In the 1880s, a young Dutch anatomist named Eugène Dubois set out to find the missing link between apes and humans. He chose to look in Indonesia, reasoning that gibbons resembled Homo sapiens. After four years of searching, he uncovered a skullcap with a simian-like brow ridge and a large brain case, along with other fragmentary fossils, buried near the Solo River on the Indonesian island of Java. Dubois’ “Java Man” became a lightning rod for debate at a time when many in the scientific community still resisted the idea that humans evolved from anything.
Stephen Munro, holding the skullcap of Trinil 2, aka “Java Man,” discovered the oldest known engraving on shells found near the fossil. Phil Dooley/Australian National University
Dubois’ missing-link claim was eventually disproven. Java Man was reclassified in the 1950s as Homo erectus and is now called Trinil 2, in reference to the excavation site.
