Dispute Over ‘Java Man’ Raises a Question: Who Owns Prehistory?

LEIDEN, the Netherlands — Historical crocodile jaws, the skull of a primeval water buffalo and a million-year-old turtle shell are only a few of the fossils that fill lengthy metallic cabinets in a depot of Naturalis Biodiversity Middle, a well-liked pure historical past museum within the Netherlands.

Neatly ordered cardboard containers comprise hundreds extra fossils, with labels comparable to Rhinoceros sondaicus (Javan rhinoceros) or Sus brachygnathus (extinct wild boar), beneath the title “Assortment Dubois.”

All advised, Naturalis owns about 40,000 prehistoric objects collected within the nineteenth century by the Dutch doctor and anatomist Eugéne Dubois from the banks of the Bengawan Solo, a river in Java, and at different digs in Indonesia, which he shipped again to the Netherlands.

The spotlight of the Dubois trove takes pleasure of place within the museum: Java Man, the primary recognized specimen of Homo erectus, lengthy thought of a “lacking hyperlink” between people and apes, is a part of a well-liked show on human evolution. A skullcap, femur and molar seem to drift in a vitrine in a central corridor, subsequent to a illustration of what Java Man may need regarded like.

However the stays should not only a museum centerpiece, they’re additionally the focus of a global restitution battle.

Indonesia desires the femur and cranium fragment again. Or relatively, it want to begin with the return of these items, however finally it desires the complete Dubois Assortment. The declare is only one half of a bigger Indonesian request for objects from a number of Dutch museums, however it’s by far essentially the most contentious.

Whereas artwork museums have been grappling for the reason that Nineties with claims that they maintain or show looted Nazi art, and ethnographic museums have confronted repatriation claims from African nations and Indigenous folks worldwide, the Java Man case pushes restitution into the realm of the pure historical past museum — the place it hasn’t been a lot of a problem till now.

It additionally asks a brand new query: Who owns prehistory?

The Dubois artifacts are from a time earlier than human civilization, earlier than the Earth was divided into nations, to allow them to haven’t any true nationwide affiliation. They aren’t linked to cultural traditions or inventive practices of any particular society, and so they can’t be recognized as anybody’s ancestral stays.

But they had been eliminated by a European scientist throughout a interval of colonial domination with which a lot of the Western cultural world is now making an attempt to reckon. Historians say that Dubois used compelled laborers for his digs and that a few of them died whereas working for him; the museum accepts these accounts. The argument for restitution rests on the concept Naturalis’s possession of the gathering relies on colonial energy.

Indonesia has requested the gathering’s return earlier than: The primary time was instantly after it gained independence, in 1949. Museum directors argued on the time that scientific finds had been common heritage, relatively than nationwide patrimony; additionally they argued that the fossils wouldn’t have been found with out Dubois’s initiative. For years, the establishment has maintained a “finders keepers” angle that’s thought of more and more problematic.

In response to the declare, the Dutch Ministry of Training, Tradition and Science is organising a fee to weigh in on the matter, a course of that would take months, mentioned Jules van de Ven, a ministry spokesman. “What’s necessary to the Dutch authorities is: How did it get into our state assortment?” he mentioned. He added that if the committee decided that “we took it with out shopping for it, and it wasn’t a present, then we’ll return it. The scientific worth of a sure artifact to a set shouldn’t be a part of the restitution debate so far as the federal government is anxious.”

Naturalis’s deputy director, Maaike Romijn, mentioned in an interview that the museum would observe the ministry’s recommendation, however she added that the influence of returning the Dubois Assortment wouldn’t be restricted to her museum, or to the Netherlands, however would have an effect on “the total worldwide scientific subject.”

“Massive components of our pure historical past collections right here, and likewise all through the world, had been collected throughout colonial occasions,” she mentioned. “That’s only a reality. The query is: With this altering perspective, how are we going to now take a look at these collections?”

Bonnie Triyana, a historian who’s the secretary of Indonesia’s repatriation committee, mentioned that it was not so easy simply to look previous the circumstances by which many fossils had been acquired. It was “the colonial context,” he mentioned, that allowed Dubois “to take this assortment away so simply from the place it belongs.” Seventy-seven years have handed since Indonesia gained sovereignty, he mentioned, including that the 2 nations can now coordinate scientific actions as equal companions.

