101-421: Java Man ( Homo erectus erectus , formerly also Anthropopithecus erectus or Pithecanthropus erectus ) is an early human fossil discovered in 1891 and 1892 on the island of Java (Indonesia). Estimated to be between 700,000 and 1,490,000 years old, it was, at the time of its discovery, the oldest hominid fossil ever found, and it remains the type specimen for Homo erectus . Led by Eugène Dubois ,
202-531: A be designated a subtribe of Hominini to include only the genus Homo — that is, not including the earlier upright walking hominins of the Pliocene such as Australopithecus , Orrorin tugenensis , Ardipithecus , or Sahelanthropus . Designations alternative to Hominina existed, or were offered: Australopithecinae (Gregory & Hellman 1939) and Preanthropinae (Cela-Conde & Altaba 2002); and later, Cela-Conde and Ayala (2003) proposed that
303-507: A geologist , and Alfred Russel Wallace , who thought of a similar theory of evolution around the same time as Darwin. Because both Lyell and Wallace believed that humans were more closely related to gibbons or another great ape (the orangutans ), they identified Southeast Asia as the cradle of humanity because this is where these apes lived. Dutch anatomist Eugène Dubois favored the latter theory, and sought to confirm it. In October 1887, Dubois abandoned his academic career and left for
404-524: A molar (Trinil 1) and a skullcap (Trinil 2). Its characteristics were a long cranium with a sagittal keel and heavy browridge. Dubois first gave them the name Anthropopithecus ("man-ape"), as the chimpanzee was sometimes known at the time. He chose this name because a similar tooth found in the Siwalik Hills in India in 1878 had been named Anthropopithecus , and because Dubois first assessed
505-565: A wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention . Sumatra has lost almost 50% of its tropical rainforest since 1980. Many species are now critically endangered , such as the Sumatran ground cuckoo , the Sumatran tiger , the Sumatran elephant , the Sumatran rhinoceros , and the Sumatran orangutan . Deforestation on the island has also resulted in serious seasonal smoke haze over neighbouring countries, such as
606-452: A " reworked fossil ", that is, a relatively young fossil that was deposited into an older layer after its own layer had been eroded. For this reason, there is still dissent about whether all the Trinil fossils represent the same species. Java Man was about 173 cm (5 ft 8 in) tall and his thighbones show that he walked erect like modern humans. The femur is thicker than that of
707-491: A 9.2 earthquake shook Bengkulu and Western Sumatra. Both events caused large tsunamis . Earthquakes are very common throughout the coastal area of the west and center of the island, and tsunamis are common due to the high seismicity in the area. By population, Medan is the largest city in Sumatra. Medan is also the most visited and developed city in Sumatra. Sumatra supports a wide range of vegetation types that are home to
808-607: A common ancestor. With the publication of Dmanisi skull 5 in 2013, it has become less certain that Asian H. erectus is a descendant of African H. ergaster which was in turn derived from H. habilis . Instead, H. ergaster and H. erectus appear to be variants of the same species, which may have originated in either Africa or Asia and widely dispersed throughout Eurasia (including Europe , Indonesia , China ) by 0.5 Mya. Homo erectus has often been assumed to have developed anagenetically from H. habilis from about 2 million years ago. This scenario
909-478: A few years earlier to refer to a supposed "missing link" between apes and humans. This specimen has also been known as Pithecanthropus 1. In 1927, Canadian Davidson Black identified two fossilized teeth he had found in Zhoukoudian near Beijing as belonging to an ancient human, and named his specimen Sinanthropus pekinensis , now better known as Peking Man . In December 1929, the first of several skullcaps
1010-616: A greatly expanded chest and upper body", the Trinil creature became a gigantic ape of about 100 kilograms (220 lb), but "double cephalization of the anthropoid apes in general and half that of man". It was therefore halfway on the path to becoming a modern human. As Dubois concluded his 1932 paper: "I still believe, now more firmly than ever, that the Pithecanthropus of Trinil is the real 'missing link.'" Based on Weidenreich's work and on his suggestion that Pithecanthropus erectus and Sinanthropus pekinensis were connected through
1111-466: A group of fossilized animals (a " faunal assemblage ") found nearby on the same geological horizon , which is itself compared with assemblages from other layers and classified chronologically. Ralph von Koenigswald first assigned Java Man to the Trinil Fauna , a faunal assemblage that he composed from several Javanese sites. He concluded that the skullcap was about 700,000 years old, thus dating from
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#17327766432351212-692: A juvenile skullcap known as the Mojokerto child in East Java . Considering the Mojokerto child skull cap to be closely related to humans, von Koenigswald wanted to name it Pithecanthropus modjokertensis (after Dubois's specimen), but Dubois protested that Pithecanthropus was not a human but an "ape-man". Von Koenigswald also made several discoveries in Sangiran , Central Java, where more fossils of early humans were discovered between 1936 and 1941. Among
1313-707: A kind of Neanderthal , closer to humans than the Pithecanthropus , and insisting that Pithecanthropus belonged to its own superfamily , the Pithecanthropoidea. After the discovery of Java Man, Berlin-born paleontologist G. H. R. von Koenigswald recovered several other early human fossils in Java. Between 1931 and 1933 von Koenigswald discovered fossils of Solo Man from sites along the Bengawan Solo River on Java , including several skullcaps and cranial fragments. In 1936, von Koenigswald discovered
