• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Weidenreich journeyed to Java and participated in another discovery, known as Pithecanthropus III (S3 in Table 7.2, p. 498). This find consisted of many skull fragments, adding up to the right parietal bone, part of the left parietal bone, and a small piece of the occipital bone of a juvenile individual. von Koenigswald stated (1940a, p. 102) that most of these fragments were found by his collectors in July 1938 in the southern sector of the Sangiran dome. A few were discovered by himself and Weidenreich in the course of their visit to the site in September 1938. von Koenigswald (1940a) went on to describe the condition of these skull fragments. they were found on the surface, and they were extensively corroded. in fact, von Koenigswald wrote that these pieces of bone must have been lying around on the surface for a long time, because roots of grasses were penetrating a piece of one of the fragments. despite this, von Koenigswald (1940a, p. 103; 1956, p. 101) and Le Gros clark and campbell (1978, p. 94) stated that Pithecanthropus III is from the Kabuh formation. But considering that this specimen was discovered on the surface, there is room to doubt this. in his 1956 book Meeting Prehistoric Man, von Koenigswald failed to mention that the Pithecanthropus III skull was found on the surface, thus misleading the reader into accepting it as strong evidence for a missing link in the Middle pleistocene.

7.3.5 A Meeting in Peking

In January 1939, von Koenigswald and Weidenreich met at the Cenozoic Research Laboratory in peking to directly compare fossils of Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus, as Peking man was known in scientific circles. Peking man was represented by some fairly complete skulls with features thought to be markedly human. the humanlike nature of peking man was further supported by the presence of crude stone implements and evidence of fire in the excavation at choukoutien. All of this indicated Sinanthropus was much more than an ape. At their meeting, von Koenigswald and Weidenreich agreed that Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus were anatomically very closely related. So if peking man was a distant ancestor of the human type, then so was Java man. von Koenigswald (1956, pp. 47– 48) wrote: “the cranial curve of peking man was exactly similar to that of the disputed Javanese Pithecanthropus. Since there could be no doubt that the peking man, despite all his primitive characteristics, was genuinely human, practically all Dubois’s opponents were convinced by this new find that Pithecanthropus, too, must have been human.”

Von Koenigswald’s characterization of Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus as “genuinely human” refers only to certain departures from apelike morphology in the direction of humanlike morphology. But such departures do not require one to conclude that modern humans descended from Pithecanthropus or Sinanthropus. Furthermore, one cannot rule out the possibility that humans of modern type existed contemporaneously with or previous to Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus. As we have seen, there is much evidence demonstrating this latter possibility.

concerning the alleged identity of Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus, dubois himself was not convinced. “the discovery of peking man might have been expected to represent a great triumph for dubois, who had up till then been exerting every ounce of his authority to convince the world that the disputed [Java man] fossil was human,” stated von Koenigswald (1956, p. 55). “curiously enough, this was not how dubois saw it. till the end of his life [in 1940] he refused to recognize any affinity between Sinanthropus and his Pithecanthropus. He described Sinanthropus as a degenerate neanderthaler, and suddenly decided that his own find must be ascribed to a gibbon-like ape.”

While in peking, von Koenigswald received from his collector Rusman a new Pithecanthropus fossil, a thickly encrusted upper jaw. Later von Koenigswald’s Javanese servants sent from the