2. Finding Homo Erectus
After wasting a lot of time in Sumatra and catching malaria for his troubles, Dubois loaded up his family and moved to Java. As he settled into his new home he bought a large, ugly stork that liked to walk around in a stately manner and peer down its long beak at everything. Dubois called it the “Adjutant” because it reminded him of a pompous colonel in Batavia.[1]
With the blessings of the bird, Dubois spent the years 1890 through 1892 excavating in Java, and he and his men were able to find the fossils of what would later be classified as “Homo erectus.” The find site delivered up some teeth, part of a jaw, a skullcap, and a thigh bone that was found 49 feet away from the skullcap [“about 15 metres,” said Dubois in 1892].
Dubois made it a point to associate the thigh bone with the rest of the finds: “Taking this view of the thigh bone, one can say with absolute certainty that Anthropopithecus of Java stood upright and moved like a human.”[2] Additionally, Dubois said, “The Javanese Anthropopithecus, which in its skull is more human than any other known anthropoid ape, already had an upright, erect posture, which has always been considered to be the exclusive privilege of humans. Thus this ancient Pleistocene ape from our island is the first known transitional form linking Man more closely with his next of kin among the mammals.”[3]
Now here is something I find to be very odd. Dubois originally measured the cranial capacity of the skull as 700 cc, which is close to the brain capacity of gorillas, about 650 cc. Thus, by taking the “modern”-looking thighbone and correlating it to the skull, Dubois seemed halfway home in realizing his desire to find the “missing link.”
I have it on good authority, however, that the Adjutant played no small part in convincing Dubois to make other plans. The stork sagely advised Dubois that he had “flubbed it.” That is, he may have said that, for the stork failed to preserve his notes, and we are left with surmises as to what his exact words were. I therefore cannot stress enough just how important it is for researchers to make detailed recordings of their work in the field, and to publish it as soon as practically possible. It is a great disservice to science to neglect this duty.
Here is what happened from what I’ve been able to discover. Dubois rechecked his calculations, and suddenly realized he had made a mistake in his measurements. After gaining a greater understanding of how to measure cranial capacity, he re-measured the skull of Homo erectus, and found it to have a cranial capacity of 1000 cc―a 300 cc difference! It’s a capacity considerably larger than any known ape’s by a long shot. Now here is the interesting question: Did this change of measurement lead to a change of mind regarding the “missing link” status of Homo erectus? Oh, no, not at all. In revising his measurement of the cranial capacity of Homo erectus, Dubois wrote: “The brain of this transitional form was considerably larger than one would gather from the report . . . nearly 1000 cc.”
Shipman, relaying Dubois’s thought processes, says, “This Javan skull was comparable in brain size to some human races, like the Andaman Islanders or the Australian Aborines.” Further, “This fact tipped the balance of the creature from ape to . . . almost human. This had to be [sic] something very like the missing link: an upright-walking ape with a brain as big as some humans.”[4]
You see, Dubois had formulated his initial viewpoint of Homo erectus as half-ape, half-man on the basis of a wildly erroneous measurement of the cranial capacity of Homo erectus. Now when he realized his error, he, of course, sought advice from the stork. “Dubois,” said the Adjutant, “this new data, as you call it, does not falsify your earlier view. No, it marvelously confirms it. Your half-ape, half man, which you call Anthropo-something or other, may have a cranial capacity comparable to some modern humans, but it’s still a half-ape, half-man missing link. You take my word for it, Dubois, this new data, as you call it, will go along fine. You just touch it up and get it to hopping, and it’ll jump down the road and plop itself right where it’s supposed to be. You take that as the truth Herr Doctor. You just let it go, and you’ll see the results go your way.”
So Dubois listened to the stork’s advice, at least as far as we can determine, and things haven’t been the same since. Dubois started with the theory that Homo erectus was an ape-man, and ended up with the new and improved theory that Homo erectus was an ape-man. Thus does science correct itself.
Let not the ignorant and the doubters mock, for this is the power and the magic of Darwinism―a theory in which even failures, frauds, and falsifications can become confirmations of the theory. It took me some time to write that sentence and to find the words beginning with “f”, so the reader will please be kind enough to stop and admire it for a moment before moving on to other attractions.