1414-399: A maximum age of 1.49 ± 0.13 Ma, that is, 1.49 million years with a margin of error of plus or minus 130,000 years. The fossils found in Java are considered the type specimen for H. erectus . Because the fossils of Java Man were found "scattered in an alluvial deposit " – they had been laid there by the flow of a river – detractors doubted that they belonged to
1515-584: A modern human, indicating he was engaging in a lot of running. The skull was characterized by thick bones and a retreating forehead. The large teeth made the jaw large and jutting, with the lower lips overhanging the lower margin of the mandible, giving the impression of no chin. The browridges were straight and massive. At 900 cm, his cranial capacity was smaller than that of later H. erectus specimens. However, he had humanlike teeth with large canines. Judging from anatomical and archeological aspects as well as Java Man's ecological role, meat from vertebrates
1616-462: A number of scientists examine the fossils in a series of conferences held in Europe in the 1890s, they started to agree that Java Man may be a transitional form after all, but most of them thought of it as "an extinct side branch" of the human tree that had indeed descended from apes, but not evolved into humans. This interpretation eventually imposed itself and remained dominant until the 1940s. Dubois
1717-497: A possible 100,000 to 1000 individuals) occurred "around 930,000 and 813,000 years ago ... lasted for about 117,000 years and brought human ancestors close to extinction." Weiss (1984) estimated that there have been about 44 billion (short scale) members of the genus Homo from its origins to the evolution of H. erectus , about 56 billion individuals from H. erectus to the Neolithic , and another 51 billion individuals since
1818-528: A rich variety of species, including 17 endemic genera of plants. Unique species include the Sumatran pine which dominates the Sumatran tropical pine forests of the higher mountainsides in the north of the island and rainforest plants such as Rafflesia arnoldii (the world's largest individual flower), and the titan arum (the world's largest unbranched inflorescence ). The island is home to 201 mammal species and 580 bird species. There are nine endemic mammal species on mainland Sumatra and 14 more endemic to
1919-691: A series of interbreeding populations, German biologist Ernst Mayr reclassified them both as being part of the same species: Homo erectus . Mayr presented his conclusion at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium in 1950, and this resulted in Dubois's erectus species being reclassified under the genus Homo . As part of the reclassification, Mayr included not only Sinanthropus and Pithecanthropus , but also Plesianthropus , Paranthropus , Javanthropus , and several other genera as synonyms , arguing that all human ancestors were part of
2020-407: A single extant species, Homo sapiens (modern humans), along with a number of extinct species (collectively called archaic humans ) classified as either ancestral or closely related to modern humans; these include Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis . The oldest member of the genus is Homo habilis , with records of just over 2 million years ago. Homo , together with
2121-476: A single genus ( Homo ), and that "never one more than one species of man existed on the earth at any one time". A "revolution in taxonomy", Mayr's single-species approach to human evolution was quickly accepted. It shaped paleoanthropology in the 1950s and lasted into the 1970s, when the African genus Australopithecus was accepted into the human evolutionary tree . In the 1970s a tendency developed to regard
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#17327766432352222-403: A so-called " missing link ". Many disagreed. Some critics claimed that the bones were those of an upright walking ape, or that they belonged to a primitive human. This judgment made sense at a time when an evolutionary view of humanity had not yet been widely accepted, and scientists tended to view hominid fossils as racial variants of modern humans rather than as ancestral forms. After Dubois let
2323-684: A steady rise in cranial capacity is observed already in Autralopithecina and does not terminate after the emergence of Homo , so that it does not serve as an objective criterion to define the emergence of the genus. Homo habilis emerged about 2.1 Mya. Already before 2010, there were suggestions that H. habilis should not be placed in the genus Homo but rather in Australopithecus . The main reason to include H. habilis in Homo , its undisputed tool use, has become obsolete with
2424-675: A stiff economic decline as the heritage of the Srivijaya empire was superseded by the economic policy of the Singhasari and Majapahit . The Palembang sultanate experienced a terminal decline in the early 19th century. With the coming of the Dutch Empire , the many Sumatran princely states gradually fell under their control. Aceh posed major obstacles, as the Dutch were involved in the long and costly Aceh War (1873–1903). During
2525-439: A very aged female", Dubois renamed the specimen Anthropopithecus erectus . Only in late 1892, when he determined that the cranium measured about 900 cubic centimetres (55 cu in), did Dubois consider that his specimen was a transitional form between apes and humans. In 1894, he thus renamed it Pithecanthropus erectus ("upright ape-man"), borrowing the genus name Pithecanthropus from Ernst Haeckel , who had coined it
