If man is therefore essentially one, he cannot have had more than one
primeval home. This human cradle, as it may be called, has been located
with some certainty in the Eastern Archipelago, and more particularly in
the island of Java, where in 1892 Dr. Eugene Dubois brought to light the
earliest known remains that can be described as distinctly human. From
the Pliocene (late Tertiary) beds of the Trinil district he recovered
some teeth, a skull, and a thigh-bone of a being whom he named the
_Pithecanthropus erectus_, thereby indicating an “Ape-man that could
walk.”
In this “first man,” as he has been designated, the erect position,
shown by the perfectly human thigh-bone, implies a perfectly prehensile
(grasping) hand, with opposable thumb, the chief instrument of human
progress, while the cranial capacity suggests vocal organs sufficiently
developed for the first rude utterances of articulate speech.