|
It is interesting to note that the find was not
a complete specimen, as many are led to beleive,
but consisted merely of a skullcap, a femur, and
three teeth. A 342 page report written shortly
after the finding has thrown much doubt upon the
validity of this particular specimen. Despite
this, the "Java man" is still found
in many textbooks today.
A second "Java Man"
was later discovered in the village of Sangiran, Central
Java, 18km to the north of Solo. His
remains, a skullcap of similar size to that found by Dubois,
was discovered by Berlin-born paleontologist Dr
GHR von Koenigswald in 1936, as a direct result
of the excavations by Dubois in 1891.
Until older human remains were later
discovered in the Great Rift Valley in Kenya,
Dubois' and Koenigswald's discoveries
were the oldest hominid remains ever found, and the first
to support Charles Darwin's and Alfred Russell Wallace's
theory of evolution.
Many scientists of the day even suggested
that Dubois' Java Man might have been the so-called "missing
link", yet due to 19th Century scepticism,
this theory was never credited to Dubois.
The "missing link" is the
creature that is supposed to provide the evolutionary
connection between the anthropoid apes and modern
man.
|