2626-495: Is also an area in the archipelago that received the spread of Islam first compared to other islands or other areas. The island of Sumatra became the first area to receive the spread of Islam because of the position of the island of Sumatra which is close to the Malacca strait. The initial process of Islamization related to trade and also the formation of the kingdom. Islam entered Sumatra through pious Arabs and Tamil traders in
2727-521: Is also used as an inter-ethnic means of communication in some parts of Aceh province. Religion in Sumatra (2023) The majority of people in Sumatra are Muslims (87.12%), while 10.69% are Christians, and less than 2.19% are Buddhists and Hindus. Sumatra is one of seven geographical regions of Indonesia , which includes its adjacent smaller islands. Sumatra was one of the eight original provinces of Indonesia between 1945 and 1948. Including adjacent archipelagoes normally included with Sumatra (such as
2828-608: Is generally accepted by archaeologists to have begun some 400,000 years ago, with claims regarding earlier evidence finding increasing scientific support. Burned wood has been found in layers that carried the Java Man fossils in Trinil , dating to around from 500,000 to 830,000 BP. However, because Central Java is a volcanic region, the charring may have resulted from natural fires, and there is no conclusive proof that Homo erectus in Java controlled fire. It has been proposed that Java Man
2929-455: Is likely that Homo sapiens (anatomically modern humans) has been the only extant species of Homo . John Edward Gray (1825) was an early advocate of classifying taxa by designating tribes and families. Wood and Richmond (2000) proposed that Hominini ("hominins") be designated as a tribe that comprised all species of early humans and pre-humans ancestral to humans back to after the chimpanzee–human last common ancestor , and that Hominin
3030-647: Is near the Andaman Islands , while off the southeastern coast lie the islands of Bangka and Belitung, Karimata Strait and the Java Sea . The Bukit Barisan mountains, which contain several active volcanoes, form the backbone of the island, while the northeastern area contains large plains and lowlands with swamps, mangrove forest and complex river systems. The equator crosses the island at its centre in West Sumatra and Riau provinces. The climate of
3131-533: Is no consensus as to which gave rise to Homo . Especially since the 2010s, the delineation of Homo in Australopithecus has become more contentious. Traditionally, the advent of Homo has been taken to coincide with the first use of stone tools (the Oldowan industry), and thus by definition with the beginning of the Lower Palaeolithic . But in 2010, evidence was presented that seems to attribute
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3232-1364: Is still highly controversial. Approximate radiation dates of daughter clades are shown in millions of years ago (Mya). Sahelanthropus and Orrorin , possibly sisters to Australopithecus , are not shown here. The naming of groupings is sometimes muddled as often certain groupings are presumed before any cladistic analysis is performed. Hylobatidae (gibbons) Ponginae (orangutans) Gorillini (gorillas) Panina (chimpanzees) Australopithecines (incl. Australopithecus , Kenyanthropus , Paranthropus , Homo ) Cladogram based on Dembo et al. (2016): Ardipithecus ramidus (†) Australopithecus anamensis s.s. (†3.8) Australopithecus afarensis (†) Australopithecus garhi (†) Australopithecus deyiremeda (†3.4) Kenyanthropus platyops (†3.3) Australopithecus africanus (†2.1) Paranthropus (†1.2) Homo habilis (†1.5) [REDACTED] Homo rudolfensis (†1.9) [REDACTED] Homo ergaster (†1.4) [REDACTED] African Homo erectus s.s. (†) [REDACTED] Asian Homo erectus s.s. (†0.1) [REDACTED] Homo antecessor [REDACTED] (†0.8) H. neanderthalensis (†0.05) [REDACTED] Denisova people (†0.05) Homo sapiens [REDACTED] Australopithecus sediba (†2.0) Homo floresiensis (†0.05) Several of
3333-525: Is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 482,286.55 km (182,812 mi. ), including adjacent islands such as the Simeulue , Nias , Mentawai , Enggano , Riau Islands , Bangka Belitung and Krakatoa archipelago . Sumatra is an elongated landmass spanning a diagonal northwest–southeast axis. The Indian Ocean borders
3434-583: Is the largest producer of Indonesian coffee . Small-holders grow Arabica coffee ( Coffea arabica ) in the highlands, while Robusta ( Coffea canephora ) is found in the lowlands. Arabica coffee from the regions of Gayo, Lintong and Sidikilang is typically processed using the Giling Basah (wet hulling) technique, which gives it a heavy body and low acidity. Sumatra is a highly seismic island. Huge earthquakes have been recorded throughout history. In 1797, an 8.9 earthquake shook Western Sumatra, and in 1833,
3535-529: The 2005 Nias–Simeulue earthquake and the 2010 Mentawai earthquake and tsunami . Lake Toba is the site of a supervolcanic eruption that occurred around 74,000 years ago, representing a climate-changing event. The most important rivers in Sumatra belong to the catchment area of the South China Sea . Heading north to south, the Asahan , Rokan , Siak , Kampar , Indragiri , Batanghari flow into
3636-404: The 2013 Southeast Asian haze which caused considerable tensions between Indonesia and affected countries Malaysia and Singapore . The widespread deforestation and other environmental destruction in Sumatra and other parts of Indonesia has often been described by academics as an ecocide . Several unconnected railway networks built during Netherlands East Indies exist in Sumatra, such as
3737-871: The Barisan Mountains in the west and swampy plains in the east. Sumatra is the closest Indonesian island to mainland Asia. To the southeast is Java , separated by the Sunda Strait . To the north is the Malay Peninsula (located on the Asian mainland), separated by the Strait of Malacca . To the east is Borneo , across the Karimata Strait . West of the island is the Indian Ocean . The Great Sumatran fault (a strike-slip fault), and
