The Lost Forest

by John Francis Kinsella

  Chapter 51

  A SOLO VISIT

  It would have been strange not to have visited the home of Pithecanthropus erectus, or Java man, at the site where Eugene Dubois had made history by discovering the first fossils of Homo erectus by his extraordinary vision and good fortune. Together with Pierre Ross they asked Aris to organise a visit to the historic sites in East Java.

  Aris not only agreed but insisted on joining them for what was to be a small expedition, an escape from the crisis torn capital where it was becoming more and more difficult to conduct normal business. They would cover two thousand kilometres in two Landcruiser, accompanied by an armed and uniformed army Sergeant Major - responsible for their security – especially that of Aris himself, not only an ethnic Chinese but also a rich and important figure in Indonesian business.

  Ennis had suggested flying to Jogjakarta, but Aris would have nothing of it. “If ever there was a moment to show my friends Java then this is it,” he told them.

  His taste for palaeontology was growing by the day, as was the political and economic crisis and his need to keep a low profile, well out of the media’s eye. Aris had the good fortune of being less indebted to the international banks than many of the hapless Indonesian industrialists and entrepreneurs who saw bankruptcy looming if the political crisis was not resolved very quickly. Aris had also had the foresight to move a considerable part of his liquidities out of the country to Singapore and Hongkong.

  They set out equipped for a seven-day expedition in two vehicles complete with the necessary supplies, including a significant sum of cash in Dollars and Rupiahs, to cover costs, which could only be paid in cash in the villages and isolated regions of the island.

  The roads of Indonesia were dangerous, congested, and badly maintained and much too risky for driving after dark. The first day they averaged not more than forty kilometres an hour, less than in Kalimantan.

  On the afternoon of the second day they arrived in Bandung towards six where Aris had booked them into the Grand Hotel, the historic site of the famous first non-aligned nation’s conference, held in 1951, where Nasser, Nehru and Soekarno, invented the third world.

  Aris was at ease wherever he went, he was a Totok, an ethnic Chinese born in Indonesia, who no longer spoke Chinese and who had almost completely lost his Chinese culture. He was a Christian, a Roman Catholic. To Ennis, he was certainly one of the most inscrutable individuals that he had ever met. Each word of conversation, each expression, each gesture was full of nuance, leaving the other believe what he wanted to believe, or, conveying a idea, so subtle, that sometimes Ennis felt that Aris was uncertain of what he wanted himself.

  He was short, flat footed, and bespectacled. Often, the remains of his last meal clung to his teeth. In spite of his unimposing physical appearance, he was remarkably precise and authoritative in giving instructions to his subordinates.

  Above all other things Aris was an Indonesian, there was no doubt in his mind about that, he had faith in his country in spite of the difficult period it was traversing. At first, it could have appeared strange; the ethnic Chinese had been frequently victims of mob violence, or government legislation. Perhaps London or New York would have been safer havens for his investments once he had become rich.

  It was not so simple. Asia was Asia and the Chinese had been in Indonesia for many centuries long before the Europeans, before the Arabs and before the Indians. They had known good times as well as bad times. On closer examination it was obvious that people such as the Aris and others like him had not done too badly in Indonesia.

  The towns and villages of Java were part of his home, he knew just where to find the things he wanted, above all the right place to eat and the specialties of the region. Eating was his greatest pleasure - that is after making money - good eating, and to be more precise eating in general. Ennis, knew he’d never have to worry when it came to mealtime, Aris always found the local specialty, and the best table in the town or village, whenever they stopped to eat.

  Along the road in the small town Javanese eating places Ennis had what he already knew confirmed, looking too closely at Indonesians eating habits was not the most appetising sight; they were too different. Aris, when out of smart hotels, ate with his fingers in the manner of his fellow citizens, speaking and waving his hands at the same time. When he was amused, became enthused by the conversation or especially when he laughed, particles of rice flew in all directions, accompanied by the mushing sound of his chewing.

  Aris also enjoyed the company of young women and Ennis was not surprised to discover to his greatest pleasure that Aris brightened their evenings with the presence for the best of local beauties that he invited to their table to entertainment then and then dance whenever a little music was available.

  They crossed the chain of volcanic mountains strung across the centre of island on the south Java coast descending to Jogjakarta, a city long known to Indonesians as the world’s largest village and that had since become a large bustling city with large avenues and a flyover where the roads from Parangtritis, Solo and Jogya as it was called meet.

  It was a good few years since Ennis had last visited Jogya, it had not changed with many parts of the city retaining a village-like character with the surrounding countryside having changed little since the Mataram Kingdom.

  A detour to Borobudur was unavoidable, the Buddhist temple lay forty kilometres north of Jogjakarta. Taking the Jogya-Semerang road, they arrived in Muntilan, the closest town to the site, the world’s largest stupa and one of the most surprising creations of mankind. Looming in the distance they saw the slopes of the volcano Merapi, ‘The Flaming Mountain’.

