Although Charles Darwin had speculated in his work The Descent of Man, published in 1871 (p.240), that "It is therefore probable that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee ; and as these two species are now man’s nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere." So, Darwin was the first to propose an Out of Africa origin for mankind.
But Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), a German scientist who quickly accepted and promoted Darwin' theory of Evolution through natural selection thought otherwisw.
Haeckel coined the term pithecanthropus (ape-men) and believed that humans had evolved from Catarhini, or Narrow-nosed Apes in South East Asia. Current woke feelings condemn his posture on eugenics, and racial inferiority of some human populations. His writings acceptable in his days would now be considered racist, and derogatory towards dark-skinned peoples, but he was a man of his time when such points of view were acceptable, so we can't apply our modern standards to judge him with hindsight.
Haeckel described a human phylogenetic tree, and addressed practical aspects of human evolution. Even before Darwin's "Descent of Man", he had conjectured about the birthplace of humanity. In 1868 he wrote (see p. 436 Vol. 2 in The History of Creation: "Man, we may feel certain, is descended from Catarhini, or narrow-nosed apes... Of the five now existing continents, neither Australia, nor America, nor Europe can have been this primaeval home, or the so-called "Paradise," the "cradle of the human race." Most circumstances indicate Southern Asia as the locality in question."
Homo erectus discovery
Heaeckel's work inspired a Dutch physician, Eugène Dubois, to explore that region in search of the "missing link" ancestor of the human species. He succeeded, and he discovered the first pithecanthropus, now known as Homo erectus in 1891, at Trinil, a site located on the banks of the Solo River, in Java, in what is now Indonesia. They were ancient, and validated Haeckel's hypothesis. Now we know they are ancient, between 700,000 and 1,500,000 years old.
The Trinil "Java Man" or "pithecantropus erectus" (upright ape man) was the oldest hominin discovered at that time, far older than the European Neanderthals. More erectus remains were discovered near Beijing, China, starting in 1921, at the Zhoukoudian site. These remains were named "Peking Man" (Sinanthropus pekinensis).
Further excavations were conducted at Trinil in the early 1900s but didn't yield any remains.
But, less than one hundred years ago, the situation changed. A member of that expedition, Willem Frederik Oppenoorth had persisted in his quest, and had become the head of the Java Mapping Progran in 1930. He also secured funding to conduct further archaeological research in the region, searching for erectus. Noting the Trinil site's location, Oppenoorth surveyed the Solo River east of it, and struck gold when one of his teams led by Ter Haar discovered some animal fossils on August 27, 1931 close to the village of Ngandong.
They dug at the spot, located 20 m (33 ft) above the level of Solo River and found that it was a rich deposit containing animal fossils entombed by a flood that laid volcanic ashes along a now abandoned river bed.
For those keen on more details, I suggest reading Huffman et al., 2010, who describe the site, its exploration, layout, and remains in great detail.
On September 15, 1931 the dig unearthed hominin remains, they had discovered what we now classify as Homo erectus. Oppenoorth published the findings in 1932 (Solo Man a new fossil skull. Scientific American Sept. 1932, 154–155). He soon realized that the "Solo Man" belonged to the same group as Java Man and Peking Man. Oppenoorth believed that the Indonesian Java Man was the ancestor of the less primitive, and more recent Solo Man, and that both were part of the branch of mankind that led to the Australian Aboriginal people. On the other branch was the Peking Man from northern China,who was the root of the tree that led to Neanderthals in Europe. Man had its roots in Asia. However, he also recognized that these Asian hominins were similar to the African Homo rhodesiensis.
Dubois, who had discovered the Java Man, classed them as human beings, naming them Homo sapiens soloensis (Source).
A few years later, in 1939, von Koenigswald and Weidenreich recognized that Java Man and Peking Man were "related to each other in the same way as two different races of present mankind. Now we know that they were erectus, and so was the Solo Man.
How old was the Solo Man?
At first these remains were believed to be very old, closer to the age of the Java Man, but over the years we learned that they are much more recent, and they may have even co-existed with Modern humans.
Specimens from the Solo River site ad Ngandong were studied by Yokoyama et al. (2008), who calculated an age of 40,000 to 70,000 years for them, which would place them close the the date of arrival of modern humans to the region. Did they overlap with Homo sapiens? Maybe not.
The latest dating of the Solo Man was preformed by Rizal et al., 2020. This study revealed that the terrace above the Solor River in Ngandong was formed between 92,000 and 140,000 years ago and they estimated "ages of 117 to 108 thousand years (kyr) for the H. erectus bone bed, which accumulated during flood conditions. These results negate the extreme ages that have been proposed for the site and solidify Ngandong as the last known occurrence of this long-lived species." This date is earlier than the currently accepted date for the second, and final, Out of Africa migration which is believed to have taken place ~60 kyr ago.
It is possible that modern humans left Afria earlier, or that the first Out of Africa around 120 kya advanced east much further than currently believed and reached Indonesia, instead of the Levant. In either case, Solo Man and Modern humans could have met.
Alternatively, these erectus could have survived and thrived in the region until the arrival of modern humans. We do know that Denisovans lived in this region before modern humans arrived. We ignore if erectus and Denisovans admixing here.
Currently, there is no direct genetic evidence of direct super-archaic admixture in the people who now live in this region (Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, or Australia), see Hudjashov et al., 2007. Perhaps further studies will clarify the matter. But, we recently learned that erectus and Denisovans admixed somewhere in East Asia, and that some of the erectus genes ended up in modern humans via Denisovan-Human interactions.
Some open questions remain: did Solo Man evolve from the original Java Man? or were they closely related "sister lineages" evolving in the same region, both being subspecies of H. erectus?
Interestingly H. erectus has been in Asia for over two million years, which is older than the oldest African erectus fossils. Furthermore, erectus remains were found in Africa far more recently than those discovered in Asia; starting in 1970 Richard Leaky discovered fossils in Koobi Fora, near Lake Turkana, in Kenya, which are 1.75 million years old. In 1984 the erectus Turkana Boy was found there too. It is possible that H. erectus evolved in Asia and then migrated to Africa.
As mentioned in my recent post, they lived in Siberia between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago, showing that they were equally well adapted to the tropical climate of Indonesia and the icy Siberian forests. These adaptable and intelligent hominins were capable of colonizing Africa from Asia, and also, moving on, and reaching America.
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