3838-768: The Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia ) to look for the fossilized ancestor of modern man. Having received no funding from the Dutch government for his eccentric endeavor – since no one at the time had ever found an early human fossil while looking for it – he joined the Dutch East Indies Army as a military surgeon. Because of his work duties, it was only in July 1888 that he began to excavate caves in Sumatra . Having quickly found abundant fossils of large mammals, Dubois
3939-621: The Homo lineages appear to have surviving progeny through introgression into other lines. Genetic evidence indicates an archaic lineage separating from the other human lineages 1.5 million years ago, perhaps H. erectus , may have interbred into the Denisovans about 55,000 years ago. Fossil evidence shows H. erectus s.s. survived at least until 117,000 yrs ago, and the even more basal H. floresiensis survived until 50,000 years ago. A 1.5-million-year H. erectus -like lineage appears to have made its way into modern humans through
4040-532: The Malacca Strait , while the island's largest river, the Musi , flows into the sea at Bangka Strait in the south. To the east, big rivers carry silt from the mountains, forming the vast lowland interspersed by swamps. Even if mostly unsuitable for farming, the area is currently of great economic importance for Indonesia. It produces oil from both above and below the soil – palm oil and petroleum . Sumatra
4141-605: The Rijksmuseum van Geologie en Mineralogie and later Naturalis in the Netherlands since 1900. Charles Darwin had argued that humanity evolved in Africa , because this is where great apes like gorillas and chimpanzees lived. Though Darwin's claims have since been vindicated by the fossil record, they were proposed without any fossil evidence. Other scientific authorities disagreed with him, like Charles Lyell ,
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4242-584: The Second World War , Japan invaded Sumatra in 1942. The Free Aceh Movement fought against Indonesian government forces in the Aceh Insurgency from 1976 to 2005. Security crackdowns in 2001 and 2002 resulted in several thousand civilian deaths. The island was heavily impacted by both the 1883 Krakatoa eruption and the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami . Sumatra’s population as of 2023 was estimated to be about 60,795,669 ; it has about
4343-577: The Sunda megathrust (a subduction zone ), run the entire length of the island along its west coast. On 26 December 2004, the western coast and islands of Sumatra, particularly Aceh province, were struck by a tsunami following the Indian Ocean earthquake . This was the longest earthquake recorded, lasting between 500 and 600 seconds (8.33–10 minutes). More than 170,000 Indonesians were killed, primarily in Aceh. Other recent earthquakes to strike Sumatra include
4444-514: The Taung child – the 2.8 million-year-old remains of an Australopithecus africanus – were discovered in South Africa in 1924, Dubois's and Koenigswald's discoveries were the oldest hominid remains ever found. Some scientists of the day suggested that Dubois's Java Man was a potential intermediate form between modern humans and the common ancestor we share with
4545-479: The 13th century. In terms of economic development the port of Banda Aceh only started to face competition in the 18th century when more ports were constructed in Sumatra for maritime transport . Nevertheless, major pepper suppliers used the port of Banda Aceh at the beginning of the 19th century. The port in Medan grew swiftly in the late 19th and early 20th century. Meanwhile the medium sized port of Palembang faced
4646-1250: The 2010 census (including Riau Islands , Bangka Belitung , Nias , Mentawai , Simeulue and islands around it) There are over 52 languages spoken, all of which (except Chinese and Tamil) belong to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family. Within Malayo-Polynesian, they are divided into several sub-branches: Chamic (which are represented by Acehnese in which its closest relatives are languages spoken by Ethnic Chams in Cambodia and Vietnam), Malayic ( Malay , Minangkabau and other closely related languages), Northwest Sumatra–Barrier Islands ( Batak languages , Gayo and others), Lampungic (includes Proper Lampung and Komering ) and Bornean (represented by Rejang in which its closest linguistic relatives are Bukar Sadong and Land Dayak spoken in West Kalimantan and Sarawak ( Malaysia )). Northwest Sumatra–Barrier Islands and Lampungic branches are endemic to
4747-477: The 6th and 7th centuries AD. At the beginning and end of the 13th century the formation of the kingdom, the king of the Samudra kingdom had converted to Islam. Marco Polo visited the island in 1292, and his fellow Italian Odoric of Pordenone in 1321. Aceh in the north of Sumatra became known in the 16th century as trading centre for the pepper trade by shipping quality piperaceae ( pepper ). Aceh became
4848-555: The Denisovans and specifically into the Papuans and aboriginal Australians. The genomes of non-sub-Saharan African humans show what appear to be numerous independent introgression events involving Neanderthal and in some cases also Denisovans around 45,000 years ago. The genetic structure of some sub-Saharan African groups seems to be indicative of introgression from a west Eurasian population some 3,000 years ago. Some evidence suggests that Australopithecus sediba could be moved to
4949-565: The Indonesian government announced a plan to protect Sumatra's remaining forests. The island includes more than 10 national parks, including three which are listed as the Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra World Heritage Site – Gunung Leuser National Park , Kerinci Seblat National Park and Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park . The Berbak National Park is one of three national parks in Indonesia listed as
