🔬 Discovery

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)
🕸️ View in the graph

Built on

📄 Original publication

Discovery of an Additional Pithecanthropus SkullG. H. R. VON KOENIGSWALD, FRANZ WEIDENREICH · Nature · 1938

Links

Sources✓ verified 2026-10-09