August 7, Tuesday

August 7, Tuesday

We left Jogjakarta at 8 am today.  

 Mount Merapi (Fire Mountain) to the north.  “An active stratovolcano located on the border between Central Java and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. It is the most active volcano in Indonesia and has erupted regularly since 1548. It is located approximately 28 kilometres (17 mi) north of Yogyakarta city, and thousands of people live on the flanks of the volcano, with villages as high as 1,700 metres (5,600 ft) above sea level.”     This is the volcano that erupted in 2010 covering Borobudur with 10 cm of ash.

I told you !  Almost every round-about has some type of statue on it.

During one of my conversations with Daniel, I asked him if he knew where Java Man had been discovered.  He said it near Sangiran Village, but that it was too far out of the way for us to go.   Dodi indicated this morning however that it was only about 15 km north of Surakarta, which we were passing on our drive today.  (Second time I realize Daniel can’t read a map.)    If I was willing to give something else up, we could go visit the site.  YES!   I told him that I could go through both the palace and the temple we were scheduled to see today, without the use of a guide and very quickly, giving us time for me to visit the archeological site.

We drove to Surakarta and then north to the small town of Sangiran where the archeological museum about Java Man was located.  Unfortunately the dig itself was not located here, it was a few kilometers away and would take too much time to get to, visit and come back, so I only got to see the museum.  The volcanic soil on Java has been a rich source of fossils of all kinds.  Kind of nice anyway since I saw “Lucy” in South Africa and now “Java man

“Java Man (Homo erectus erectus) is the name given to fossils discovered in 1891 at Trinil - Ngawi Regency on the banks of the Solo River in East Java, Indonesia, one of the first known specimens of Homo erectus. Its discoverer, Eugène Dubois, gave it the scientific name Pithecanthropus erectus, a name derived from Greek and Latin roots meaning upright ape-man.    Until older human remains were discovered in the Great Rift Valley in Kenya, Dubois' and Koenigswald's discoveries were the oldest hominid remains ever found. Some scientists of the day suggested Dubois' Java Man as 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 (possibly Homo ergaster), rather than the Asian populations exemplified by Java Man and Peking Man.”   

Considered as being the “missing link” at the time it was found, Java man existed 1,000,000 to 500,000 years ago and pre-dates Peking man. Flores Man or Homo floresiensis (initially nicknamed the Hobbit) found on Flores Island Indonesia, had a small body and a small brain and lived about 12,000 years ago; very recent in terms of evolution.  It was later renamed “Flo” after it was identified as having been a female.

 The skull found in Sangiran

 I wish I could read Indonesian !

There were notes about Charles Darwin who visited Java in during his 1831 to 1835 voyage on the Beagle. (Other people who had their own ideas on the theory of man’s evolution through natural selection and who are mentioned in the museum: Alfred Wallace (worked with Darwin), Gregor J. Mendel (genetics / inheritance), Ernst Haeckle (biologist, zoologist), Thomas Huxley (comparative anatomy). Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn (Botanist who researched in Java). Eugene Dubois (Dutch paleoanthropologist who found remains in 1891 of what he called Pithecanthropus erectus or "ape-human that stands upright" or “Java Man”. They all had their own theories of evolution. At the time, none of them believed that man originated from Africa; the theory was that there were four main branches: Eurasian, African, Arabic & Mongolean.

Why Australopithecus? “Pithecus” Greek word meaning ape. “Australe” means south, or found in the southern hemisphere, it has nothing to do with the country Australia. {Other way around actually.}

Unfortunately almost all the notes in the museum were in Indonesian so I could not read much. I took some pictures of the notes anyway and will try to put them through a translator to see what it says.

Best exhibit of all ......Homo erectus as “The Thinker”  !   I LOVE IT

 Art work covers the outside museum walls.  "The mammoth hunters"

 Depictions of Java man

Anthropological sculptor Elisabeth Daynes created these images of Java Man and Flores based on the skulls found in Indonesia. She has also created images from finds in the Lascaux caves in France, Lucy in South Africa, King Tut in Egypt, others in Spain.  Le penseur de Rodin, is her idea.SUPERBE !    
Check out her web-site at http://www.daynes.com/en/reconstructions.php

 
The gates to the museum grounds as we leave Sangiran Village

Back in Surakarta, we stopped in Solo to visit Mangkunegaran Palace.  I searched and searched on the map to try to find Solo, to no avail.  It turns out it is the older part of Surakarta!  The palace belonged to the king’s brother, a sultan!  The Dutch at some point decided that they did not want both brothers in the same city, so the younger brother moved here from Yogyakarta.  Established in 1757, the palace (not a real palace, more of a large covered gazebo)  The living quarters of the royal family are in a building at the back and has a definite Dutch influence in its architecture.