5050-603: The Javanese variety of H. erectus as a subspecies, Homo erectus erectus , with the Chinese variety being referred to as Homo erectus pekinensis . Dubois's complete collection of fossils were transferred between 1895 and 1900 to what is now known as Naturalis , in Leiden in the Netherlands . The main fossil of Java Man, the skullcap cataloged as "Trinil 2", has been dated biostratigraphically , that is, by correlating it with
5151-596: The Neolithic. This provides the opportunity for an immense amount of new mutational variation to have arisen during human evolution. A separate South African species Homo gautengensis has been postulated as contemporary with H. erectus in 2010. A taxonomy of Homo within the great apes is assessed as follows, with Paranthropus and Homo emerging within Australopithecus (shown here cladistically granting Paranthropus , Kenyanthropus , and Homo ). The exact phylogeny within Australopithecus
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#17327766432355252-686: The Portuguese throughout the 16th and 17th century. When the Dutch were weakened in the 18th century the British empire began to actively intervene in Aceh, establishing close relations between Banda Aceh and Penang . In the 17th and 18th century the Aceh Sultanate battled the Siak sultanate in the south of Sumatra. The port city of Banda Aceh was recorded in European historical writings since
5353-563: The Riau Islands, Nias and the Bangka-Belitung group), it now covers ten of Indonesia's 38 provinces , which are set out below with their areas and populations. The longest axis of the island runs approximately 1,790 km (1,110 mi) northwest–southeast, crossing the equator near the centre. At its widest point, the island spans 435 km (270 mi). The interior of the island is dominated by two geographical regions:
5454-478: The Sangiran site's poor presentation and interpretation. More than 50 years after Dubois's find, Ralph von Koenigswald recollected that, "No other paleontological discovery has created such a sensation and led to such a variety of conflicting scientific opinions." The Pithecanthropus fossils were so immediately controversial that by the end of the 1890s, almost 80 publications had already discussed them. Until
5555-464: The ambiguity of classifying groups as incertae sedis (uncertain placement)—for example, H. neanderthalensis vs. H. sapiens neanderthalensis , or H. georgicus vs. H. erectus georgicus . Some recently extinct species in the genus have been discovered only lately and do not as yet have consensus binomial names (see Denisova hominin ). Since the beginning of the Holocene , it
5656-527: The beginning of the Middle Pleistocene . Though this view is still widely accepted, in the 1980s a group of Dutch paleontologists used Dubois's collection of more than 20,000 animal fossils to reassess the date of the layer in which Java Man was found. Using only fossils from Trinil, they called that new faunal assemblage the Trinil H. K. Fauna , in which H. K. stands for Haupt Knochenschicht , or "main fossil-bearing layer". This assessment dates
5757-424: The cranium to have been about 700 cubic centimetres (43 cu in), closer to apes than to humans. In August 1892, a year later, Dubois's team found a long femur (thighbone) shaped like a human one, suggesting that its owner had stood upright. The femur bone was found 50 feet (approx. 15 meters) from the original find one year earlier. Believing that the three fossils belonged to a single individual, "probably
5858-492: The decades of the 20th century, fossil finds of pre-human and early human species from late Miocene and early Pliocene times produced a rich mix for debating classifications. There is continuing debate on delineating Homo from Australopithecus —or, indeed, delineating Homo from Pan . Even so, classifying the fossils of Homo coincides with evidence of: (1) competent human bipedalism in Homo habilis inherited from
5959-460: The development of Homo close to or even past 3 Mya. This finds support in a recent phylogenetic study in hominins that by using morphological, molecular and radiometric information, dates the emergence of Homo at 3.3 Ma (4.30 – 2.56 Ma). Others have voiced doubt as to whether Homo habilis should be included in Homo , proposing an origin of Homo with Homo erectus at roughly 1.9 Mya instead. The most salient physiological development between
6060-517: The discoveries was a skullcap of similar size to that found by Dubois at the Trinil 2 site. Von Koenigswald's discoveries in Sangiran convinced him that all these skulls belonged to early humans . Dubois again refused to acknowledge the similarity. Ralph von Koenigswald and Franz Weidenreich compared the fossils from Java and Zhoukoudian and concluded that Java Man and Peking Man were closely related. Dubois died in 1940, still refusing to recognize their conclusion, and official reports remain critical of
6161-409: The discovery of Australopithecus tool use at least a million years before H. habilis . Furthermore, H. habilis was long thought to be the ancestor of the more gracile Homo ergaster ( Homo erectus ). In 2007, it was discovered that H. habilis and H. erectus coexisted for a considerable time, suggesting that H. erectus is not immediately derived from H. habilis but instead from
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#17327766432356262-495: The earlier Australopithecus of more than four million years ago, as demonstrated by the Laetoli footprints ; and (2) human tool culture having begun by 2.5 million years ago to 3 million years ago. From the late-19th to mid-20th centuries, a number of new taxonomic names, including new generic names, were proposed for early human fossils; most have since been merged with Homo in recognition that Homo erectus
