Java Man

Curtis, Garniss H.

ISBN 10: 0316648604 / ISBN 13: 9780316648608

Published by Little Brown & Co, 2000

About this Item

, . NB: This is a secondhand book in very good condition. See our FAQs for more information. Please note that the jacket image is indicative only. A description of our secondhand books is not always available. Please contact us if you have a question about this title.Author: Carl SwisherFormat: HardbackNumber of Pages: 256A scientific narrative of a landmark discovery, involving the fascinating adventure of the Dutch physician Eugene Dubois and his search for early humans in Java in the East Indies a century ago. There he uncovered the first fossils of our immediate ancestor, Homo erectus. A century later, the authors brought the power of the most sensitive radiosotopic dating technique to Homo erectus fossils from the same island where Dubois toiled so diligently. Their true age is almost two million years old, a million years older than anthropological theory has held, and the implications are profound. Not only does it mean that Homo erectus left Africa almost a million years earlier than was believed, indicating that it was a very different kind of animal than we thought; it also tells us that our own species, Homo sapiens, evolved rapidly and recently, in Africa. This solves anthropology's most contentious and rancorous debate, that of the origin of modern humans and the fate of the Neanderthals.

Seller Inventory # 9780316648608-SECONDHAND

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Java Man
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316648604
• ISBN 13: 9780316648608
• Binding: Hardback
• Book Type: Hardback

About this title

Synopsis

In October 1887, Dutch physician Eugene Dubois set sail for the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), in pursuit of the 'missing link' that would prove man was a descendant of the apes. Unable to gain funding for his project, Dubois joined his country's army, making time for fossil hunting in between his regular duties. His discovery of a fossilised skullcap and femur led him to the conclusion of the existence of what he called Anthropithecus erectus, more commonly known as 'Java Man'.
Dubois' find, together with subsequent discoveries, such as the 'Mojokerto child' in 1936, revolutionised conventional thinking about mankind's origin. Now recent scientific developments in the field of geochronology have turned anthropology on its head once more. Using advanced dating techniques, Carl Swisher and Garniss Curtis returned to the fossil finds of Indonesia and made an amazing discovery: the fossils were far older than had previously been thought, firm evidence that homo erectus had been in Indonesia two million years ago. The find solved the question of why it supposedly took homo erectus so long to migrate from Africa - the truth was the movement had actually occurred far earlier.
But the geochronologists did not stop there. As well as finding evidence for the existence of homo erectus in Indonesia earlier than before, they also found evidence that the species existed far more recently, as little as 30,000 years ago. And this discovery points the way to a fundamental rethink of human evolution. Rather than a steady 'sapienization' from two million years ago to the recent past, the evidence suggests that several species co-existed on Earth, including Neanderthal Man, and for whatever reason - economic competition, violent confrontation - it was homo sapiens that drive the others to extinction.

About the Author

Carl Swisher is a palaeontologist, geochronologist and a member of the Berkeley Geochronology Group at the University of California, Berkeley.