Creationist Arguments: Java Man
http://earth.ics.uci.edu:8080/faqs/homs/a_java.html
Many creationists have claimed that Java Man, discovered by Eugene Dubois in
1893, was "bad science". Gish (1985) says that Dubois found two human skulls
at nearby Wadjak at the same level and had kept them secret; that Dubois
later decided Java Man was a giant gibbon; and that the bones do not come
from the same individual.

Most people would find Gish's meaning of "nearby" surprising: the Wadjak
skulls were found 65 miles of mountainous countryside away from Java Man.
Similarly for "at the same level": the Wadjak skulls were found in cave
deposits in the mountains, while Java Man was found in river deposits in a
flood plain (Fezer, 1993). Nor is it true, as is often claimed, that Dubois
kept the existence of the Wadjak skulls secret because knowledge of them
would have discredited Java Man. Dubois briefly reported the Wadjak skulls
in three separate publications in 1890 and 1892. Despite being corrected on
this in a debate in 1982 and in print (Brace, 1986), Gish has continued to
make this claim, even stating, despite not having apparently read Dubois'
reports, that they did not mention the Wadjak skulls (Fezer, 1993).

Lubenow does acknowledge the existence of Dubois' papers, but argues that
since they were bureaucratic reports not intended for the public or the
scientific community, Dubois was still guilty of concealing the existence of
the Wadjak skulls. This is also incorrect; the journals in which Dubois
published, although obscure, were distributed in Europe and America, and are
part of the scientific literature. They are available in major libraries and
have often been referred to by later researchers (Brace, 1996:pers.comm.).

Based on his own theories about how brains had evolved and wishful thinking,
Dubois did claim that Java Man was "a gigantic genus allied to the gibbons",
but this was not, as creationists imply, a retraction of his earlier claims
that it was an intermediate between apes and humans. Dubois also pointed out
that it was bipedal and that its brain size was "very much too large for an
anthropoid ape", and he never stopped believing that he had found an
ancestor of modern man (Theunissen, 1989; Gould, 1993; Lubenow, 1992).

Creationists are right about one thing. Most modern scientists agree that
the femur is more recent than the skullcap, belonging to a modern human.
Some of the teeth found nearby are now thought to be from an orang-utan,
rather than Homo erectus.

It is instructive to listen to Gish (1993) expounding on the apelike
qualities of the skullcap:

     "Now we see that the skullcap is very apelike; notice that it has
     no forehead, it's very flat, very typical of the ape. Notice the
     massive eyebrow ridges, very typical of the ape".

Despite this, the skullcap definitely does not belong to any ape, and
especially not to a gibbon. It is far too large (940 cc, compared to 97 cc
for a gibbon), and it is similar to many other Homo erectus fossils that
have been found. One of these is Sangiran 17, also found on Java. This
skull, which is never mentioned by creationists, is an almost complete
cranium and is clearly human, albeit primitive. Others are the Turkana Boy
and ER 3733 fossils, both of which creationists recognize as human.

If one is trying to pigeonhole Java Man as either an ape or a human, calling
it a human is easily the best choice, but Lubenow (1992) seems to be the
only creationist who has done so. However he attempts to disqualify Java Man
as a primitive human by using faunal evidence to show that it is the same
age as the Wadjak skulls. Lubenow gives the following quote from Hooijer
(1951):

     "Tapirus indicus, supposedly extinct in Java since the Middle
     Pleistocene, proved to be represented in the Dubois collection
     from the Wadjak site, central Java, which is late - if not post -
     Pleistocene in age."

Lubenow is saying that since this species of tapir was found in both the
Trinil [the site where Java Man was found] and Wadjak faunas, these fossils
may be of the same age. This conclusion is reinforced by three other quotes
from Hooijer, all of which describe difficulties in using faunal methods to
date Javan fossils. Lubenow's argument fails for a number of reasons.

Even if faunal methods were completely invalid, it would not constitute
evidence that Wadjak Man and Java Man were the same age. The most that could
be claimed was that the ages of both were unknown. However Hooijer never
said that the faunal methods were useless, or that the Wadjak and Trinil
faunas were the same.

By far the simplest resolution of the tapir discrepancy is, as Hooijer
stated, that Tapirus indicus survived longer than previously thought on Java
(Lubenow does admit this possibility). This is consistent with the rest of
the evidence. The Wadjak fauna is modern, and hence Wadjak Man is considered
to be less than 50,000 years old, and more probably about 10,000 years old.
The Trinil fauna contains many more extinct species, and is hence older.

Basically, Lubenow argues that Wadjak Man and Java Man are the same age
because a single species of tapir is in both faunas, ignoring that there are
many other species not shared between the faunas, and that the extinct
species are exclusively in the Trinil fauna.

Lubenow claims that Dubois concealed the Wadjak fossils because the
discrepancy of the tapir would have contradicted his claim that Java Man was
far older than Wadjak. This seems implausible because Dubois was one of the
earliest collectors in Java, and detailed information on the Javan faunas
was not compiled until decades later (Hooijer, 1951).

Incidentally, the tapir was probably not singled out for mention by Hooijer
because it is an anomaly, as Lubenow seems to suspect. It was probably of
interest because this species of tapir is still living in South East Asia,
and is not, as Lubenow states, extinct. (Hooijer only stated that it was
extinct in Java, not elsewhere.)

Parker (Morris and Parker, 1982) expresses puzzlement that Johanson (1981)
considers Java Man to be a valid fossil. It is of course a valid fossil
because the skullcap had to belong to something, but Parker merely dismisses
it as "bad science". (He seems to be of the opinion that it was an ape, but
does not say so explicitly.)
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