ABSTRACT
The guardians of human origins, in so far as these are embodied in fossils, are predominantly male: two exceptions, Maeve Leakey and Marie-Antoinette de Lumley, custodians through marriage to Richard Leakey and Henri de Lumley, respectively, are exceptions which prove the rule. Pithecanthropus erectus, discovered by the Dutchman Eugène Dubois a century ago on Java, and now classified as the type specimen of Homo erectus, is a case in point. Dubois’ collection was transported to Holland in the late 1890s, where it has already passed through the hands of three generations of curators at the Dutch National Museum of Natural History. The collection comprises some 12,000 Pleistocene faunal fossils, including the skull-cap, molar and thigh-bone of Pithecanthropus erectus. Only specialists are usually granted access to the collection, which obviously adds extra piquancy to any public display of the fossils.
