Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald

The professor Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald (Berlin, November 13rd, 1902 - Francfort-sur-le-Main, July 10th, 1982) is a paleontologist and a geologist who undertook many research on the fossil Hominides, in particular on Homo erectus . Its discoveries and its studies on the Hominides missing from Java as its studies of other important fossils of the Southeast Asia firmly sat its reputation like one of the great figures of the paleoanthropology at the 20th century.

Koenigswald was born at one time when the study of the evolution aroused an intense interest. It began its collection of vertebrate fossils by making at fifteen years the acquisition of a molar of rhinoceros during an excursion with Mauer. Thereafter, he studied geology and paleontology in Berlin, Tübingen, Cologne and Munich.

Java

Ferdinand Broili (1874-1946), the professor of von Koenigswald, had good relationships with the Dutch geologists K. Martin and Louis Martin Robert Rutten (1884-1946). Also von Koenigswald could it join the Geological Investigation of Java, in what was then the the Indies Dutchwomen, as paleontologist with the beginning of the year 1930. Helped financially partly with the Carnegie foundation, it began a systematic investigation in the country. It made its most important discoveries in this sector of Asia between January 1931 and 1941. At 33 years, he announced that he had discovered calvarium of a young individual with Mojokerto (current province of Java Is) and allotted it to Pithecanthropus erectus . This identification was criticized by the paleontologist Eugene Dubois, respected but already old; despite everything von Koenigswald persisted in its identification.

Between 1937 and 1941, some important specimens Hominides were discovered in Java. One of the assistances of von Koenigswald brought to him a cranium fragment of Pithécanthrope in 1937. Unfortunately, an offer to pay with the part for other fossils led its indigenous assistances to break of pieces the specimens. Cranium a top, the first found calvarium with Sangiran (current province of Java Centers), appeared an exact duplicate of that of Pithécanthrope of Dubois. Other well-known fossils are the mandible B of Sangiran, Sangiran the 4 which includes/understands the well-known maxilla with its diastème, and jaws of 1939 and 1941 allotted by von Koenigswald to Meganthropus palaeojavanicus .

Its work on the fossils of the center of Java, particularly to Sangiran, led it to support the idea that the remainders of mammals of this area could belong to the three subdivisions of the Pléistocène. All the fossils of Javanese Hominides discovered come from three important whole of layers:

formation of Pucangan, layers of Jetis dated at lower Pleistocene,
the Kabuh formation, layers of Trinil average Pleistocene and
layers of Ngandong higher Pleistocene.

Von Koenigswald showed that these discoveries of fossils and others made since 1917 contradicted the idea of the XIXe century that the ancestor of the man would have had a modern brain and a jaw of monkey and he straightforwardly proposed the opposite idea. The fossils of Java are currently preserved in the Museum of Senckenberg thanks to the financial support of the Foundation Werner Reimer de Bad Homburg.

In 1937, von Koenigswald accommodated the Paléontologiste Franz Weidenreich in visit with Java to examine sites discovered recently. Also in 1937, von Koenigswald became Dutch citizen. In 1938, von Koenigswald and Weidenreich jointly announced the discovery of a new cranium of Pithecanthropus ( P. robustus ). At the beginning of 1939, von Koenigswald brought several specimens of Javanese Hominides to Weidenreich to Beijing. The comparison of the Hominides of Sangiran and Choukoutien led the two scientists to conclude that the specimens were narrowly related. They decided to give up the kind Sinanthropus , while bringing back all the specimens to the kind of older name Pithecanthropus . Later, Pithecanthropus was placed in the kind Homo as a Homo erectus .

Second world war

The Second world war brought to von Koenigswald difficulties and dangers to Java. It succeeds in hiding its fossils with the Japanese invader and although, Dutch citizen, it had been interned in a prison camp, only a cranium of fossil was confiscated by the Japanese soldiers and was offered to the Hirohito emperor; it however was recovered after the war.

During these years, descriptions of Sinanthropus were published by Weidenreich. In an office placed at its disposal by the American Museum of Natural history (American Museum off Natural History), Weidenreich enriches their initial work and their conclusions on the place by these fossils in the human evolution, amalgamating Sinanthropus and Pithecanthropus in new a taxon, Homo erectus , with various geographical subspecies. It published descriptions and gave scientific names to some of discovered von Koenigswald, because it supposed with others that this last had died between the hands of the Japanese. After the war, von Koenigswald worked with Weidenreich with the American Museum of Natural history in New York for eighteen months.

Post-war period

The twenty years which followed, von Koenigswald occupied a pulpit of Paleontology created for him in Rijksuniversiteit of Utrecht in the Netherlands. During its academic career, he visited sites in the North and the South of Africa (1951-52), Philippines, Thailand and Borneo (1957), and Pakistan (1966-67). In Pakistan, von Koenigswald and its students discovered new fossils, among which a palate allotted to a new species of hominoïde, Sivapithecus , and teeth belonging to Ramapithecus .

Von Koenigswald studied the relationship between the African, Asian and European fossils of hominoïdes allotted to Ramapithecus or species close like Graecopithecus found in Greece and Kenyapithecus to Strong Ternan, in Kenya. According to him the Indian form one was hominidé and the African form a Pongidé. This idea led it later to vigorously support the Indian origin of the Hominidae .

After its retirement of its Pulpit of Utrecht, the Werner-Reimers Foundation made him allot a service in Germany, with the Museum of Natural history and Research institute of Senckenberg of Frankfurt. With the assistance of J.L. Franzen, it directed this paleontological research center during the fourteen last years of its life. He died at his place in Bad Hombourg close to Frankfurt in West Germany on July 10th, 1982.

External bonds

Biography off von Koenigswald (in Dutch)

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