  Borobudur, the most remarkable monument in the Southern Hemisphere, was built by the kings of Central Java at the beginning of the ninth century. The scene was extraordinary, as they climbed the grey black volcanic andesite slabs of the pyramid that led to the upper levels of the temple. The spectacle was vast, breath taking, through the huge bell like forms of the Dagobs and the statues of Buddha; they looked over the surrounding plain, a ragged view of fields, bamboo and palms that slowly rose to the mountains and the volcanoes of Merapi and Merbabu to the North East.

  They stood on the last terrace awed by a mystical sensation of time and their own insignificant passage that the monument to Buddha inspired.

  ‘People say that if you pray here you will have your wish!’ said Aris breaking the silence.

  ‘What should I wish for?’

  ‘That’s up to you ... but it wouldn’t be a bad idea if it was for an end to this crisis!’

  The next day they took the road east in the direction of Solo with the sharp peak of Merapi on their left. Aris pointed out the new lava flows and the dense white clouds rising off its slopes. Merapi continually emitted bursts of steam and volcanic matter. It was considered one of the world’s most destructive volcanoes, killing almost two thousands people in twenty-five eruptions since 1930. Aris informed him that there were needs six observation posts high on its slopes to keep a permanent eye on it. Such volcanoes had decided the life of man and his ancestors on Java for an incredible and unimaginable two million years.

  Their Sergeant Major recommended avoiding certain towns and taking secondary roads. By midday they had become helplessly lost amongst the small hills and valleys, the villagers, only speaking a Javanese dialect, could not understand their questions. They drove around in circles for almost two hours passing buffalo and farmers work knee-deep in the rich volcanic soil of the region.

  Aris told them that is was typical of Indonesians villagers when questioned, to first determine by subtle questioning precisely what the stranger really wanted. If the unfortunate stranger asked whether he was heading in the right direction, it would be impolite to disappoint him by giving him the bad news. Even the Sergeant Major could not help; his uniform only intimidated the villagers who figured that the strangers were important people, who before long would ask for more than just directions.


  They arrived in Solo, on whose site men had lived since the dawn of humanity. From the Toyota they saw barefoot children playing in lanes shaded by leafy trees, veiled school girls in brown uniforms wait at the sides of roads for sputtering public minivans, women carry everything from babies to huge durian in woven baskets. The narrow streets and lanes of the city were filled with small traders and craftsmen. The markets seethed with scooters, rickshaws, horse drawn carts and bicycles making it difficult for the Toyota to pass through. There were vendors selling everything from farm tools to plants, medicines, and cosmetics. Songbirds flutter in plaited bamboo cages. In the ancient part of the city, the rivers were a dirty brown from the rich red volcanic soil.

  ‘Solo, is said to be Jogya’s sister city,’ said Aris, ‘it’s one of Java’s least Westernised and most Javanese city.’

  It was an aristocratic stronghold, the original capital of the Mataram Kingdom, with its palaces and decorative street lamps left over from the Dutch colonial days. But things were rapidly changing as the city was invaded by shopping malls and traffic, and the sleepy feudal capital was shattered by the ever present noise of the endless streams of motorbikes.

  There in 1891, the fossilised fragments of a skull and leg bone of Pithecanthropus erectus were unearthed at Trinil by Eugene Dubois, just a few years after Darwin had published his theory of evolution. The fossils were those of Homo erectus.

  They headed north along the road from Solo to Kalijambe, a dusty market town where they turned east to Sangiran village. Travelling through a dry, harsh country, known by geologists as the Sangiran Dome, they passed by typical Javanese houses with their red-tiled, four-sided limasan-style roofs, and where here and they saw a Brahmin bull tethered in a yard. When they arrived before the museum the parking area was almost empty.

  In the small museum displays of fossilised pigs, tigers, turtles, alligators, bison, rhinoceros, stegodon tusks, and horns from giant deer were presented in glass cases. The curator explained that the original Homo erectus cranium was in Bandung’s geological office. An extremely life-like diorama depicted a hirsute family of hominids devouring flesh from scattered bones of extinct animals. Although the ape-men in the diorama possess Indonesian faces, in reality the proto-humans of the time were a distinct species that has completely died out.

  The fossil, Pithecanthropus erectus, found by Dubois had only recently been accurately dated by an American scientific team to around 1.8 million years old.

  ‘That’s 90,000 generations,’ said Pierre, if you calculate with around 3,000 persons per generation, the population survival level for primates, that means about quarter of a billion individuals, lived, survived and died here in Java over that immense period of time.’

  ‘An eternity for man,’ added Ennis in awe.

  A million years ago the human population has been estimated at about one and a half million. The territory where hunter gatherers could have lived, that is in Africa, Southern Europe and Southern and Eastern Asia was just a few million square kilometres excluding mountains, dense forests, lakes and isolated islands. That meant that a family group of thirty individuals needed one hundred square kilometres to hunt and to forage for food, a piece of land ten kilometres by ten.

  Java is just 48,000 square kilometres, so the population could not have been greater than about fifteen thousand individuals. Their life expectancy was twenty to thirty years with the population limited by the availability of food, that is to say game and edible fruit and plants.

