Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald
Encyclopedia
Professor Dr. Gustav Heinrich Ralph (often cited as G. H. R.) von Koenigswald (1902–1982) was a distinguished paleontologist and geologist
who conducted research on hominins, including Homo erectus
. Ralph von Koenigswald made many contributions to paleontology during his career. His discoveries and studies of hominid fossils in Java and his studies of other important fossils of south-eastern Asia firmly established his reputation as one of the leading figures of 20th Century paleo-anthropology.
Von Koenigswald was born in Berlin on November 13, 1902, during a period of intense interest and rapid growth in the study of evolution. He began his fossil vertebrate collection when he was fifteen with the acquisition of a rhinoceros
molar during an excursion to Mauer, Germany. He subsequently studied geology
and paleontology at Berlin, Tübingen, Cologne and Munich.
geologists K. Martin
and R.W. van Bemmelen
. Through these contacts Von Koenigswald could join the Geological Survey of Java as paleontologist in late 1930. Financed in part through the Carnegie Foundation
, he began a systematic survey of the country. von Koenigswald made his most significant finds in this area of Asia between January 1931 and 1941. At age 33, he announced the discovery of a juvenile calvarium from Mojokerto
and assigned it to Pithecanthropus erectus. This identification was criticized by the respected paleontologist Eugène Dubois
, but von Koenigswald did not change his identification. Between 1937 and 1941, a number of important hominid specimens emerged from Java. One of von Koenigswald's assistants brought him a piece of a Pithecanthropus skull in 1937. Unfortunately, an offer to pay for additional fossils by the piece led to specimens being broken into splinters by native helpers. One skull cap, the first Sangiran calvarium, was an exact duplicate of Dubois' Pithecanthropus calvarium. Other well-known fossils include the Sangiran B mandible, Sangiran 4 including the well-known maxilla with the diastema, and the 1939 and 1941 jaws assigned by von Koenigswald to Meganthropus paleojavanicus.
His work on the fossils of Central Java, particularly from Sangiran, led him to claim that the mammalian remains of the area could be assigned to all three levels of the Pleistocene
. All Javanese hominid fossils recovered emerged from three major sets of beds:
von Koenigswald pointed out that these and other fossil discoveries since 1917 contradicted the 19th century idea that humans had an ancestor with a modern brain and ape jaw, and actually suggested the opposite relationship. The Java fossils are currently housed in the Senckenberg Museum with the financial support of the Werner Reimers Foundation of Bad Homburg.
In 1937, von Koenigswald hosted paleontologist Franz Weidenreich
's visit to Java to examine recent discovery sites.
Also in 1937, von Koenigswald became a Dutch citizen.
In 1938 von Koenigswald and Weidenreich together announced the discovery of a new skull of Pithecanthropus (P. robustus). Early in 1939, von Koenigswald took several Javanese hominin specimens to Weidenreich in Peking, China
. Comparing the Sangiran and Choukoutien hominids led the two scientists to conclude that the specimens were closely allied. They decided to abandon the genus Sinanthropus, combining all the specimens into the earlier-named genus Pithecanthropus. Later, Pithecanthropus was incorporated into the genus Homo
as Homo erectus.
brought difficulty and danger to von Koenigswald in Java. He managed to hide his fossils from the invading Japan
ese, and although he, being a Dutch citizen, was interned in a prisoner-of-war camp
, only one fossil skull was confiscated by the Japanese soldiers. It was presented to Emperor Hirohito but was recovered after the war.
During the war years, Weidenreich's description of Sinanthropus was published. In a borrowed office at the American Museum of Natural History
, Weidenreich added to the their earlier work and reviewed the fossil record of human evolution, merging Sinanthropus and Pithecanthropus into a new taxon, Homo erectus, with various geographic sub-species. He published descriptions and assigned scientific names to some of von Koenigswald's discoveries, as he and others presumed that von Koenigswald was dead at the hands of the Japanese. After the war, von Koenigswald worked with Weidenreich at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City for eighteen months.
at Utrecht
, Netherlands
. During his academic career, he visited sites in North and South Africa
(1951–52), the Philippines
, Thailand
and Borneo
(1957), and Pakistan
(1966–67). In Pakistan, von Koenigswald and his students found specimens which included a palate assigned to a new species of the hominoid genus Sivapithecus
and teeth considered to belong to Ramapithecus.
von Koenigswald studied the relationships between African, Asian and European hominoid fossils attributed to Ramapithecus or its close allies such as Graecopithecus of Greece
and Kenyapithecus of Fort Ternan
, Kenya
. It was his opinion that the Indian form was a hominid and the African form a pongid
. This later led him to strongly press the claim of India
as the original home of the Hominidae
.
After retiring from the Chair at Utrecht, the Werner-Reimers Foundation provided him with facilities at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt
, Germany
. He, with the support of J. L. Franzen, directed this paleontological research center for the remaining fourteen years of his life. von Koenigswald died at his home in Bad Homburg
near Frankfurt-am-Main in West Germany on July 10, 1982.
Geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...
who conducted research on hominins, including Homo erectus
Homo erectus
Homo erectus is an extinct species of hominid that lived from the end of the Pliocene epoch to the later Pleistocene, about . The species originated in Africa and spread as far as India, China and Java. There is still disagreement on the subject of the classification, ancestry, and progeny of H...
. Ralph von Koenigswald made many contributions to paleontology during his career. His discoveries and studies of hominid fossils in Java and his studies of other important fossils of south-eastern Asia firmly established his reputation as one of the leading figures of 20th Century paleo-anthropology.
Von Koenigswald was born in Berlin on November 13, 1902, during a period of intense interest and rapid growth in the study of evolution. He began his fossil vertebrate collection when he was fifteen with the acquisition of a rhinoceros
Rhinoceros
Rhinoceros , also known as rhino, is a group of five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. Two of these species are native to Africa and three to southern Asia....
molar during an excursion to Mauer, Germany. He subsequently studied geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
and paleontology at Berlin, Tübingen, Cologne and Munich.
Java
Von Koenigswald's teacher Ferdinand Broili had good contacts with the DutchNetherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
geologists K. Martin
Karl Martin
Johann Karl Ludwig Martin was a German geologist. He was professor in geology at Leiden University from 1877 to 1922. From 1880 to 1922 he also was director of the Geological Museum of Leiden...
and R.W. van Bemmelen
Reinout Willem van Bemmelen
Reinout Willem van Bemmelen was a Dutch geologist whose interests were structural geology, economic geology and volcanology...
. Through these contacts Von Koenigswald could join the Geological Survey of Java as paleontologist in late 1930. Financed in part through the Carnegie Foundation
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Carnegie Corporation of New York, which was established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 "to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding," is one of the oldest, largest and most influential of American foundations...
, he began a systematic survey of the country. von Koenigswald made his most significant finds in this area of Asia between January 1931 and 1941. At age 33, he announced the discovery of a juvenile calvarium from Mojokerto
Mojokerto
Mojokerto is one of the districts in East Java Province, Indonesia. It is located 40 km southwest of Surabaya, and constitutes one of the regional units of Gerbangkertosusila Development .-Geographic...
and assigned it to Pithecanthropus erectus. This identification was criticized by the respected paleontologist Eugène Dubois
Eugène Dubois
Marie Eugène François Thomas Dubois was a Dutch paleoanthropologist. He earned worldwide fame for his discovery of Pithecanthropus erectus , or 'Java Man'...
, but von Koenigswald did not change his identification. Between 1937 and 1941, a number of important hominid specimens emerged from Java. One of von Koenigswald's assistants brought him a piece of a Pithecanthropus skull in 1937. Unfortunately, an offer to pay for additional fossils by the piece led to specimens being broken into splinters by native helpers. One skull cap, the first Sangiran calvarium, was an exact duplicate of Dubois' Pithecanthropus calvarium. Other well-known fossils include the Sangiran B mandible, Sangiran 4 including the well-known maxilla with the diastema, and the 1939 and 1941 jaws assigned by von Koenigswald to Meganthropus paleojavanicus.
His work on the fossils of Central Java, particularly from Sangiran, led him to claim that the mammalian remains of the area could be assigned to all three levels of the Pleistocene
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....
. All Javanese hominid fossils recovered emerged from three major sets of beds:
- Pucangan formation, Jetis beds dated to the Early PleistoceneEarly PleistoceneCalabrian is a subdivision of the Pleistocene Epoch of the Geologic time scale. ~1.8 Ma.—781,000 years ago ± 5,000 years, a period of ~.The end of the stage is defined by the last magnetic pole reversal and plunge in to an ice age and global drying possibly colder and drier than the late Miocene ...
, - the Kabuh formation, Trinil beds dated to the Middle PleistoceneMiddle PleistoceneThe Middle Pleistocene, more specifically referred to as the Ionian stage, is a period of geologic time from ca. 781 to 126 thousand years ago....
, and - the Ngandong beds dated to the Upper Pleistocene.
von Koenigswald pointed out that these and other fossil discoveries since 1917 contradicted the 19th century idea that humans had an ancestor with a modern brain and ape jaw, and actually suggested the opposite relationship. The Java fossils are currently housed in the Senckenberg Museum with the financial support of the Werner Reimers Foundation of Bad Homburg.
In 1937, von Koenigswald hosted paleontologist Franz Weidenreich
Franz Weidenreich
-External references:*...
's visit to Java to examine recent discovery sites.
Also in 1937, von Koenigswald became a Dutch citizen.
