Sangiran site (Von Koenigswald's Pithecanthropus)
Yacimiento de Sangiran (Pithecanthropus de Von Koenigswald)
- Date
- 1934-1941 · confidence high
- Place
- Sangiran, Sragen, Central Java, Indonesia
- Credited to
- Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald
- People
- 👤 Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald1902–1982
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Between 1934 and 1941 the palaeontologist Von Koenigswald found Homo erectus fossils in the Sangiran dome that expanded Dubois's finds. The site holds about half of the known fossils of the species and a sequence of over a million years.
The Mojokerto child (1936) and the Sangiran 2 and 17 skulls belong to the same programme; absolute dates for the basal levels (c. 1.5-1.3 Ma) have been revised several times.
What it led to
- a Homo erectus sequence in Java spanning over a million years
- hominin fossils used in the debate on human evolution in Asia
- Sangiran as a World Heritage Site (1996)