Java Man
Until the Taung childthe 2.8 million-year-old remains of an "Australopithecus africanus"were discovered in South Africa in 1924, Dubois's and Koenigswald's discoveries were the oldest hominid remains ever found. Some scientists of the day suggested that Dubois's Java Man was a potential intermediate form between modern humans and the common ancestor we share with the other great apes. The current consensus of anthropologists is that the direct ancestors of modern humans were African populations of "Homo erectus" ("Homo ergaster"), rather than the Asian populations of the same species exemplified by Java Man and Peking Man.