6363-415: The earlier australopithecine species and Homo is the increase in endocranial volume (ECV), from about 460 cm (28 cu in) in A. garhi to 660 cm (40 cu in) in H. habilis and further to 760 cm (46 cu in) in H. erectus , 1,250 cm (76 cu in) in H. heidelbergensis and up to 1,760 cm (107 cu in) in H. neanderthalensis . However,
6464-476: The earth, the boundaries and definitions of the genus have been poorly defined and constantly in flux. Because there was no reason to think it would ever have any additional members, Carl Linnaeus did not even bother to define Homo when he first created it for humans in the 18th century. The discovery of Neanderthal brought the first addition. The genus Homo was given its taxonomic name to suggest that its member species can be classified as human. And, over
6565-412: The emergence of H. erectus , so that the evolution of H. erectus would not have been anagenetically, and H. erectus would have existed alongside H. habilis for about half a million years ( 1.9 to 1.4 million years ago ), during the early Calabrian . On 31 August 2023, researchers reported, based on genetic studies, that a human ancestor population bottleneck (from
6666-593: The excavation team uncovered a tooth , a skullcap , and a thighbone at Trinil on the banks of the Solo River in East Java . Arguing that the fossils represented the " missing link " between apes and humans, Dubois gave the species the scientific name Anthropopithecus erectus , then later renamed it Pithecanthropus erectus . The fossil aroused much controversy. Within a decade of the discovery almost eighty books or articles had been published on Dubois's finds. Despite Dubois's argument, few accepted that Java Man
6767-436: The first African exodus. There is evidence that the Java population of H. erectus lived in an ever-wet forest habitat. More specifically the environment resembled a savannah , but was likely regularly inundated ("hydromorphic savanna"). The plants found at the Trinil excavation site included grass ( Poaceae ), ferns , Ficus , and Indigofera , which are typical of lowland rainforest. The control of fire by Homo erectus
6868-677: The fossils of Java Man to between 900,000 and 1,000,000 years old. On the other hand, work published in 2014 gives a "maximum age of 0.54 ± 0.10 million years and a minimum age of 0.43 ± 0.05 million years" for Ar-Ar and luminescence dating of sediment in human-predated shell material from Trinil. Work continues on assessing the dating of this complex site. Other fossils attest to the even earlier presence of H. erectus in Java. Sangiran 2 (named after its discovery site ) may be as old as 1.66 Ma (million years). The controversial Mojokerto child , which Carl C. Swisher and Garniss Curtis once dated to 1.81 ± 0.04 Ma, has now been convincingly re-dated to
6969-505: The four genera Australopithecus , Ardipithecus , Praeanthropus , and Sahelanthropus be grouped with Homo within Hominini (sans Pan ). Several species, including Australopithecus garhi , Australopithecus sediba , Australopithecus africanus , and Australopithecus afarensis , have been proposed as the ancestor or sister of the Homo lineage. These species have morphological features that align them with Homo , but there
7070-407: The generic sense of "human being, mankind". The binomial name Homo sapiens was coined by Carl Linnaeus (1758). Names for other species of the genus were introduced from the second half of the 19th century ( H. neanderthalensis 1864, H. erectus 1892). The genus Homo has not been strictly defined, even today. Since the early human fossil record began to slowly emerge from
7171-615: The genus Paranthropus , is probably most closely related to the species Australopithecus africanus within Australopithecus . The closest living relatives of Homo are of the genus Pan ( chimpanzees and bonobos ), with the ancestors of Pan and Homo estimated to have diverged around 5.7-11 million years ago during the Late Miocene . H. erectus appeared about 2 million years ago and spread throughout Africa (debatably as another species called Homo ergaster ) and Eurasia in several migrations . The species
7272-501: The genus Homo , or placed in its own genus, due to its position with respect to e.g. H. habilis and H. floresiensis . By about 1.8 million years ago, H. erectus is present in both East Africa ( H. ergaster ) and in Western Asia ( H. georgicus ). The ancestors of Indonesian H. floresiensis may have left Africa even earlier. Homo erectus and related or derived archaic human species over
7373-427: The human evolutionary tree . To distinguish Java Man from other Homo erectus populations, some scientists began to regard it as a subspecies, Homo erectus erectus , in the 1970s. Other fossils found in the first half of the twentieth century in Java at Sangiran and Mojokerto , all older than those found by Dubois, are also considered part of the species Homo erectus . The fossils of Java Man have been housed at
7474-408: The island has also resulted in serious seasonal smoke haze over neighbouring countries, such as the 2013 Southeast Asian haze which caused considerable tensions between Indonesia and affected countries Malaysia and Singapore . The widespread deforestation and other environmental destruction in Sumatra and other parts of Indonesia has often been described by academics as an ecocide . Sumatra
7575-435: The island is tropical , hot, and humid. Lush tropical rain forest once dominated the landscape. Sumatra has a wide range of plant and animal species but has lost almost 50% of its tropical rainforest in the last 35 years. Many species are now critically endangered , such as the Sumatran ground cuckoo , the Sumatran tiger , the Sumatran elephant , the Sumatran rhinoceros , and the Sumatran orangutan . Deforestation on
