| Abstract: |
While there is much uncertainty about the exact geologic age of the Australopithecinae in South Africa (Broom, 50), the general opinion among physical anthropologists seems to be that the geologic age of the various types of Early Man in Java, at least, is pretty well settled. In Weidenrichs widely known treatise Giant Early Man from Java and South China, published in 1945, the opinion is expressed that all the finds of Pithecanthropus as well as Meganthropus and Gigantopithecus are Middle Pleistocene in age, and thus contemporaneous. This statement occurs time and again in the subsequent literature, most recently in Zuckerman (50, p. 440). The purpose of the present paper is to point out that this is an oversimplified and, therefore, incorrect presentation of the facts, and to bring together what we really know with certainty about the age of the various finds of Early Man in Asia. From my own studies on the fossil and prehistoric mammals from Java, Sumatra, and India as preserved in the Dubois Collection in Leyden, Netherlands, certain facts have emerged some of which merit consideration here since they do not fit in the scheme of the stratigraphic distribution and succession of the fossil mammals of Java as repeatedly presented by Dr. von Koenigswald since 1934. It may be of importance to present this paper the modern views held on the age of the Pleistocene vertebrate faunas of Java and elsewhere in Asia, since all the finds of Early Man belong to certain assemblages of mammals, and it is only through the study of the accompanying faunas that we can learn something about the age of Early Man himself.
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