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Excavation at Trinil continued through the first decades of this century, but no further supporting evidence came to light. In 1931, however, the significance of Dubois' initial discoveries became known when more skull fragments were found at Ngandong, which also lay on the Solo River. Similar fossils were uncovered at nearby Sangiran. In 1936 the remains of a man-like creature were found at Mojokerto and proved to be the earliest yet discovered; the estimated age was an incredible 1.9 million years. 'Java Man' could no longer be ignored. Despite its historical significance, Trinil had nothing to offer interested visitors until the nineteen sixties, when a local farmer named Wirodiharjo built a small house near the original excavation site and began to build up a small collection of fossils, which have continued to be discovered annually by villagers who come to bathe in the river. Wirodiharjo's efforts were rewarded in 1980 when his collection came to the attention of the government and a small museum was built, Wirodiharjo himself becoming honorary keeper.
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As
a result, Dubois concluded that what he had found was an 'upright
walking ape man', which he named pithecanthropus erectus.
The article which Dubois was to publish in 1894, claiming
that pithecanthropus was a distant ancestor of modern
man and had lived almost a million years ago, caused such an
outcry among the scientific community as well as the religious
orthodoxy that he ended up re-burying his discoveries under his
own house, where they remained for the next thirty years.
