PITHECANTHROPUS TWO--Missing Link Expedition to Java-- GRH VON KOENIGSWALD, 1936-38

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Close to the Missing Link, but not quite the same thing...

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Ames Daily Tribune, 08 March 1938, Science Page.

New Java Ape-Man Almost Missing Link
BY DR. FRANK THONE, Science Service Editor in Biology

     The Missing Link, imagined by scientists as the creature halfway between man and ape, came close to actual existence in Java Ape-Man No. 2 whose skull was found recently by Dr. G. R. H. von Koenigswald, young German scientist working under the auspices of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. This second skull of Pithecanthropus erectus is estimated at about 750 cubic centimeters, in the latest study made on the new early human fossil find. This is just midway between the 1,000 of Java Ape-Man No. 1, discovered 40 years ago, and the 500 of one of the larger existing apes. 

(Photo credit: Chicago Tribune, 22 May 1938, Page 4)
     

Close to the Missing Link, but not quite the same thing, states Prof. Hans Weinert, director of the Anthropological Institute at the University of Kiel, Germany, in the scientific periodical Die Umschau. 

     The jawbone, also found by Dr. von Koenigswald, is quite definitely human. While it is the only present clew to the facial appearance of the Java ape-man, it is clew enough, in the opinion of Professor Weinert, to indicate that Pithecanthropus lacked the pronounced simian "Schnauz" (in English, "mug") which the Kiel scientist put on his model of what the Missing Link ought to look like, when he made it a few years ago. 

Near "Missing Link" 
     So the Missing Link must remain "just around the corner." But he had a very narrow squeak this time. 

     It is astonishing that the two skulls should be so different in brain capacity and yet belong to the same species. But there seems to be no way out. They were found at the same level in the gravel beds of the same river, the Solo, and the correspondence is too close in shape and arrangement of parts to allow of different classification.. There is no question in the minds of Dr. von Koenigswald and Professor Weinert that the two skulls belong together. 
     One explanation of the discrepancy might be a difference in sex. Women, being generally smaller than men, as a rule have smaller skulls and smaller brains. (Photo Credit: Chicago Tribune, 22 May 1938, Page 4.)

Sex Not Settled 

     To be sure, it has long been customary to refer to the first Pithecanthropus skull, found in 1891 by the Dutch physician Eugene Dubois, as a female. Dr. von Koenigswald now ignores this convention, and refers to the No. 1 skull as male, and to his own recently found No. 2 skull as female. These assumptions regarding the sex of both skulls, however, are by no means to be taken as settled facts. Most striking feature of the new skull, Professor Weinert declares, is the very low arch of its roof. Much flatter than the famous low brow of Ice Age Europe, the Neandertal Man, flatter even than the skulls of Peking Man, this low bony dome from Java seems to lift itself only with difficulty above the ape skull level. 

May Have Been in Europe

     There is a hint (it is hardly strong enough to be called evidence) that the Pithecanthropus race, or something resembling it, may once have existed in Europe. The jawbone which Dr. von Koenigswald dug up is very much like the famous jawbone found in a gravel pit at Mauer, near Heidelberg, in 1907... The skullcap of Pithecanthropus No. 2 was very smashed up when Dr. von Koenigswald gathered it up last August. It was in more than 40 pieces, so that months have been required to clean them all up and fit them together.

     When Dr. Dubois discovered the first Pithecanthropus skull it was commonly given a very great age. It was assigned to the geological period before the Great Ice Age-at least a million years back. Now, animal fossils associated with the two skulls in the same river gravel beds indicate that the race during the Ice Age, probably only half a million years ago at the outside.

(Photo credit: The Ogden Standard-Examiner, 19 June 1938, Page 32)

APE-MAN OF JAVA WINS CREDENCE BY DISCOVERY      

"This new skull seems to me to be smaller than the Trinil skull. If I am correct, to be determined by measurements, the skull must belong to a female, and the Trinil skull to a male and not to a female as Dubois believes. In such case Pithecanthropus would have less brain capacity than Sinathropus, indicating that Pithecanthropus was more primitive than Peking man. 

     "The study of the mandible has given a very unexpected result. Besides its more primitive teeth, the mandible agrees in general shape so well with the mandible of Heidelberg man that I am convinced there must be a close relation between them. This would place Pithecanthropus in the line of our direct ancestors.  (Reno Evening Gazette, 01 July 1938, Page 5.) 

Skull of 'Ape-Man' Discovered in Java

The "old man," the skull fragments found by Dr. von Koeningswald show, must have had a curious combination of human and pe features. His complete upper jaw was found with only two teeth missing. They were very large, heavy teeth with the incisors greatly worn, probably by gnawing on bones. 

     He had a protruding jaw, but by no means to the same degree as the great apes. In fact, reports Dr. van Koeningswald, the great progress he had made in this direction toward the appearance of modern man is surprising. The protrusion, he said, is often surpassed by that of some present-day Mongols.

(Boston Globe, 16 December 1939, Page 12.)

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University of Nevada, Reno--Fall 2023

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