The Fossil Record and the Emergence of Modern Man

Abstract

When Charles Darwin wrote the “Descent of Man” (1871) there was no evidence that an ape-like hominid ancestor had preceded us on earth. Human fossils had been discovered in Europe since 1848, but these forms, though somewhat primitive-looking, closeley resembled modern man, and were not a proof in favour of Darwin’s postulates. Darwin, however, never expected to find the ape-like human ancestor in the European continent, but in Africa. He had clearly recognized that the great apes were man’s closest living relatives, and among them he noticed that the African apes, e.g., the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and the gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) were closer to man than was the orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus), the only great ape of Asian origin. He therefore predicted that man’s origin would one day be traced in the tropical forest regions of Africa, where the African great apes now dwell. In the last century, however, there were opinions in favour of the Asian origin of man. Ernst Haeckel in his “Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte”.(1868) proposed that man could have also originated in South East Asia, an idea which later influenced Dubois to search for fossils in East Java. It was precisely Dubois who in 1891–1894 discovered for the first time the remains of an ape-like hominid which he called “the erect walking ape-man of Java”, or Pithecantropus erectus. This initial discovery was soon followed by subsequent expeditions to East Java, and by 1909 remains from 11 specimens of Pithecantropus erectus had been found there (Jacob, 1973).