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Forty years after he discovered Java �man,� Eugene Dubois conceded that it was not a man, but was similar to a large gibbon (an ape). In citing evidence to support this new conclusion, Dubois admitted that he had withheld parts of four other thighbones of apes found in the same area (h).

h. Java man consisted of two bones found about 39 feet apart: a skullcap and femur (thighbone). Rudolf Virchow, the famous German pathologist, believed that the femur was from a gibbon. By concurring, Dubois supported his own non-Darwinian theory of evolution�a theory too complex and strange to discuss here.

Whether or not the bones were from a large-brained gibbon, a hominid, another animal, or two completely different animals is not the only issue. This episode shows how easily the person who knew the bones best could shift his interpretation from Java �man� to Java �gibbon.� Even after more finds were made at other sites in Java, the total evidence was so fragmentary that many interpretations were possible.

�Pithecanthropus [Java man] was not a man, but a gigantic genus allied to the Gibbons, superior to its near relatives on account of its exceedingly large brain volume, and distinguished at the same time by its erect attitude.� Eugene Dubois, �On the Fossil Human Skulls Recently Discovered in Java and Pithecanthropus Erectus,� Man, Vol. 37, January 1937, p. 4.

�Thus the evidence given by those five new thigh bones of the morphological and functional distinctness of Pithecanthropus erectus furnishes proof, at the same time, of its close affinity with the gibbon group of anthropoid apes.� Ibid., p. 5.

�The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity ... A striking example, which has only recently come to light, is the alteration of the Piltdown skull so that it could be used as evidence for the descent of man from the apes; but even before this a similar instance of tinkering with evidence was finally revealed by the discoverer of Pithecanthropus [Java man], who admitted, many years after his sensational report, that he had found in the same deposits bones that are definitely human.� W. R. Thompson, p. 17.

W. R. Thompson, in his �Introduction to The Origin of Species� by Charles Darwin, refers to Dubois� discovery in November 1890 of part of a lower jaw containing the stump of a tooth. This was found at Kedung-Brubus (also spelled Kedeong Broboes), 25 miles east of his find of Java �man� at Trinil, eleven months later. Dubois was confident it was a human jaw of Tertiary age. [See Herbert Wendt, In Search of Adam (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishers, 1955), pp. 293�294.] Dubois� claims of finding �the missing link� would probably have been ignored if he had mentioned this jaw. Similar, but less convincing, charges have been made against Dubois concerning his finding of obvious human skulls at Wadjak, 60 miles from Trinil.

C. L. Brace and Ashley Montagu, Human Evolution, 2nd edition (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1977), p. 204.

Patrick O�Connell, Science of Today and the Problems of Genesis, 2nd edition (Roseburg, Oregon: self-published, 1969), pp. 139�142.