Dubois also had a personal motivation. Many thought he had gone off on a fool’s errand and the finding of the “missing link” would vindicate him against all the doubts of the naysayers. When he found Homo erectus, Shipman has him saying, “But I have it, Anna [his longsuffering wife], I have found the missing link. Everyone will see now; everyone will understand I am not just a crazy man who ran off to the Indies in search of an idea.”[5]
As Dubois informed scientists and the public of his discoveries, some of them objected to the association of the thigh bone with the skull. An early critic was P.A. Daum, publisher and editor of an opposition newspaper. Writing in 1892 he said, “I fear . . . that this time the Darwinian outlook of the esteemed Mr. Dubois has played a trick on him, a danger that an impartial observer would have escaped.” He then went on to relate what Dubois had found (based on reports published by Dubois) but questioned the association of the skull, teeth, and leg bone. “A non-Darwinist would scratch himself through his fur before he would propose a genetic link between the monkey skull and the monkey molar and the femur, which has a close speaking acquaintance with a human femur. Not so the esteemed Mr. Dubois.”[6]
Daum’s misunderstanding of the nature of the skull and teeth is not the important thing. What’s important is that Daum was one of the first to question any linkage between the skull and the human femur (leg bone). He continued: “No, I am afraid that the esteemed Mr. Dubois, prejudiced because he has completely swallowed Darwinism, has gone too far, and has constructed a connection between the human femur and the monkey skull and molar where none has ever existed.”
Daum thought that a volcanic eruption had killed humans along with the “monkey” and other animals. He then recommended an impartial viewing of the facts by experts before the government put its stamp of approval on Dubois’s report. He signed his article as “Homo erectus”! Dubois liked the joke, but criticized Daum (rightly) for thinking the skull belonged to a monkey. He then fell into what would become a familiar dogmatic insistence that the human femur must be associated with the skull. “When there is only a handful of fossil primates in all of Asia, I have the good fortune to find a site with three species, one of which has left only its head, one its leg, and one its tooth.”[7]
But Daum was not the last critic. A little later Pieter Vincent van Stein Callenfels challenged the correlation between the leg bone and the skull, criticized Dubois’s handling of the excavations, and doubted that Dubois had ever found the missing link.[8] In addition, G. H. R. von Koenigswald also challenged Dubois’s view of his Trinil finds, but as Shipman comments “Dubois admitted no correct opinion on matters Javanese except his own.”[9] However, in 1937 Koenigswald attended a major scientific conference in Philadelphia (which Dubois could not attend) and restated the view that the leg bone belonged to a different individual, and even asserted that the Homo erectus skull cap was from a Neanderthal.[10]
From 1931 to 1933, Koenigswald (and W. F. F. Oppenoorth) had found more fossil skulls in Java, close to where Homo erectus had been found. One of the skulls (Skull V) had large browridges, the sort one finds in Homo erectus and Neanderthal Man, but also a cranial capacity of 1300 cc.[11] In addition, Koenigswald found a new skull at Modjokerto, Java, which has been named the Modjokerto Boy, and thought it was another Homo erectus. Dubois dismissed the find and claimed it was as a real human child of the “Wadjak” race, not an example of Homo erectus.[12]
Dubois’s response to Koenigswald was fairly typical. He could never give up his idée fixe, that his Java Man was old Haeckel’s imaginary half ape, half man. Even when other fossils of the same type were found, Dubois resisted the comparison. And though he had seen the Spy Neanderthal skulls first hand, and saw the similarity, he refused to relate the two types. Java Man had to stay by itself, such was Dubois’s desire to retain his status as the finder of the Missing Link. Anything else would undermine his lifelong worship of both the Darwinist creed, and more importantly, his own ego.
To his dying day, Dubois continued to make comparisons of his Homo erectus skull with the skull of a gibbon so as to maintain the uniqueness of his find. Many thought he actually went back on his former beliefs about the skull being transitional, and adopted the view that it was in fact a gibbon. This is not what he did, but Dubois is to blame for leaving this impression, so eager was he to differentiate his “missing link” from all other fossils of Homo erectus, such as Peking Man, and other finds in Java.
“[Dubois’s] P.e.” says Shipman, “was losing some of her uniqueness. He tried steadfastly to maintain her ‘missing link’ position, emphasizing the primitive, even apelike features [sic] of her anatomy. In 1935, Dubois published a paper entitled ‘On the Gibbonlike Appearance of Pithecanthropus erectus’, an astonishing move for the man who had so vehemently fought Virchow’s early suggestion that P.e. was naught but a big gibbon. But now things were different and he needed to emphasize the gibbonoid features of P.e. to make sure that P.e. remained distinct from Sinanthropus [Peking Man]. His fossil was apelike. . . . He added his morphological observations to the results of his research into the proportions of brain weight and body weight. . . . Once again, the calculations reinforced Dubois’s main conviction: Pithecanthropus was an apeman. . . .”[13]
The calculations turned out to be misleading, as Gould would point out: “Dubois never said that Pithecanthropus was a gibbon . . . ; rather, he reconstructed Java Man with the proportions of a gibbon in order to inflate the body weight and transform his beloved creature into a direct human ancestor―its highest possible status―under his curious theory of evolution.”
