Homo erectus soloensis
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| Javanthropus Conservation status: Fossil | ||||||||||||||||||
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Homo erectus soloensis (formerly classified as Homo sapiens soloensis) is a subspecies of the extinct hominid, Homo erectus. Remains of this anomalous hominid have been found in both Indonesia and Australia. Though its morphology was, for the most part, typical of Homo erectus, its culture was unusually advanced. This poses many problems to current theories concerning just what the behavior of Homo erectus was limited to in terms of innovation and language. Due to the tools found with the extinct hominid and many of its more gracile anatomical features, it was first classified as a subspecies of Homo sapiens and thought to be the ancestor of modern aboriginal Australians. However, more rigorous studies have concluded that this is not the case. This subspecies was also once called Javanthropus. While most subspecies of Homo erectus disappeared from the fossil record roughly 400,000 years ago, H. e. soloensis persisted up until 50,000 years ago in regions of Java and was possibly absorbed by a local Homo sapiens population at the time of its decline.
The biggest problem with H. e. soloensis is that remains of the subspecies have been found in Australia, and several islands around and including Java, Indonesia. Though in prehistoric times the effects of continental drift would have put these land masses closer together, as far as paleoanthropologists have been able to discern, there should still have been a significant amount of water separating most of these land masses. This seems to leave only one possible conclusion: Homo erectus soloensis (and possibly some other late subspecies of Homo erectus) could build crude ocean-going vessels and navigate. To do so, at least some variations of Homo erectus must have possessed language, whether the prospect shatters the current theoretical architecture of paleo-anthropology or not.