Homo Erectus in Java: Early Evidence of Modern Human Behaviors at Trinil

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Paleo-Environmental Reconstruction

Analysis of the types of animals found at the site allowed Joordens et al. (2009) to define the Trinil environment at the time H. erectus was living there. Taken as a whole, the animals lived in a transitional type of environment, a marshy, swampy area, with rivers, lagoons and mangroves, grading into a coastal plain and eventually adjacent open upland grasslands.


That is to say, an environment comparable to a modern tropical freshwater swamp forest, found today along the lower reaches of tropical rivers and lake margins. No evidence for stone tools has been identified at Trinil, although a clamshell cutting tool was discovered in the collections. Joordens et al. argue that H. erectus could have well have consumed aquatic resources. 

• Read about evidence for clamshell tools at Trinil

In their 2009 report, Joordens et al. commented that although Dubois kept nearly every bone he excavated at Trinel, their specific stratigraphical provenience was not kept, and so the environmental reconstruction must remain general. At the present, and in the foreseeable future, the site is underwater, and so researchers must rely on Dubois' collections. Stable isotope analysis on the faunal material, however, did determine that what freshwater the animals had access to was provided by run off from two volcanoes on Java, Gunung Merapi in central Java, and Gunung Lawu in the east.

Discovery

Trinil was discovered by the Dutch army surgeon Eugène Dubois in the late 19th century. Dubois had been stationed in Java for a number of years, and he had devoted much time to the search for vertebrate fossils. He first published his findings in Trinil in 1894 in German, naming the hominid Pithechanthropus erectus.

Dubois' meticulous retrieval of all the faunal material from the site has made it possible for researchers over a hundred years later to learn more about the site, despite its being inundated and currently unavailable. 

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This article is a part of the About.com guide to the Lower Paleolithic, and the Dictionary of Archaeology.

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