A dome of uplifted and eroded ground about 7 by 8 kilometres in the Solo river valley of central Java, 15 kilometres north of Surakarta, cut open by erosion so that the fossil-bearing beds inside are exposed at the surface. A UNESCO assessment put it alongside Zhoukoudian, Willandra Lakes, Olduvai Gorge and Sterkfontein as one of the most important places in the world for the study of fossil man, and more productive than any of them. Eugene Dubois worked here in 1883, found little, and moved to Trinil where he made his name. Ralph von Koenigswald returned in 1934 and the excavations that followed produced Homo erectus fossils, then around sixty more hominin finds including the disputed Meganthropus material. The site museum stands on the dome itself.
Homo erectus, the Java Man country · Pleistocene
This ground is protected. Photograph it, record it, leave it where it lies. On US federal land the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act 2009 makes collecting vertebrate fossils an offence, and penalties are real.
Indonesia
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