October 1891

Java Man

Dubois's Trinil team uncovers the Java Man skullcap

“Java Man” arrived in pieces over nearly a year: a tooth, then a skullcap, then a surprisingly modern-looking thighbone.

October 1891, on the Solo riverbank

The excavation directed by Eugène Dubois at Trinil, on Java's Bengawan Solo River, uncovered a fossil skullcap in October 1891. It is now catalogued as Trinil 2, and Dubois reported maximum dimensions of 18.2 cm by 13.3 cm.

A rich fossil-bearing layer had been exposed along the river during the dry season, prompting the government-supported team to excavate the bank systematically.

A metre from last month's tooth

The skullcap lay about one metre from a wisdom tooth uncovered the previous month, at what the excavators recorded as precisely the same stratigraphic level.

That September molar had been the first candidate primate remain from Trinil, so October was not the start of the sequence. The femur came later still, in August 1892, and modern research disputes whether it and the skullcap came from the same individual or depositional context.

Not a missing link, not yet

Dubois initially reported the tooth and skullcap as Anthropopithecus, a chimpanzee-like anthropoid. The name Pithecanthropus erectus and the transitional “ape-man” reading came later, after the femur and further study.

Nor did Dubois dig it out himself. Army noncommissioned officers G. Kriele and A. de Winter supervised the largely unnamed colonial labourers who exposed and recovered the fossils. The skullcap was recorded in Dubois's fourth-quarter memorandum, and the rainy season then halted work until May 1892.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 2 audit passes

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What the sources leave uncertain

The month is independently supported, but the sources consulted do not establish an exact October day.
The September molar was the first candidate primate remain from Trinil, so October was the skullcap discovery—not the first fossil find of the sequence.
The molar’s attribution has subsequently been questioned, and modern research also disputes whether the later femur and skullcap came from the same individual or depositional context.