The Netherlands refer “Java Man”, thousands of colonial era fossils from Indonesia

The Dutch government has agreed to return thousands of fossils to Indonesia from a world renown collection, after a commission judged that they had been removed from its colonial functions “against the will of the people,” the Ministry of Education announced on Friday.

The historically significant trow known as the Dubois collection includes a piece of discovered skull of the solo river on the island of Java which is considered to be the first fossil proof of Homo Erectus, which is generally considered an ancestor of our species, Homo sapiens. Fossils are often called “Java Man”.

The decision to return more than 28,000 fossils to Indonesia is the last act of restitution by the Dutch government of art and artefacts taken – often by force – countries around the world in the colonial era.

The fossils were searched at the end of the 19th century by the Dutch anatomist and geologist Eugene Dubois, when the current Indonesia was a colony of the Netherlands.

After in -depth research, the Dutch colonial collections committee concluded that “the circumstances in which the fossils were obtained means that it is likely that they were removed against the will of the people, which leads to an act of injustice against them”.

Fossils had a spiritual and economic value for the local population, which were forced to reveal fossil sites.

The Minister of Education, Culture and Sciences Gouke Moes sealed the agreement on Friday with his Indonesian counterpart Fadli Zon at the Naturalis Museum in Leiden, where the collection is currently accommodated.

“Committee’s advice is based on in -depth and in -depth research,” Mues said in a statement. “We will apply the same level of meticulousness in work with Naturalis and our Indonesian partners to ensure that the transfer takes place gently. Indonesia and the Netherlands believe that it is important that the collection remains a source of scientific research.”

Also Friday, Indonesian President Prabowo suffered met the Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima in their palace in The Hague.

Homo Erectus appeared in Africa about two million years ago and spread over there and in Asia, and perhaps in Europe.

He reached Java over 1.5 million years ago, and dating techniques suggest that she died at least 35,000 years before the arrival of our own species, Homo Sapiens.

Stolen artifacts return home

This is not the first time that the Netherlands have returned artifacts or stolen objects during its colonial past. In 2023, he returned hundreds of objects to Indonesia and Sri Lanka, and returned more to Indonesia in 2024, including four Buddhist Hindu sculptures.

Some other Western nations return from looted artefacts and other objects as part of a calculation with their often brutal colonial stories. Earlier this month, Madagascar received three indigenous warriors’ warriors returned from France, a believer to be a king killed by French troops 128 years ago. The repatriation marked the first use of a French law in 2023 regulating the return of human remains to its former colonies.

In recent years, a Berlin museum has announced that it was ready to return hundreds of human skulls from the former German colony in East Africa, and Belgium has returned a gold tooth belonging to the hero of Congolese independence killed Patrice Lumumba. France has said that it would return from statues, royal thrones and sacred altars drawn from the West African nation of Benin.

Although repatriation efforts have increased in Canada, there is still no federal legislation facilitating the repatriation of Canada’s museums.

Repatriation generally occurs on a case -by -case basis in Canadian museums. The Royal Ontario Museum, the largest museum in Canada, returned possessions From a chief of the 19th century plains to his descendants in 2023.

A government survey published in 2019 revealed that there were approximately 6.7 million Aboriginal cultural artefacts in Canadian museums and around 2,500 ancestral remains.

Meanwhile, Aboriginal groups in Canada are fighting for the return of artifacts and human remains that were taken to Europe by the colonizers.

The federal government concluded an agreement with the National Scotland Museum in 2019 to return the remains of a Beothuk husband and woman, whose graves were ransacked by an Scottish Canadian explorer in the 1820s. The same museum made a Commemorative Totème pole Belonging to members of the Nisga’a nation in the northwest of British Columbia in 2023, after having displayed it for almost a century.