Java man
Java man Java Man is the name given to fossils discovered in 1891 at Trinil - Ngawi Regency on the banks of the Solo River in East Java, Indonesia, one of the 1st known specimens of Homo erectus. Its discoverer, Eugxne Dubois, gave it the scientific name Pithecanthropus erectus, a name derived from Greek and Latin roots meaning upright ape-man. In 1887, Eugxne Dubois began to excavate caves in Southeast Asia while working as a military surgeon. Dubois hoped to learn more about human evolution and to discover an ancestor of modern man. With this goal in mind he traveled to Sumatra, but after he failed to find the fossils he was looking for on the island he moved onto Java in 1890. Assisted by convict laborers and two army sergeants, Dubois began searching along the Solo River at Trinil in August of 1891. The new date of the Mojokerto child, Dr. Swisher's group [of the Institute of Human Origins in Berkeley] has determined, is about 1.81 million years, and the Sangiran fossils are ...