Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [327]
Figure 7.1. Pithecanthropus skullcap discovered by Eugene Dubois in 1891 in Java (Wendt 1972, p. 167).
In August 1892, Dubois returned to trinil and found there—among bones of deer, rhinoceroses, hyenas, crocodiles, pigs, tigers, and extinct elephants—a fossilized humanlike femur (thighbone). This femur (Figure 7.2) was found about 45 feet from where the skullcap and molar were dug up. Later another molar was found about 10 feet from the skullcap. Dubois believed the molars, skull, and femur all came from the same animal, which he still considered to be an extinct giant chimpanzee (von Koenigswald 1956, p. 31).
Figure 7.2. thighbone found by Eugene Dubois at trinil, Java (Boule 1923, p. 100). Dubois attributed it to Pithecanthropus erectus.
The British researcher Richard Carrington (1963, p. 84) stated in his book A Million Years of Man : “Dubois was at first inclined to regard his skull cap and teeth as belonging to a chimpanzee, in spite of the fact that there is no known evidence that this ape or any of its ancestors ever lived in Asia. But on reflection, and after corresponding with the great Ernst Haeckel, professor of Zoology at the University of Jena, he declared them to belong to a creature which seemed admirably suited to the role of the ‘missing link.’” We have not found any correspondence Dubois may have exchanged with Haeckel, but if further research were to turn it up, it would add considerably to our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the birth of Pithecanthropus erectus. Obviously, both men had a substantial emotional and intellectual stake in finding an ape-man specimen. Haeckel, on hearing from Dubois of his discovery, telegraphed this message: “From the inventor of Pithecanthropus to his happy discoverer!” (Wendt 1972, p. 167).
It was only in 1894 that Dubois finally published a complete report of his discovery, titled “Pithecanthropus erectus, a Man-like Species of transitional Anthropoid from Java.” therein he wrote: “Pithecanthropus is the transitional form which, in accordance with the doctrine of evolution, must have existed between man and the anthropoids” (von Koenigswald 1956, p. 31). Pithecanthropus erectus, we should carefully note, had itself undergone an evolutionary transition within the mind of Dubois, from fossil chimpanzee to transitional anthropoid.
What factors, other than Haeckel’s influence, led Dubois to consider his specimen transitional between fossil apes and modern humans? Dubois found that the volume of the Pithecanthropus skull was in the range of 800–1000 cubic centimeters. Modern apes average 500 cubic centimeters, while modern human skulls average 1400 cubic centimeters, thus placing the trinil skull midway between them. to Dubois, this indicated an evolutionary relationship. But logically speaking, one could have creatures with different sizes of brains without having to posit an evolutionary progression from small to large. Furthermore, in the Pleistocene many mammalian species were represented by forms much larger than today’s. thus the Pithecanthropus skull might belong not to a transitional anthropoid but to an exceptionally large Middle Pleistocene gibbon, with a skull bigger than that of modern gibbons.
today, anthropologists still routinely describe an evolutionary progression of hominid skulls, increasing in size with the passage of time—from Early Pleistocene Australopithecus (first discovered in 1924), to Middle Pleistocene Java man (now known as Homo erectus), to Late Pleistocene Homo sapiens sapiens. But the sequence is preserved only at the