7676-678: The island. Like all parts of Indonesia, Indonesian (which was based on Riau Malay) is the official language and the main lingua franca. Although Sumatra has its own local lingua franca, variants of Malay like Medan Malay and Palembang Malay are popular in North and South Sumatra, especially in urban areas. Minangkabau (Padang dialect) is popular in West Sumatra, some parts of North Sumatra, Bengkulu, Jambi and Riau (especially in Pekanbaru and areas bordered with West Sumatra ) while Acehnese
7777-643: The main commercial centre of the Aceh Sultanate and trading routes were established to the Mediterranean via the Red Sea to rival the Portuguese shipping lanes . The reign of Iskandar Muda is known as the golden age of Sumatra because he extended the cultural influence of the Aceh Sultanate to Padang and Johor . The Aceh Sultanate sustained the rivalry with the Johor sultanate , the Dutch, and
7878-457: The milestone of Kepaksian Sekala Brak in the 13th century AD with the Dalom building. At the same time, the spread of Islam in Indonesia occurred gradually and indirectly, starting from the western regions such as the Sumatra area which became the first place for the spread of Islam in the archipelago, then Java, then to the eastern regions of Indonesia, Sulawesi and Maluku. The island of Sumatra
7979-618: The name for the entire island. By the year 692 , the Melayu Kingdom was absorbed by Srivijaya . Srivijaya's influence waned in the 11th century, specifically in the year 1025, after suffering defeat at the hands of the Chola Empire in southern India By the end of the 12th century, Srivijaya had been reduced to a kingdom, and its dominant role in South Sumatra ended with the last king, Ratu Sekekhummong, who founded
8080-416: The nearby Mentawai Islands . There are about 300 freshwater fish species in Sumatra. There are 93 amphibian species in Sumatra, 21 of which are endemic to Sumatra. The Sumatran tiger , Sumatran rhinoceros , Sumatran elephant , Sumatran ground cuckoo , Sumatran orangutan and Tapanuli orangutan are all critically endangered, indicating the highest level of threat to their survival. In October 2008,
8181-563: The next 1.5 million years spread throughout Africa and Eurasia (see: Recent African origin of modern humans ). Europe is reached by about 0.5 Mya by Homo heidelbergensis . Homo neanderthalensis and H. sapiens develop after about 300 kya. Homo naledi is present in Southern Africa by 300 kya. Sumatra Sumatra ( / s ʊ ˈ m ɑː t r ə / ) is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia . It
8282-565: The northwest, west, and southwest coasts of Sumatra, with the island chain of Simeulue , Nias , Mentawai , and Enggano off the western coast. In the northeast, the narrow Strait of Malacca separates the island from the Malay Peninsula , which is an extension of the Eurasian continent. In the southeast, the narrow Sunda Strait , containing the Krakatoa Archipelago , separates Sumatra from Java . The northern tip of Sumatra
8383-416: The other great apes . The current consensus of anthropologists is that the direct ancestors of modern humans were African populations of Homo erectus ( Homo ergaster ), rather than the Asian populations of the same species exemplified by Java Man and Peking Man . Dubois first published his find in 1894. Dubois's central claim was that Pithecanthropus was a transitional form between apes and humans,
8484-503: The relationship between India and the Indonesian archipelago. In the late 13th century, Marco Polo referred to the kingdom as Samara , while his contemporary fellow Italian traveller Odoric of Pordenone used the form Sumoltra . Later in the 14th century the local form "Sumatra" became popular abroad due to the rising power of the kingdom of Samudera Pasai and the subsequent Sultanate of Aceh . From then on, subsequent European writers mostly used Sumatra or similar forms of
8585-473: The same number of inhabitants as South Africa , making it the fifth-most populous island in the world . Yet because it is such a large island, it is not densely populated: it has an average of about 126 people per km . The largest indigenous ethnic groups in Sumatra are Malays, Minangkabaus, Bataks, Acehnese, and Lampungs. Other major non-indigenous ethnic groups are Javanese , Sundanese , and Chinese . Below are 11 largest ethnic groups in Sumatra based on
8686-411: The same species, let alone the same individual. German pathologist Rudolf Virchow , for instance, argued in 1895 that the femur was that of a gibbon. Dubois had difficulty convincing his critics, because he had not attended the excavation, and could not explain specifically enough the exact location of the bones. Because the Trinil thighbone looks very much like that of a modern human, it might have been
8787-516: The so-called Southern Dispersal , beginning about 70–50,000 years ago, leading to the lasting colonisation of Eurasia and Oceania by 50,000 years ago. H. sapiens met and interbred with archaic humans in Africa and in Eurasia. Separate archaic (non- sapiens ) human species including Neanderthals are thought to have survived until around 40,000 years ago. The Latin noun homō (genitive hominis ) means "human being" or " man " in
8888-541: The tenth through thirteenth centuries, in reference to a kingdom near modern-day Banda Aceh which was the first landfall for traders. The island has also been known by other names, including Andalas or Percha Island . Scholars suggest that mention of Suwarnadwipa in the Hindu Epic the Ramayana may be a reference to Sumatra. According to experts on The Ramayana , the epic is one of the first sources to document
