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TRINIL
 The
story begins in the closing years of the last century, when a
Dutchman named Eugene Dubois unearthed the fossilized remnants
of what was later to become known as 'Java Man', near the East
Javanese village of Trinil. In 1894, three years after the discovery,
Dubois published an article in which he claimed that the remains
belonged to a distant ancestor of modern man, who had lived almost
a million years ago. He named the creature Pithecanthropus Erectus
(L). The article created such an outcry among the scientific
community, as well as the religious orthodoxy, that Dubois ended
up re-burying his finds under his own house, where they stayed
for the next thirty years.
Dubois had originally come to Indonesia, or the Dutch East Indies
as it was called then, in 1887 as an army doctor stationed in
Sumatra. Two years later, relieved of his medical duties, he
was able to devote full time to the study of fossils, his main
interest. Initial research began in the Sumatran caves but proved
disappointing. Then, hearing of van Rietschoten's discoveries
at Wajak, near Tulung Agung, he moved to East Java. It was here,
on the banks of the Solo River in the Ngawi region, that Dubois
dug up a child's jaw bone, a skull, and finally the female thigh
bone which was to cause all the controversy.
During the next few years excavations continued in the Ngawi
district. At Trinil a German scientist removed 10,000 cubic metres
of earth, uncovering numerous fossilized animal remains but finding
no further evidence of Java Man. At last, however, in 1931, more
human fossils were found beside the Solo River, followed up by
the discovery of a still older creature, Homo Mojokertoensis
(L.), near the town of Mojokerto. The estimated age of the latter
find was an incredible 1.9 million years.
Since then, evidence of early man has continued to be unearthed
through the co-ordinated efforts of a number of Indonesian institutions,
among them Surabaya's Airlangga University and the University
of Gajah Mada in Yogyakarta. Trinil is still an important site
and the remains of long extinct animal species are discovered
annually, often by local farmers. The more important finds are
preserved in a small museum close to the site where Eugene Dubois
made his famous discovery 100 years ago.
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