Dubois had wasted away much of his later scientific life by a) chasing skirts, and b) making overlong efforts to understand the correlation between brain and body weight. The pro-Darwinist TalkOrigins website says this of Dubois’s efforts:
“He eventually came up with a complicated scheme in which all animals had a certain degree of encephalization, which increased in jumps of two (so humans were 1, apes were 1/4, cats and dogs were 1/8, etc.). It was a pioneering approach, but Dubois’ results were hopelessly flawed, based on a small amount of real data and a large amount of speculation and special pleading. Under this scheme, Java Man, especially if reconstructed with gibbon-like body proportions, had an index of 1/2, which placed it nicely in the gap between apes and humans.”[14]
Hah! “Small amount of real data and a large amount of speculation.” That’s a phrase that could very well sum up just about everything said by Darwinists.
Now, here is what I think really happened in Java. Our Homo erectus friend needed a leg, and she borrowed one from a “modern” man while he was preoccupied with his business concerns. Latterly, when the man had closed up his shop, he noticed the departed member and was not pleased about it. He made inquiries, and it was not long before he found Homo erectus and convinced the latter to return payment on the leg. Homo erectus did so, but the interest was prohibitive, consisting of most of her body parts, and during the meeting with the “modern” man, she died of undercapitalization. And so, Dubois, prying into matters that were really none of his business, came along and found the result. I got this story from the stork, who was always full of useful information of that sort, so there is no reason outside of prejudice to doubt its veracity.
Dubois always resisted the idea that Homo erectus was a type of Neanderthal. Nevertheless, when it came to describing Peking Man (now recognized today as part of the Homo erectus family), Dubois said: “The shape and the major features of the Sinanthropus [Peking] skull, on the contrary, are those of a full-grown male Neanderthaler. . . . It is difficult to estimate the capacity of this very incomplete cranium; however, 1150 cc will probably not be too high an estimate. In proportion to such a female capacity a normal adult male of the same race should have about 1300 cc capacity.”[15] He went on: “I may express my opinion that the adolescent Sinanthropus is a human male, belonging to the Neanderthal group of mankind. . . .”[16]
This is an interesting point, for creationists maintain that Homo erectus (of which Peking Man is certainly a member) was only a smaller version of Neanderthal Man. Since Neanderthal Man is now regarded as fully human, there does not seem to be any reason why we cannot jettison the homo erectus moniker and speak instead of homo sapiens erectus.[17]
In any case, when we look at all of Dubois’s work and his discoveries, it is remarkable that on the basis of so little data, Dubois could actually believe he had proof for such an enormous metaphysical claim as that man evolved from ape-like creatures. The enormity of this doctrine is breathtaking in its implications, even if it is altogether ho hum in its evidential foundations. Dubois was nothing if not a man of great faith―strong enough to move mount―I mean dirt, strong enough to move dirt, lots and lots of it. Or at least it looked like dirt.
[1] Shipman, The Man Who Found the Missing Link, p. 140.
[2] Shipman, p. 185.
[3] Shipman, p. 186.
[4] Shipman, p. 187.
[5] Shipman, pp. 189-190.
[6] Shipman, p. 198.
[7] Shipman, p. 199.
[8] Shipman, pp. 471, 472.
[9] Shipman, p. 473.
[10] Shipman, p. 475.
[11] Shipman, p. 458.
[12] Shipman, p. 467.
[13] Shipman, pp. 460-461.
[14] http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/edubois.html; citing Gould, S.J., “Men of the thirty-third division,” Eight Little Piggies, New York: W.W.Norton, 1993, pp. 124-37.
[15] Shipman, p. 459; emphasis added.
[16] Shipman, p. 460; emphasis added.
[17] At one time, creationists doubted the human status of Homo erectus, but since at least 1994 have now generally accepted it. See, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/tj/v8/n1/erectus. With the discovery of the Turkana Boy in 1984, it can no longer be denied that Homo erectus was human: “[A]ffinities with both archaic sapiens and Neanderthal sapiens are so strong that it can hardly be denied that all are closely related human beings.”
