In 1892, near Trinil on the island of Java, laborers under the direction of the expatriate Dutch physician‐anatomist Eugène Dubois uncovered fossil bones that, Dubois believed, belonged to a single member of a hitherto‐undiscovered species. Dubois named the species Pithecanthropus erectus , a reflection of his steadfast belief in its transitional role in human evolution. The fossil, popularly known as “Java Man,” is now classified as Homo erectus—a species not fully human but far closer to us th…
Read moreIn 1892, near Trinil on the island of Java, laborers under the direction of the expatriate Dutch physician‐anatomist Eugène Dubois uncovered fossil bones that, Dubois believed, belonged to a single member of a hitherto‐undiscovered species. Dubois named the species Pithecanthropus erectus , a reflection of his steadfast belief in its transitional role in human evolution. The fossil, popularly known as “Java Man,” is now classified as Homo erectus—a species not fully human but far closer to us than Dubois envisioned.Dubois and Pithecanthropus have been covered before: briefly in Carl Swisher, Garniss Curtis, and Roger Lewin's Java Man and at length in Bert Theunissen's Eugene Dubois and the Ape‐Man from Java . Pat Shipman's interests are more strictly biographical: Dubois as a family man, as a European in Southeast Asia, and as a scientist struggling to establish a career and a reputation. The Man Who Found the Missing Link weaves together the multiple threads of a complex life: extensive travels, eclectic scientific interests, tempestuous relations with colleagues, and a slowly disintegrating marriage. It vividly conveys Dubois's near‐obsession with the Pithecanthropus erectus fossils and his tenacity in defending their significance. Shipman tells the story almost exclusively from Dubois's point of view and almost exclusively in the present tense, sacrificing authorial distance for immediacy. The book often reads, therefore, as if it were Dubois's own memoir, “as told to” Shipman.Lavishly produced by a major trade publisher, Shipman's book is clearly aimed at readers who have enjoyed the work of Dava Sobel, Bella Bathurst, and Simon Winchester. Taken on those terms, it succeeds admirably. Like Sobel's Longitude and Winchester's The Map That Changed the World , it is a vigorous tale of an embattled scientific maverick who triumphs despite repeated setbacks. Like them, it succeeds both as literature and as a character study.Historians interested in the book for professional reasons will find it less satisfying. It is full of recounted conversations and descriptions of unvoiced thoughts and feelings—these elements are the heart of the book's literary style and essential to its characterization of Dubois. The sparse and sketchy endnotes make it impossible, however, to determine the sources of this material or to draw clear lines between contemporary accounts, after‐the‐fact recollections, the author's inferences, and outright speculations. Shipman writes, in one alarming example, that “Dubois is something else, something extraordinary, the coolies conclude. He is a chosen man. Clearly he has been given a special role or dharma through a divine revelation: that is the only possible explanation” . With no endnote to explain the source of this insight into the coolies' thoughts, readers are left to wonder if it is Dubois's own imperialist fantasy, reported as if it were fact.Shipman also does little to relate Dubois to the scientific world of his day. Coverage of the culture of colonial science, Dutch scientific institutions, and turn‐of‐the‐century debates over human evolution is scant. Scientists like Henry Fairfield Osborn, Ales Hrdlicka, and Ralph Von Koenigswald are introduced with only vague indications of their interests, status, or intellectual commitments. Hominid fossils other than Pithecanthropus erectus receive little more attention; even the Neanderthals, on whom Shipman has coauthored an authoritative book, are accorded only a handful of pages. All of this makes it difficult to assess whether Dubois's experiences were typical of the times, places, and fields in which he worked. It also undercuts Shipman's claim that Dubois, by his dogged insistence on the “missing link” status of Pithecanthropus erectus, forced his fellow scientists to confront the reality of human evolution
