Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [341]
von Koenigswald said that the jaw was found in the upper layer of the Black clay stratum of the putjangan formation at Sangiran ( Weidenreich 1945, p. 14). Although von Koenigswald reported on this find in five different publications (1939 pp. 926 –929, with Weidenreich as coauthor; 1940a, p. 52; 1947, p. 48; 1949a, p. 92; 1956, pp. 105–111), in none of these did he state the exact location in the stratum of the jaw or the rear braincase. He did not state if the stratum was undisturbed or at what depth the fossils (S4 in table 7.2, p. 498) were found.
considering the importance of these discoveries, the reader is entitled to the detailed stratigraphic information that should have been provided.
One can simply imagine what might have happened if the discovery had been a fossil skull of the modern human type. Authorities such as Hrdlicka would have pointed out that it had been discovered by a native collector and not a trained scientist, that the exact location of its discovery was unknown, and that there was, therefore, sufficient reason to reject the find. But sloppiness that would be fatal to an anomalous find is easily tolerated in the case of a find that fits in nicely with accepted ideas about human evolution.
7.3.6 Weidenreich’s Reconstruction
in 1945, Weidenreich used the S1b lower jaw, found in 1936 near Kalijoso, and the upper jaw and rear braincase of the so-called Pithecanthropus IV individual (S4) to put together his famous Pithecanthropus robustus reconstruction. this was surely a strange mix. von Koenigswald and more recent authors such as Le Gros clark and campbell (1978) uncritically accepted that the rear braincase and upper jaw belonged to the same individual although no empirical data was ever brought forward to prove this. the S1b lower jaw was found at a different site. Furthermore, in
Weidenreich’s Pithecanthropus robustus reconstruction, there were no fossils for the front half of the cranium and the upper part of the face. von Koenigswald (1949a, p. 92) concluded that Weidenreich modeled the facial part of the Pithecanthropus robustus skull after the peking man fossils and the front half of the cranium after dubois’s original Pithecanthropus skullcap. despite the considerable guesswork involved with this reconstruction (Figure 7.4) many paleoanthropologists have accepted it as valid.
Figure 7.4. Reconstruction of the Java man (Pithecanthropus robustus) skull by Franz Weidenreich (1945, plate 4). the only bone fragments used in the reconstruction comprised the rear part of the cranium and the upper and lower jaws. these were from different sites.
thirty years later, however, Grover S. Krantz presented a very convincing case that the upper jaw used in the reconstruction did not belong to the same individual as the rear part of the skull.
After making detailed measurements, Krantz (1975, pp. 363–365) concluded that the upper jaw (palate) was much too wide to fit with the rear braincase. Weidenreich appears to have realized this back in 1945 when he did the reconstruction. Krantz noted that Weidenreich artificially spread apart two key bones of the rear braincase (called the mandibular fossae) “without any explanation.” Krantz (1975, p. 366) stated that the mandibular fossae, even after Weidenreich spread them apart, were nevertheless “much too close together to accommodate the palate breadth.”
It is interesting that in the same volume in which Krantz’s report appeared, von Koenigswald stated that the width of the palate as Krantz had measured it—94 millimeters—was incorrect (tuttle 1975, p. 377). von Koenigswald arrived at a width narrower than 94 millimeters, which he said allowed the palate to