'APE MAN'S' BONES HUNTED IN JAVA BY RICH WIDOW
On The Track of Primitive Man And His Ancestor
According to a dispatch received from Holland, the Dutch Government has granted special facilities for an expedition to Java under the leadership of Mme. Selenka, widow of the famous scientist, Dr. Emil Selenka, who will continue the researches of Dr. Dubois for the elusive Pithecanthropos Erectus. The Berlin Academy of Science has voted the money necessary for the hunt, and there seems to be good reason to expect that Mme. Selenka, who has already completed some effective work of an experimental character among the anthropoid apes of Borneo, will bring the scientific world a long step nearer to the discovery that Huxley so confidently predicted.
The Island of Java is the scene selected for the projected excavations, not alone n account of the important discovery made twelve years ago, but because Java is believed to be at the centre of a submerged continent on which the first act of the human drama was supposed to have been opened.
(The New York Times, 23 December 1906, Page 2.)
(Mme. Selenka profile sketch: The Kansas City Star, 06 October 1904, Page 7.)
HUNT FOR MISSING LINK
Woman To Head Expedition To Java Next Year.
London, Dec. 9.—The Dutch Government has granted special facilities for an expedition to Java with the object of continuing the researches of Dr. Dubois for the Missing Link. The expedition will be under the leadership of Mme. Selenka, widow of the great scholar, Dr. Emil Selenka.
Dr. Dubois discovered on the banks of the Solo river in Java the remains of a creature, which he named Pithecanthropus Erectus, and which he maintained was the true missing link between man and the ape. The discovery excited much controversy, Professor Virchow especially opposing the theory of Dr. Dubois.
The Berlin Academy of Science has, however, voted a special subsidy to Mme. Selenka, who will leave Europe next year and will conduct extensive excavations on the spot where the remains were found. Mme. Selenka has had much previous experience of this kind. Some years ago she accompanied her husband to the interior of Borneo and did conspicuous experimental work with anthropoid apes. (The Baltimore Sun, 10 Dec 1906, Mon Page 10)
New York, Jan. 6. — Mme. Lenore Selenka, widow of Prof. Emil Selenka of Munich, Germany, who has spent the greater part of her life in gathering the bones of the pithecanthropus, or ape man, more popularly known as the "missing link," is one of the many scientists now gathered in this city for the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Mme. Selenka arrived here yesterday, interrupting a trip she is making to Trinit, Java after more of the bones of the pithecanthropus, and to the village of Orotava, Teneriffe, where she has established a large station for the study of the psychology of the ape.
Mme. Selenka has financed innumerable expeditions which have gone digging for the bones of the "missing link" and has headed more than one of these herself. She is firmly convinced that additional bones will be found in time and that science will some day have the opportunity of studying the pithecanthropus in its entirety instead of in sections.
Mme. Selenka spoke in high terms yesterday of the aid the Dutch government had given her in her work in Java. She said that prisoners had been turned over to her for the work of excavation, adding. --
"I studied my workers, too, and I will tell you something that may interest you. Murderers make the best diggers among criminals and thieves come next." (The Pittsburgh Press, 07 January 1917, Page 2.)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 30 December 1916, Page 3.
In 1907 Mme. Selenka went to Java and spent two years excavating for bones of the strange being whom every good Darwinian was half-way house between him and ape. The most authentic fragments of the "missing link" were found in Java by scientists 20 years ago.
"Pithecanthropus" - she would call him nothing less polysyllable - "walked upright, like any man, except that he sagged a little at the knees. We know this from the shape of the big thigh bone that was found. And because he walked upright he undoubtedly learned the use of his hands. We have found no bones of the hand, and so we cannot tell if it was the typical monkey member, with two bones in the little finger instead of three, and an inordinately long distance from the wrist to the fingers. But pithecanthropus could use it."
"Pithecanthropus probably was not white. We do not know, but the natives of Java are not now white skinned, and in prehistoric ages the island was still hot. I, myself, during my excavations, found oranges that had been turned to stone, although none grow there now."
Univ. of Nevada, Reno, Fall 2023
