Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's most populous island, home to approximately 56% of the Indonesian population. Indonesia's capital city, Jakarta, is on Java's northwestern coast.
Marie Eugène François Thomas Dubois was a Dutch paleoanthropologist and geologist. He earned worldwide fame for his discovery of Pithecanthropus erectus, or "Java Man". Although hominid fossils had been found and studied before, Dubois was the first anthropologist to embark upon a purposeful search for them.
Meganthropus is an extinct genus of non-hominin hominid ape, known from the Pleistocene of Indonesia. It is known from a series of large jaw and skull fragments found at the Sangiran site near Surakarta in Central Java, Indonesia, alongside several isolated teeth. The genus has a long and convoluted taxonomic history. The original fossils were ascribed to a new species, Meganthropus palaeojavanicus, and for a long time was considered invalid, with the genus name being used as an informal name for the fossils.
Solo Man is a subspecies of H. erectus that lived along the Solo River in Java, Indonesia, about 117,000 to 108,000 years ago in the Late Pleistocene. This population is the last known record of the species. It is known from 14 skullcaps, two tibiae, and a piece of the pelvis excavated near the village of Ngandong, and possibly three skulls from Sambungmacan and a skull from Ngawi depending on classification. The Ngandong site was first excavated from 1931 to 1933 under the direction of Willem Frederik Florus Oppenoorth, Carel ter Haar, and Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald, but further study was set back by the Great Depression, World War II and the Indonesian War of Independence. In accordance with historical race concepts, Indonesian H. erectus subspecies were originally classified as the direct ancestors of Aboriginal Australians, but Solo Man is now thought to have no living descendants because the remains far predate modern human immigration into the area, which began roughly 55,000 to 50,000 years ago.
Central Java is a province of Indonesia, located in the middle of the island of Java. Its administrative capital is Semarang. It is bordered by West Java in the west, the Indian Ocean and the Special Region of Yogyakarta in the south, East Java in the east, and the Java Sea in the north. It has a total area of 33,750.37 km2, with a population of 36,516,035 at the 2020 Census making it the third-most populous province in both Java and Indonesia after West Java and East Java. The official population estimate in mid-2023 was 37,608,336 The province also includes a number of offshore islands, including the island of Nusakambangan in the south, and the Karimun Jawa Islands in the Java Sea.
Java Man is an early human fossil discovered in 1891 and 1892 on the island of Java (Indonesia). Estimated to be between 700,000 and 1,490,000 years old, it was, at the time of its discovery, the oldest hominid fossil ever found, and it remains the type specimen for Homo erectus.
Gustav Heinrich Ralphvon Koenigswald was a German-Dutch paleontologist and geologist who conducted research on hominins, including Homo erectus. His discoveries and studies of hominid fossils in Java and his studies of other important fossils of south-eastern Asia firmly established his reputation as one of the leading figures of 20th-century paleo-anthropology.
Wayang wong, also known as wayang orang, is a type of classical Javanese and Balinese dance theatrical performance with themes taken from episodes of the Ramayāna or Mahabharāta. Performances are stylised, reflecting Javanese court culture:
Wayang wong dance drama in the central Javanese Kraton of Yogyakarta represents the epitome of Javanese aesthetic unity. It is total theatre involving dance, drama, music, visual arts, language, and literature. A highly cultured sense of formality permeates every aspect of its presentation.
Sangiran 2 is a fossilized upper cranium of a Homo erectus. It was discovered in Sangiran, Indonesia by G.H.R. von Koenigswald in 1937.
The Sonobudoyo Museum is a Javanese history and culture museum and library in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The museum contains the most complete collection of Javanese artifacts, after the National Museum in Jakarta. In addition to ceramics of the Neolithic era and bronze sculptures from the 8th century, the museum also includes collections of wayang, various ancient weapons, and Javanese masks.
Homo erectus is an extinct species of archaic human from the Pleistocene, with its earliest occurrence about 2 million years ago. Its specimens are among the first recognizable members of the genus Homo.
Prehistoric Indonesia is a prehistoric period in the Indonesian archipelago that spanned from the Pleistocene period to about the 4th century CE when the Kutai people produced the earliest known stone inscriptions in Indonesia. Unlike the clear distinction between prehistoric and historical periods in Europe and the Middle East, the division is muddled in Indonesia. This is mostly because Indonesia's geographical conditions as a vast archipelago caused some parts — especially the interiors of distant islands — to be virtually isolated from the rest of the world. West Java and coastal Eastern Borneo, for example, began their historical periods in the early 4th century, but megalithic culture still flourished and script was unknown in the rest of Indonesia, including in Nias and Toraja. The Papuans on the Indonesian part of New Guinea island lived virtually in the Stone Age until their first contacts with modern world in the early 20th century. Even today living megalithic traditions still can be found on the island of Sumba and Nias.
Cultural properties of Indonesia are those items defined by Indonesian law as of "important value for history, science, and culture", and include both man-made artefacts and natural objects. The cultural properties number more than 8,000 and include ancient Hindu and Buddhist temples, mosques, historic colonial buildings, forts, art galleries, national parks and beaches. A number of the sites are World Heritage Sites.
The National Press Monument is a monument and museum to the national Indonesian press. Formally established in 1978, more than 20 years after it was first proposed, the monument is located in Surakarta, Central Java, and operated by the Ministry of Communications and Informatics. The complex consists of an old society building, which was constructed in 1918 and used for the first meeting of the Indonesian Journalists Association, as well as several subsequent expansions; it is listed as a cultural property of Indonesia.
The Mojokerto child, also known as Mojokerto 1 and Perning 1, is the fossilized skullcap of a juvenile early human. It was discovered in February 1936 near Mojokerto by a member of an excavation team led by Ralph von Koenigswald. Von Koenigswald first called the specimen Pithecanthropus modjokertensis but soon renamed it Homo modjokertensis because Eugène Dubois – the discoverer of Java Man, which was then called Pithecanthropus erectus – disagreed that the new fossil was a Pithecanthropus. The skullcap is now identified as belonging to the species Homo erectus.
Panthera tigris soloensis, known as the Ngandong tiger, is an extinct subspecies of the modern tiger species. It inhabited the Sundaland region of Indonesia during the Pleistocene epoch.
The region of Southeast Asia is considered a possible place for the evidence of archaic human remains that could be found due to the pathway between Australia and mainland Southeast Asia, where the migration of multiple early humans has occurred out of Africa. One of many pieces of evidence is of the early human found in central Java of Indonesia in the late 19th century by Eugene Dubois, and later in 1937 at Sangiran site by G.H.R. van Koenigswald. These skull and fossil materials are Homo erectus, named Pithecanthropus erectus by Dubois and Meganthropus palaeojavanicus by van Koenigswald. They were dated to c. 1.88 and 1.66 Ma, as suggested by Swisher et al. by analysis of volcanic rocks.
The archaeology of Indonesia is the study of the archaeology of the archipelagic realm that today forms the nation of Indonesia, stretching from prehistory through almost two millennia of documented history. The ancient Indonesian archipelago was a geographical maritime bridge between the political and cultural centers of Ancient India and Imperial China, and is notable as a part of ancient Maritime Silk Road.
Kedungbanteng is a district located in the eastern part of Tegal Regency, Central Java, Indonesia. The Kedungbanteng district is 8 km drive from the center of regency, namely Slawi Town through southern of Pangkah district. The central government is located in the village of Kedungbanteng.
