The similarity between the fossil fauna of Indonesia and that found in India
also made Dubois suspect the existence of fossil humans in the Dutch colony.
After failing in his petition for funds from the Dutch state, he applied for and
obtained a post as medical oYcer in Sumatra. He started his research in 1888
in his free time. Despite his initial poor results, he immediately resolved to
publish,Wnishing hisWrst article with a patriotic call: ‘Will the Netherlands’,—
he exclaimed—‘which has done so much for the natural sciences of the East
Indies colonies, remain indiVerent where such important questions are con-
cerned, while the road to their solutions has been shown?’ (in Swisher IIIet al.
2000: 62). His heartfelt cry to science and national pride worked. He was
relieved of his duties and assigned two engineers andWfteen forced labourers.
Dubois moved to Java in 1891 where he foundWrst a tooth and, a month later,
a skull, and then, in the campaign of 1892, a femur. He classiWed the remains
as a new species, calling itPithecanthropus erectus, the erect ape-man. Apart
from Haeckel and a couple of other specialists, hisWnding was not accepted.
Interestingly, national traditions aVected the criticisms Dubois received:
whereas British anthropologists favoured the notion that the skull was
human, German scholars (Vichow included) 6 deWned it as belonging to an
ape (Swisher IIIet al. 2000: 69).
Dubois’Weldwork was followed in 1906–8 by a German team led by Margar-
ethe Leonore Selenka (1860–1922). The expedition undertook an extensive
palaeoanthropological excavation on the opposite side of the river from Dubois’
Trinil fossils (Tanudirjo 1995: 67). This expedition had originally been organized
by Margarethe’s late husband, the Munich Professor Emil Selenka (1842–1902),
but his death prompted her to take over. Margarethe Selenka, known for her
involvement in the Women’s Rights and Peace movement (Ka ̈tzel 2001), led a
team of seventeen specialists. In the bulky scientiWcreportproducedin1911the
evidence presented contradicted Dubois’Wndings. It was claimed that Dubois
had overestimated the chronology of the stratum where the Pithecanthropus
fossils had been found. It is interesting to note that while national pride had
prompted the authorities toWnance Dubois and the scholarly communities to be
organized along national lines, the sponsorship for Selenka’s research was only
possible because German colonial interest in neighbouring Micronesia was at its
height.
6 Rudolf Virchow had once been Ernst Haeckel’s tutor. He was not opposed to Darwinism,
but was very cautious about rushing interpretations. HeWrst argued that there was a lack of data
regarding missing links or modern human ancestors. When Neanderthals were discovered, he
maintained that the diVerences could be explained by a range of pathologies. Then, when two
fragments of Pithecanthropus, a femur and a skullcap, were discovered by the Dutch E. Dubois,
Virchow claimed that theWrst remains were of a human deformed by pathologies and the
second belonged to a giant gibbon (Ackerknecht 1953 (1981): 200–3).
302 Colonial Archaeology