The controversy about whether or not Java Man belongs in Naturalis or within the Nationwide Museum of Indonesia in Jakarta — which presently shows a copy of the fossils — suits into a bigger course of often called the “decolonization of museums.”

In 2017, President Emmanuel Macron of France pledged to make the return of African cultural artifacts a “top priority” for his administration. Whereas France has been sluggish in residing as much as Macron’s promise, with just a few headline-grabbing restitutions, his assertion nonetheless prompted different European nations to reply to repatriation requests, resulting in some necessary returns, comparable to Germany’s gradual restitution of Benin Bronzes to Nigeria.

Whereas Nigeria argued that the Bronzes characterize its cultural patrimony from current centuries, it’s more durable for nations to argue for the restitution of prehistoric objects with out trying on the particular circumstances round their elimination.

In 2020, the Zambian authorities renewed a claim for Rhodesian Man, a 250,000-year-old fossilized cranium found in 1921. The cranium, which is a uncommon specimen of the human ancestor Homo heidelbergensis , was found in a zinc mine within the former British protectorate of Northern Rhodesia, which achieved independence as Zambia in 1964; the fossil is now within the Pure Historical past Museum in London. Zambia argues that it was eliminated illegally.

This summer season, the State Museum of Pure Historical past Karlsruhe, in Germany, introduced that it could return a 110-million-year-old dinosaur fossil to Brazil, the place it was unearthed a few decade in the past, as a result of it was eliminated with out correct export permits and documentation.

These instances are solely the tip of the iceberg, mentioned Wiebke Ahrndt, president of the German Museums Affiliation, who helped Germany formulate a algorithm for dealing with objects acquired throughout colonial occasions. “The subject of archaeological objects from colonial contexts is one thing fairly new,” she mentioned, “however it’s a rising situation.”

International locations in search of restitution of things that may be thought of scientific, organic or a part of pure historical past could face additional difficulties with their claims, mentioned Alexander Herman, director of the Institute of Artwork and Legislation in London. “Gadgets of scientific significance could be examined and cared for anyplace,” he mentioned. “They don’t should be in a specific nation state. In that sense, there’s an argument to be made that the significance to the nation of origin is much less clear.”

Pieter ter Keurs, a professor at Leiden College who research museums, mentioned that instances just like the one involving Java Man shouldn’t be selected authorized issues alone.

“There’s a ethical and moral facet of the difficulty,” he mentioned. “Dubois himself didn’t discover these objects; he used compelled laborers,” he added. “On the time, what Dubois did was thought of authorized, however by as we speak’s moral requirements, we are saying, ‘You’ll be able to’t use compelled labor.’ Sure, it’s a judgment from these days in regards to the previous, however that’s what’s continuously occurring now

The Dubois Assortment is only one entry on a listing of eight that the Indonesian authorities desires the Netherlands to repatriate. The checklist turned public final month, when an Indonesian official shared it on a slide throughout a lecture at a museums convention in Bandung, Indonesia.

A Dutch scholar attending the convention remotely, Fenneke Sysling, snapped {a photograph} and shared it on Twitter. A information merchandise then ran within the Dutch newspaper Trouw, resulting in extra articles, and quite a lot of public controversy. “Theft is theft,” an opinion column within the NRC Handelsblad newspaper mentioned. A bunch of historians, writing in the newspaper De Volkskrant, known as Naturalis’s response to restitution claims “deplorable.”

Sysling, a historian of science and colonialism on the College of Leiden, who co-authored a scholarly paper on the provenance of the Dubois Assortment, mentioned it was factor that the controversy about restitution had expanded to incorporate prehistorical objects.

“There may be a synthetic divide between pure historical past museums and all the opposite museums,” she mentioned, as a result of the pure historical past museums have thought of their collections above the fray of politics.

“That is a completely new class on this debate,” she added. “It targets a museum that has up to now had nothing to do with repatriation discussions, which signifies that all types of scientists can have one thing to say about it.”