Homo erectus reaches Java

Homo erectus was the first human species to spread across Asia, and the island of Java, in what is now Indonesia, holds some of the longest-lasting evidence of it. In 1891 the Dutch doctor Eugène Dubois found a skullcap at Trinil, followed by a thigh bone, and named the creature Pithecanthropus erectus, 'upright ape-man'; it became known as Java Man. Later finds at Sangiran, Sambungmacan and Ngandong added many more fossils. The oldest well-dated remains from Sangiran are about 1.3 million years old, though some researchers argue for ages near 1.8 million years at other sites, and that remains debated.

At the time, sea level was much lower during glacial periods, and Java was connected to the Asian mainland as part of a land called Sundaland, so Homo erectus could have walked there from the mainland, building on earlier migrations out of Africa. The species then persisted on the island for more than a million years; the latest Ngandong fossils were dated in 2020 to roughly 117,000 to 108,000 years ago, making them among the last known Homo erectus anywhere. Dubois's find was the first fossil of an early human discovered outside Europe, and it helped persuade scientists that human origins could be traced through fossils.