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TRINIL MUSEUM
Trinil museum, 12 kilometers in the
west of Ngawi is in same direction of Soerjo monument It constitutes the complex of myth
of ancient man fossil (prehistoric men fossil) (Pithecanthropus erectus) and also fossils
of other ancient life which has been raised to the world of science by archeologist Eugene
Dubois since 1891. In Search of Java ManIn the year 1887 a young Dutchman named Eugene Dubois left the Netherlands on a ship bound for the East Indies. Born in 1858, Dubois had spent seven years studying medicine at the University of Amsterdam before taking up a teaching post there. His chief interest, however, was the evolution theory which had been proposed by Charles Darwin some years earlier. Convinced that the most likely places to find fossilized remnants of mankind's early ancestors lay in tropical zones, Dubois quit his job at the university and joined the Dutch Colonial Army as a medical officer. Arriving first in Sumatra, he was able to obtain financial support from the army and began excavating in a number of caves. Initial results, however, proved disappointing, since the fossils he discovered were too young to yield evidence of the 'missing link' for which he was searching. Then he heard news of some exciting discoveries being made by Van Rietschoten in the Wajak Mountains near Tulungagung in East Java. Moving from Sumatra, Dubois turned his attention to the region of Ngawi and in 1891 unearthed his first significant evidence, a skull cap and upper jaw molar, on the banks of Solo River at Trinil. He attributed the fossils to a type of ape which he named Anthropithecus. But eleven months later, in August 1892, he discovered a femur on the same lavel as the previous year's finds, which appeared to prove that he creature had walked upright. As a result, Dubois concluded that what he had found was an 'upright walking ape man', which he named pithecanthropus erectus". The article which Dubois was to publish in 1894, claiming that pethecanthropus was a distant ancestor of modern man and had lived almost a million years ago, caused such an outcry among the scientific community as well as the religious orthodoxy that he ended up re-burying his discoveries under his own house, where they remained for the next thirty years. Excavation at Trinil continued through the first decades of this century, but no further supporting evidence came to light. In 1931, however, the significance of Dubois initial discoveries became known when more skull fragments were found at Ngandong, which also lay on the Solo River. Similar fossils were uncovered at nearby Sangiran. In 1936 the remains of a man-like creature were found at Mojokerto and proved to be the earliest yet discovered; the estimated age was an incredible 1.9 million years. 'Java Man' could no longer be ignored. Despite its historical significance, Trinil had nothing to offer interested visitors until the nineteen sixties, when a local farmer named Wirodiharjo built a small house near the original excavation site and began to build up a small collection of fossils, which have continued to be discovered annually by villagers who come to bathe in the river. Wirodiharjo's efforts were rewarded in 1980 when his collection came to the attention of the government and a small museum was built, Wirodiharjo himself becoming honorary keeper. Now (1991), exactly one hundred years since
Eugene Dubois unearthed the fossil skull of pethecanthropus, a new museum has been
constructed. On view are numerous fossilized animal remains, the proze exhibits being a
three metre long mammoth's tusk and an enormous pair of prehistoric buffalo horns. The
museum also preserves some of Eugene Dubois original documents and photographs, as well as
exact replicas of the original skull, molar and femur of pithecanthropus erectus. |
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Further
information will be provided as soon as possible.
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