 The old gates to the compound

 Again, the traditional covered open air building to receive the people and where the "sultan held sway".

 The entrance to the palace.  From here on = no photos

 As we exit the palace (?) you can see that it dates to the Dutch period and used their style of architecture.
Not that impressive really and I did a quick walk through since I couldn’t take any pictures inside the building and none of the notes were in English. It took me less than 15 minutes to walk through and get back into the car for us to continue our drive. This building did look a bit more like a palace than the one in Yogyakarta. {If you are wondering what “karta” means, like I was, it means either “city”or “Java” or “prosperous”.   I’m still wondering since every time I ask, or research it on the internet, I get a different answer!    I’ll go with “city” since it seems to be the most logical Jaya-karta or Ja-karta = Victory City. Yogya-karta = ? still have not found. Sura-karta = Heroic City} 

Some of the small streets we took today.

We are leaving Central Java and entering East Java.   We left the main highway at Surakarta and headed southeast towards Mt. Lawu, the town of Sarangan and the erotic Sukuh Temple, built in the shape of a stepped pyramid.    This is another Hindu temple site and there are only ruins left though some restoration was carried out in the late 70s.

 Sukuh Temple

 
 There was definitely a theme to this temple

 The steps up to the third pyramid was quite steep, actually more like a ladder than stairs.

 The view from the top

and down into the valley

 
On this shot you can really see why they compare it to a Mayan temple

After visiting the temple, the drive brought us higher and higher up Mt Lawu, a massive compound stratovolcano, with some spectacular views from the south and east (the west side having been hidden by clouds). 

 We are on very narrow roads

 but the views are spectacular

 
The mountain is huge and beautiful

 
 and the views continue to be spectacular

 
 but the roads are really narrow and the GPS keeps pointing to more short cuts.

 Third indication that Daniel has no idea how to read a map: He said we would be heading towards Madiun, according to my map that should have been a fairly short drive, mostly on a “fairly” main road and in a north easterly direction, until we reached the main highway which would take us along the northern route around Mts Liman& Dorowati. After hours and hours of driving on narrower and narrower roads (the GPS kept finding shortcuts and Dodi kept taking them ! ! ) I have to admit the views were spectacular and I enjoyed it for the first hour, but as the roads got narrower and narrower, and steeper and steeper, it was no longer fun. Another roller coaster of a ride and we ended up in Ponorogo, which is completely south of what Daniel had said. Thank God (or I guess that should be Allah in this case) Dodi knows where he is going since he is driving. He had a long conversation with Daniel, in their Indonesian language where the only words I understood were Trenggalek & Blitar, which were along the southern route around Mts Liman & Dorowati, and a shorter route to reach Blitar where I would be spending the night. But it was now 5 pm and we still had about 110 km to cover. That should be easily done right? Well, not in Java. We arrived in Blitar at 7:30 pm, the last 1 ½ hours driven in the dark. Would it have made a difference if we had not gone to the site of Java Man? Possibly, but the shortcuts the GPS kept finding were on very narrow mountain roads where the pavement was not in the best conditions and our speed had to be reduced to about 15 km/hour. Not much of a short cut time-wise.  

 Another range of mountains close to our destination

 We are getting up higher and closer to it now.

 The sun sets and we are still a long way to our destination tonight.

I was staying at the Tugu Blitar Hotel for the night and enjoyed a great dinner of beef which had been stewed in coconut milk and some other herbs and/or spices. DELICIOUS ! Love this Javanese food.

It had been an extremely long and tiring day and I was asleep long before 10 pm.

 My room for tonight

and again my washroom and shower area are partially outside.  Note to self:  Keep door to bathroom closed from the bedroom to keep mosquitoes out.