Some stages of the study of ancient hominids based on archaeological finds
August 1891. Java Island (at that time Dutch India, now Indonesia). A young Dutch doctor Eugene Dubois found a molar tooth resembling a chimpanzee tooth in volcanic layers on the bank of a mountain river, and a little later – a strange cranial lid: the forehead is very sloping, a fairly large volume of the brain box, a large supraorbital roller. The following year, Dubois found a thigh resembling a human thigh, and a tooth – the same as the first, only chewing. Already in our time, it has been proved that both the femur and the turnip box found at that time by Dubois belonged to the same creature. Moreover, the combination of a primitive skull and relatively progressive bone development is precisely the characteristic feature of fossil humans. The findings made by Dubois provided the supporters of the evolutionary theory with convincing evidence of the validity of their views. Before the scientists were the remains of ape-men who lived 600-700 thousand years ago. Nature has revealed one of its "secrets" and confirmed the correctness of the theoretical views of the supporters of the evolutionary doctrine.
Other finds followed. In China, in a wide cleft of the hill of the Dragon Mountains, in December 1929, the first specimen of the so-called synanthropus was found. In its appearance, the skull resembled the skull of a pithecanthropus found by Dubois, although it seemed a little more "civilized". Scientists also discovered tools of the synanthropes: some of the earliest – roughly processed, with a wide oval blade, made of sandstone, quartz, quartzite; and in many flakes and bones, they were used as cutting tools. Already at the very beginning, most researchers believed that synanthropes were akin to pithecanthropus, in any case, they were somewhere close to them. It is now recognized that both are pithecanthropus. Found in Java – Javanese, in China – Beijing.
Near the city of Heidelberg, in Germany, archaeologists have found the jaw of a primitive man. And although the teeth of the Heidelberg man were more similar to human teeth than those of a synanthrope and a pithecanthropus, it is obviously most correct to classify him as a pithecanthropus too.