In 1938 von Koenigswald and Weidenreich together announced the discovery of a new skull of Pithecanthropus (P. robustus). Early in 1939, von Koenigswald took several Javanese hominin specimens to Weidenreich in Peking, China
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
. Comparing the Sangiran and Choukoutien hominids led the two scientists to conclude that the specimens were closely allied. They decided to abandon the genus Sinanthropus, combining all the specimens into the earlier-named genus Pithecanthropus. Later, Pithecanthropus was incorporated into the genus Homo
Homo (genus)
Homo is the genus that includes modern humans and species closely related to them. The genus is estimated to be about 2.3 to 2.4 million years old, evolving from australopithecine ancestors with the appearance of Homo habilis....
as Homo erectus.
World War II
World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
brought difficulty and danger to von Koenigswald in Java. He managed to hide his fossils from the invading Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese, and although he, being a Dutch citizen, was interned in a prisoner-of-war camp
Prisoner-of-war camp
A prisoner-of-war camp is a site for the containment of combatants captured by their enemy in time of war, and is similar to an internment camp which is used for civilian populations. A prisoner of war is generally a soldier, sailor, or airman who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or...
, only one fossil skull was confiscated by the Japanese soldiers. It was presented to Emperor Hirohito but was recovered after the war.
During the war years, Weidenreich's description of Sinanthropus was published. In a borrowed office at the American Museum of Natural History
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History , located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, is one of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world...
, Weidenreich added to the their earlier work and reviewed the fossil record of human evolution, merging Sinanthropus and Pithecanthropus into a new taxon, Homo erectus, with various geographic sub-species. He published descriptions and assigned scientific names to some of von Koenigswald's discoveries, as he and others presumed that von Koenigswald was dead at the hands of the Japanese. After the war, von Koenigswald worked with Weidenreich at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City for eighteen months.
Netherlands
For the next twenty years, von Koenigswald filled a Chair of Palaeontology created for him at the RijksuniversiteitUtrecht University
Utrecht University is a university in Utrecht, Netherlands. It is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands and one of the largest in Europe. Established March 26, 1636, it had an enrollment of 29,082 students in 2008, and employed 8,614 faculty and staff, 570 of which are full professors....
at Utrecht
Utrecht
Utrecht is a city in the Netherlands.The name may also refer to:* Utrecht , of which Utrecht is the capital* Utrecht , including the city of Utrecht* Bishopric of Utrecht* Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Utrecht...
, Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
. During his academic career, he visited sites in North and South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
(1951–52), the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
and Borneo
Borneo
Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is located north of Java Island, Indonesia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia....
(1957), and Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
(1966–67). In Pakistan, von Koenigswald and his students found specimens which included a palate assigned to a new species of the hominoid genus Sivapithecus
Sivapithecus
Sivapithecus is a genus of extinct primates. Fossil remains of animals now assigned to this genus, dated from 12.5 million to 8.5 million years old in the Miocene, have been found since the 19th century in the Siwalik Hills in what is now India, Nepal, and Pakistan...
and teeth considered to belong to Ramapithecus.
von Koenigswald studied the relationships between African, Asian and European hominoid fossils attributed to Ramapithecus or its close allies such as Graecopithecus of Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
and Kenyapithecus of Fort Ternan
Fort Ternan
Fort Ternan is a small town in Nyando District, Nyanza Province, Kenya located 50 kilometres east of Kisumu and five kilometres east of Koru. Fort Ternan is located adjacent the western border of Rift Valley Province . Fort Ternan forms a ward of Muhoroni Constituency and Muhoroni town council...
, Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
. It was his opinion that the Indian form was a hominid and the African form a pongid
Pongid
Pongid refers to mammals of the family Pongidae, currently not in taxonomic use*Originally, until the last few years of the 20th century, Pongidae comprised all the extant species in the current family Hominidae, excluding Homo sapiens and sometimes including the family Hylobatidae .*Currently...
. This later led him to strongly press the claim of India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
as the original home of the Hominidae
Hominidae
The Hominidae or include them .), as the term is used here, form a taxonomic family, including four extant genera: chimpanzees , gorillas , humans , and orangutans ....
.
After retiring from the Chair at Utrecht, the Werner-Reimers Foundation provided him with facilities at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. He, with the support of J. L. Franzen, directed this paleontological research center for the remaining fourteen years of his life. von Koenigswald died at his home in Bad Homburg
Bad Homburg
Bad Homburg vor der Höhe is the district town of the Hochtaunuskreis, Hesse, Germany, on the southern slope of the Taunus, bordering among others Frankfurt am Main and Oberursel...
near Frankfurt-am-Main in West Germany on July 10, 1982.
Publications
- von Koenigswald, G. H. R., translated by Arnold J. Pomerans. "Evolution of Man." University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor Paperback Series, Revised edition, 1976. ISBN 0-472-05020-6.
- von Koenigswald, G. H. R., "Meeting Prehistoric Man." Lowe & Brydone (printers) LTD, London, Scientific Book Club Edition, 1956.
See also
- List of fossil sites (with link directory)
- List of hominina (hominid) fossils (with images)