Swisher, Curtis & Lewin 2000, p. 74 ["Because Dubois applied the name 'Giant Gibbon' to this creature, many people took it to mean that ... he no longer considered his Pithecanthropus to be linked to human ancestry. ... By describing Pithecanthropus as a giant gibbon, Dubois simply meant that it was closer to gibbons than to humans in body form. And, he pointed out, gibbons and humans share many anatomical features that relate to humans' habitually and gibbons' occasionally upright mode of walking."]; Gould 1993, pp. 134–35 ["Dubois used the proportions of a gibbon to give Pithecanthropus a brain at exactly half our level, thereby rendering his man of Java ... as the direct ancestor of all modern humans. He argued about gibbons to exalt Pithecanthropus, not to demote the greatest discovery of his life."], 135–36 [citing from Dubois's 1932 paper: "Pithecanthropus was not a man, but a gigantic genus allied to the gibbons, however superior to the gibbons on account of its exceedingly large brain volume and distinguished at the same time by its faculty of assuming an erect attitude and gait. It had the double cephalization of the anthropoid apes in general and half that of man."] and 136 [... "Dubois never said that Pithecanthropus was a gibbon (and therefore the lumbering, almost comical dead end of the legend), rather, he reconstructed Java Man with the proportions of a gibbon in order to inflate the body weight and transform his beloved creature into a direct human ancestor—its highest possible status—under his curious theory of evolution."].
^Schmalzer 2008, p. 98 ["the "single-species" thesis to which he was committed became the theoretical foundation for paleoanthropology for years to come"]; Boaz & Ciochon 2004, p. 67 ["was to sweep anthropology in the 1950s" ... "Thus was born the single-species hypothesis, a powerful model that endured until the late 1970s when fossil discoveries in Africa disproved it, at least for the early part of the hominid fossil record"].
^Dennell 2009, p. 155 ["The maximum age of this specimen is thus 1.49 million years, and not 1.81 million years, as implied by Swisher et al. 1994"]; Ciochon 2010, p. 112 ["As the relocated discovery bed proved to be ~20 m above the horizon that Swisher et al. 1994 dated, the skull is certainly younger than had been previously reported" (Huffman et al. 2006)"]; Rabett 2012, p. 26 ["the 1994 estimate of its age has now been credibly refuted (Huffman et al. 2006)"]; Dennell 2010, p. 266 ["the recent re-discovery of the precise provenance of the Mojokerto cranium that is now dated to a maximum of 1.49 Ma (Morwood et al. 2003) clarifies long-standing uncertainties over the age of this important specimen"].
^Luke, Kim. "Evidence That Human Ancestors Used Fire One Million Years Ago". Retrieved 2013-10-27. An international team led by the University of Toronto and Hebrew University has identified the earliest known evidence of the use of fire by human ancestors. Microscopic traces of wood ash, alongside animal bones and stone tools, were found in a layer dated to one million years ago
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