Homo Erectus Erectus: The Search for His Artifacts

by GERT-JAN BARTSTRA Biologisch-Archaeologisch Instituut, State University of Groningen, Poststraat 6, 9712 ER Groningen, The Netherlands. 21 x 81 Where are the artifacts of Java Man? This is the question that arises now that almost four years of research and fieldwork in Indonesia (1977-81) have provisionally been completed.' One of the aims of this work was to shed light on the material culture of the early hominids of Java. Accordingly, most of the known sites with stone tools and fossil hominid remains were visited and surveyed, and several new ones were discovered. River terraces in many places in Central and East Java were mapped and investigated for the presence of artifacts. Much attention was devoted to regions in which the geological history indicates that Upper Pleistocene and (Sub-)Holocene disturbances have been minimal. Many artifacts (including handaxes and unifacial and bifacial choppers) were found, collected, and studied, but nowhere were we able to demonstrate that these artifacts came from Lower or Middle Pleistocene deposits and therefore could have been made by Java Man. The story of the discovery of Java Man has become legendary. In 1887 the Dutch army surgeon Dubois arrived in the former Dutch East Indies with the aim of finding the "missing link," and in October 1891, in the course of excavations at Trinil, a village in Central Java (fig. 1), he did indeed find the heavily fossilized braincase of a primitive hominid. Almost a year later, in August 1892, the same fossil horizon yielded a femur with a remarkable resemblance to that of modern man. Dubois (1894) described these remains as belonging to Pithecanthropus erectus, thus honouring Ernst Haeckel, who had used this generic name hypothetically in his writings. There was not much further clarification concerning Java Man until 1937, when the calvarium of a second, fully grown individual was found at Bapang, near Sangiran, also in Central Java.2 Java Man could then be accepted with more certainty as a precursor of modern man-unfortunately, however, no longer with the approval of Dubois, who came to stress the apelike features of the Trinil skullcap more and more. Pithecanthropus erectus is now classified as Homo erectus erectus, although some of those who are closely involved with palaeoanthropological research on Java still use the name Pithecanthropus. H erectus erectus (of which the remains of about 30 individuals are now known) differs ubspecifically from H. erectus modjokertensis, remains of which have been found in older deposits, and from H. erectus soloensis (Solo Man), known from younger sediments. In Africa and in Europe representatives of the species H. erectus lived in the Lower Pleistocene (from 1,800,000 to 700,000 years B.P.) and in the Middle Pleistocene (from 700,000 to 130,000 years B.P.). Java Man probably lived in the same time span.3 In the literature dealing with early man in Java, claims have often been made of the discovery of artifacts of H. erectus erectus. The first such claim appears in the reports of the Selenka expedition, where it is stated that some fossil remains of vertebrates were found at Trinil with traces of working by man (Carthaus 1911). The Selenka expedition carried out excavations (in 1906-8) close to Dubois's former pits, and the alleged bone implements came from the same fossil horizon as the braincase of the first H. erectus erectus. Subsequently, in the 1930s, von Koenigswald reported the find of small stone tools at Sangiran, the most prolific site of fossil hominid remains in Java, and attributed them to Pithecanthropus (e.g., von Koenigswald 1936a: 41), a connection that he still maintains (e.g., von Koenigswald 1978). These implements from Sangiran must be clearly distinguished from the larger and more pronounced artifacts of the Patjitan4 culture in South Java, also found for the first time in the 1930s (von Koenigswald 1936b). The finds from the older phases of this "Patjitanian" have also been ascribed to Pithecanthropus, for example, by Movius (1949:408) and van Heekeren (1972:43). Finally, Jacob et al. (1978) mention "stone tools from mid-Pleistocene sediments" near the village of Sambungmacan (also in Central Java, between Sangiran and Trinil) and suggest a correlation with a Middle Pleistocene hominid. All these claims for the association of artifacts with a Lower