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bones and a man leaving a leg bone and no skull so close to each other were remote. if it were not possible to prove there were two creatures, it would be best to assign the bones to one creature. dubois suggested that the bones were found separated because the Pithecanthropus had been dismembered by a crocodile (Bowden 1977, p. 127). But if you throw in more humanlike femurs, that argument loses a great deal of its force. Where were the other skulls? Were they apelike skulls, like the one found? And what about the skull that was found? does it really go with the femur that was found 45 feet away? Or does it belong with one of the other femurs that later turned up? Or maybe with a femur of an entirely different sort?

7.1.8 Are the Trinil Femurs Human?

M. H. day and t. i. Molleson (1973, p. 151) concluded that “the gross anatomy, radiological [X-ray] anatomy, and microscopical anatomy of the trinil femora does not distinguish them significantly from modern human femora.” They also said that Homo erectus femurs from china (Zhoukoudian) and Africa (Olduvai Hominid 28) “are anatomically similar, and distinct from those of trinil” (day and Molleson 1973, p. 152).

In 1984, Richard Leakey and three American scientists discovered an almost complete skeleton of Homo erectus in Kenya. Examining the leg bones, these scientists found that the femurs differed substantially from those of modern human beings: “the biomechanical neck length of 85 mm is well over 3 standard deviations from the mean of a sample of H. sapiens. As well as having a long femoral neck, the neck-shaft angle is very small at 110 degrees, being 5 standard deviations from the mean of the same H. sapiens population” (Brown et al. 1985, p. 791). About the Java discoveries, the authors stated: “From trinil, indonesia, there are several fragmentary and one complete (but pathological) femora. despite the fact that it was these specimens that led to the species name [Pithecanthropus erectus], there are doubts as to whether they are H. erectus with the most recent consensus being that they probably are not” (Brown et al. 1985, p. 789).

in summary, Brown et al. (1985) and day and Molleson (1973) agreed that the trinil femurs were not like those of Homo erectus, while day and Molleson (1973) said the trinil femurs were like those of modern Homo sapiens.

What is to be made of these revelations? the Java thighbones have traditionally been taken as evidence of an ape-man (Pithecanthropus erectus, now called Homo erectus) existing around 800,000 years ago in the Middle pleistocene. Should we now accept them as evidence for anatomically modern humans existing 800,000 years ago? perhaps wisely, Brown and his associates offered in their report no suggestions about the real age of the human femurs found at trinil. there is safety in silence when confronting disconcerting paleontological anomalies.

Some have said that the femurs were mixed in from higher levels. Of course, if one insists that the humanlike trinil femurs were mixed in from higher levels, then why not the Pithecanthropus skull as well? that would eliminate entirely the original Java man find, long advertised as solid proof of human evolution.

7.1.9 Dubois Backs Away from His Original Claims

Late in his life, Dubois concluded that the skullcap of his beloved Pithecanthropus belonged to a large gibbon, an ape not thought by evolutionists to be closely related to humans (Gowlett 1984, p. 17). But the heretofore skeptical scientific community was not about to say good-bye to Java man, for by this time Pithecanthropus was firmly entrenched in the ancestry of modern Homo sapiens. Dubois’s denials were dismissed as the whims of a cantankerous old man. If anything, the scientific community wanted to remove any remaining doubts about the nature and authenticity of Java man. this, it was hoped, would fortify the whole concept of darwinian evolution, of which human evolution was the most highly publicized and controversial aspect.

Despite the doubts about the Trinil find expressed by Dubois himself in his later