BioArts

Homo erectus Dubois, 1894 (Человек прямоходящий) = Pithecanthropus Dubois, 1894 (Питекантроп = Обезьяночеловек = Обезьянолюди) † - 00646

"Pithecanthropus alalus" †
Ernst Haeckel was a flamboyant figure. He sometimes took great (and non-scientific) leaps from available evidence. For example, at the time that Darwin first published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), no remains of human ancestors had yet been found. Haeckel postulated that evidence of human evolution would be found in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and described these theoretical remains in great detail. He even named the as-of-yet unfound species, Pithecanthropus alalus, and charged his students to go find it. (Richard and Oskar Hertwig were two of Haeckel's many important students.) One student did find the remains: a young Dutchman named Eugene Dubois went to the East Indies and dug up the remains of Java Man, the first human ancestral remains ever found. These remains originally carried Haeckel's Pithecanthropus label, though they were later reclassified as Homo erectus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel
Haeckel's Pithecanthropus alalus (speechless ape-man) as depicted in 1894 by the painter Gabriel Max. This painting was commissioned by Haeckel's rival Rudolf Virchow (who was openly opposed to the application of the theory of organic descent to human kind). Instead of having the desired effect of making sport of Haeckel (who, in 1874, had been theoretically audacious enough to include pithecanthropus in a hypothetical evolutionary tree), the painting served instead to reify Haeckel's unsubstantiated postulation. This reified image, negatively influenced at least two decades of hominid specimen interpretation. It was later hung in the Haeckel Museum in Jena.

Synonyms of Homo erectus:

Africa:
Telanthropus capensis Broom & Robinson, 1949
Atlanthropus mauretanicus Arambourg, 1954
Homo leakeyi Heberer, 1963
Tchadanthropus uxoris Coppens, 1965
Homo ergaster

Asia:
Anthropopithecus erectus Dubois, 1892
Pithecanthropus erectus Dubois, 1894
Sinanthropus pekinensis Black, 1927
Homo (Javanthropus) soloensis Oppenoorth, 1932
Sinanthropus officinalis von Koenigswald, 1953
Sinanthropus lantianensis Woo, 1964