Early Man in Java

Abstract

DETAILS of the discovery of another new type of man in Java a few months ago have now been published, as is noted by Prof. Elliot Smith in a letter to the Times of June 3. The discovery was made by Mr. C. Ter Haar, and the remains and circumstances of discovery are described by Mr. F. F. Oppenoorth, of the Geological Survey of Java, in the official publication of the Survey, issued at Batavia. In the course of the examination of the pliocene and pleistocene deposits of the Solo River valley, the greater part of a brain-case and two fragments of a second were found in a bone bed at Ngandong, more than twenty miles from Trinil, where Dr. Dubois found the remains of Pithecanthropus erectus in 1891. The fossil bones of fauna associated with the Ngandong find point to a mid-pleistocene age. The brain-case is described as of a more advanced type than Pithecanthropus, and to resemble more nearly Neanderthal man and the Rhodesian skull. It is, however, definitely more primitive than either and probably more ancient. The name suggested for this new species of the human family is Homo soloensis.