  ‘This is where Sutrisno made his name working at the Sangiran site which is one of the richest archaeological sites in Java with over sixty remains of prehistoric skeletons. Others were discovered in the same region at Ngandong, Sambungmacan and Trinil.”

  The most important discovery at that site was a skull named ‘Sangiran 10’. Then, in the seventies, a new site was found in the village of Sambungmacan where human cranial remains, calvaria, calottes, and fragments, with other bones were found together with various human artefacts. These fossils were thought possibly to be as old as 1.3 million years.

  The problem started when scientific investigations produced a new date of 27,000 years. This work was carried out Carl Swisher and his team in 1996, who used two different dating methods, electron spin resonance and mass spectrometric U-series, show that they are at the most 46,000 years old and with a probable date of 27,000 old. What that meant was Homo erectus coexisted with modern humans long after Homo erectus was supposed to have become extinct.

  Ros had explained that the Solo people were considered by the scientific community as a transitional form between Homo erectus and modern humans. But evidence pointing to the appearance of Homo sapiens about 160,000 years ago conflicted with the Solo fossils that showed a transitional phase dating to only 27,000BP. To complicate the picture fossils were turning up in Australia from recent times, almost identical to the Solo people.

  ‘That brings us back once again to the competing “Out of Africa” and “Multiregional” theories. A debate between the two theories that has often been very bitter, with both sides frequently accusing the other, and especially pointing at the Chinese who were naturally on the side of the Multiregionalists, as having a political and racist orientation.’

  Pierre Ros told them the following Eugene Dubois another Dutch anthropologist, Ralph von Koenigswald, excavated an unusually robust human mandible in the 1930s. Then in 1995, another fossilised skull, Sangiran 17, with primitive characteristic and heavy ridges over the eyebrows, was found by a farmer while working his garden.

  ‘How exactly does fossilisation take place?’

  ‘It’s a complicated process. It normally takes place when certain conditions are present and the remains of an organism are slowly replaced by minerals. Fossilization depends on the chemistry of the environment in which the bones were buried.’

  ‘You talk about bones?’

  ‘That’s right, forget plants and the rest as we’re interested only in the bones, normally what happens is that the soft parts of the animal rots away, leaving teeth and bones. When these are buried under layers of sediment, sand, mud or lime, that turns into sandstone, shale or limestone so over millions of years, this is compressed by the accumulated layers above, slowly becoming hard rock. The bones gradually become saturated with minerals and undergo the chemical changes that makes fossils.’

  ‘I see, what is the least time needed for fossilisation to take place?’

  ‘Certain geochemists have come to the conclusion that fossilisation takes about 10,000 years, but it depends on precise circumstances and varies considerably.’

  ‘So the mummy of an ancient Egyptian or Inca, or the skeleton of a bronze age animal would not be regarded as a fossil?’

  ‘No, and the same goes for Homo borneensis!’

  ‘Is it possible that bones don’t under go fossilisation?’

  ‘No, if there is not fossilisation of some kind, then they disappear, as I’ve just said. Fossils are some kind of mineral transformation and are naturally heavier than the original bones, two or more times heavier. That’s why when you pick up a fossilised bone you can see immediately that apart from anything else it’s heavier.’

  Pierre explained that technical the hard parts, bones and teeth, were composed mainly of calcium phosphate, combined with fluorine, chlorine or hydroxyl. A composition related to that of the mineral apatite, all such phosphates being relatively insoluble. Fossil bones, and especially the enamel of teeth, were likely to be stained by chemicals in the sediment which buried them and many bones were black or dark brown when discovered. Apart from staining, the minerals of bones were not altered, though sometimes calcite or silica was deposited in cavities that were empty in the living animal or occupied by soft tissue. Bone protein was sometimes replaced by minerals that strengthen the fossil.

  In some fossils though the form of the hard parts was preserved, the mineral matter was replaced. On the other hand the shape of soft tissue could be formed if sediments
formed in a cavity. A well known example was Pompeii where people buried by volcanic ash when Vesuvius erupted in A.D 79 became encased as the ash solidified. The bodies decayed, leaving cavities in the exact shape of those trapped under the ash. Under natural conditions, sediment fills the brain cavity of a skull and harden, keeping an exact mould of the inside of the skull and the brain.

  Burial was therefore an essential part of the process of fossilization. A skeleton can be preserved if it gets buried soon after death but this is very rare. Most animals are eaten by scavengers and their soft tissue decomposed with any other remains being trampled by animals or washed away by rain.

  Bones were completely dissolved in acid soils, but in wet alkaline they were preserved, though almost all animals that died on land were never as fossils. The best conditions for the fossilisation of skeletal parts happen when an animal falls into a crevace, or dies in a cave such as at Atapuerca, or were swept into a swamp like Mungo man. Under certain conditions they were buried in a volcanic ash shower, as in the Rift Valley or in Java. The parts that survived were normally the hardest parts such as jaws, skulls, teeth and at times limb bones.