8989-451: The use of stone tools to Australopithecus afarensis around 3.3 million years ago, close to a million years before the first appearance of Homo . LD 350-1 , a fossil mandible fragment dated to 2.8 Mya, discovered in 2013 in Afar, Ethiopia , was described as combining "primitive traits seen in early Australopithecus with derived morphology observed in later Homo . Some authors would push
9090-583: Was a transitional form between apes and humans. Some dismissed the fossils as apes and others as modern humans , whereas many scientists considered Java Man as a primitive side branch of evolution not related to modern humans at all. In the 1930s Dubois made the claim that Pithecanthropus was built like a "giant gibbon ", a much misinterpreted attempt by Dubois to prove that it was the "missing link". Eventually, similarities between Java Man and Sinanthropus pekinensis ( Peking Man ) led Ernst Mayr to rename both Homo erectus in 1950, placing them directly in
9191-538: Was a single species with a large geographic spread of early migrations. Many such names are now regarded as " synonyms " with Homo , including Pithecanthropus , Protanthropus , Sinanthropus , Cyphanthropus , Africanthropus , Telanthropus , Atlanthropus , and Tchadanthropus . Classifying the genus Homo into species and subspecies is subject to incomplete information and remains poorly done. This has led to using common names ("Neanderthal" and "Denisovan"), even in scientific papers, to avoid trinomial names or
9292-545: Was adaptive and successful, and persisted for more than a million years before gradually diverging into new species around 500,000 years ago. Anatomically modern humans ( H. sapiens ) emerged close to 300,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa, and H. neanderthalensis emerged around the same time in Europe and Western Asia . H. sapiens dispersed from Africa in several waves , from possibly as early as 250,000 years ago, and certainly by 130,000 years ago, with
9393-441: Was aware of the use of fire, and that the frequent presence of natural fires may have allowed Java Man "opportunistic use [... that] did not create an archeologically visible pattern". Early human For other species or subspecies suggested, see below . Homo (from Latin homō 'human') is a genus of great ape (family Hominidae) that emerged from the genus Australopithecus and encompasses only
9494-478: Was bitter about this and locked the fossil up in a trunk until 1923 when he showed it to Ales Hrdlicka from the Smithsonian Institution. In response to critics who refused to accept that Java Man was a "missing link", in 1932 Dubois published a paper arguing that the Trinil bones looked like those of a "giant gibbon". Dubois's use of the phrase has been widely misinterpreted as a retraction, but it
9595-507: Was found on the same site, and it appeared similar but slightly larger than Java Man. Franz Weidenreich , who replaced Black in China after the latter's death in 1933, argued that Sinanthropus was also a transitional fossil between apes and humans, and was in fact so similar to Java's Pithecanthropus that they should both belong to the family Hominidae . Eugène Dubois categorically refused to entertain this possibility, dismissing Peking Man as
9696-413: Was intended an argument to support his claim that Pithecanthropus was a transitional form. According to Dubois, evolution occurred by leaps, and the ancestors of humanity had doubled their brain-to-body ratio on each leap. To prove that Java Man was the "missing link" between apes and humans, he therefore had to show that its brain-to-body ratio was double that of apes and half that of humans. The problem
9797-506: Was known in ancient times by the Sanskrit names of Svarṇadvīpa ('Island of Gold') and Svarṇabhūmi ('Land of Gold'), because of the gold deposits in the island's highlands . The earliest known mention of the current form "Sumatra" was in 1017, when the local king Haji Sumatrabhumi ("king of the land of Sumatra") sent an envoy to China . Arab geographers referred to the island as Lamri ( Lamuri , Lambri or Ramni ) in
9898-520: Was likely an important part of their diet. Java Man, like other Homo erectus , was probably a rare species. There is evidence that Java Man used shell tools to cut meat. Java Man's dispersal through Southeast Asia coincides with the extirpation of the giant turtle Megalochelys , possibly due to overhunting as the turtle would have been an easy, slow-moving target which could have been stored for quite some time. H. erectus arrived in Eurasia approximately 1.8 million years ago, in an event considered to be
9999-463: Was relieved of his military duties (March 1889), and the colonial government assigned two engineers and fifty convicts to help him with his excavations. After he failed to find the fossils he was looking for on Sumatra, he moved on to Java in 1890. Again assisted by convict laborers and two army corporals, Dubois began searching along the Solo River near Trinil in August 1891. His team soon excavated
10100-697: Was strengthened with the discovery of Homo erectus georgicus , early specimens of H. erectus found in the Caucasus , which seemed to exhibit transitional traits with H. habilis . As the earliest evidence for H. erectus was found outside of Africa, it was considered plausible that H. erectus developed in Eurasia and then migrated back to Africa. Based on fossils from the Koobi Fora Formation, east of Lake Turkana in Kenya, Spoor et al. (2007) argued that H. habilis may have survived beyond
10201-429: Was that Java Man's cranial capacity was 900 cubic centimeters, about two-thirds of modern humans'. Like many scientists who believed that modern humans evolved " Out of Asia ", Dubois thought that gibbons were closest to humans among the great apes. To preserve the proportions predicted by his theory of brain evolution , Dubois argued that Java Man was shaped more like a gibbon than a human. Imagined "with longer arms and
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