“I do feel the historical significance of this trip,” Marcel Beukeboom, the general director of the Dutch museum where the items had been displayed, said on Monday in a text message from a plane as he transported the bones in a GPS-tracked, climate-controlled suitcase with a diplomatic seal.
The debate around repatriation in this case shifted toward a question of intellectual ownership and scientific sovereignty. Given that they were removed by foreign representatives of a colonial power, which enslaved local people and exploited local resources, officials in the Netherlands and Indonesia agreed that the fossils are part of Indonesian history.
Until recently, the remains were the centerpiece of the popular Early Humans hall at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the city of Leiden, displayed next to a representation of what Java Man might have looked like. They were among the more than 40,000 objects that Dubois removed from the banks of the Bengawan Solo river on the island of Java and at other digs in what was then called the Dutch East Indies.
He shipped them back to the Netherlands beginning in 1891, and they went into the collection at the Naturalis, a 200-year-old scientific institution.
Indonesia first made an official request for the return of Java Man and the larger Dubois Collection soon after gaining independence from Dutch rule in 1949.
Officials swatted away the claims for years, but after a Dutch government advisory committee advised more action on colonial-era restitution in 2020, the Indonesian government asked once more. The committee also commissioned a study of the Dubois Collection’s provenance and ultimately recommended that the entire trove be returned.
Sri Margana, a scholar of Javanese history at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, said that Indonesian scientists would now be able to compare the fossils with others recently found in Sumatra and Sulawesi to make new links to human evolution in Asia.
“It’s also about recognizing the role of the Indigenous people in this discovery,” he added. “The expedition was led by Dubois, but actually he didn’t do that much. He was relying on the local people who did the hard work, and also Indigenous intellectuals, who already know the place, had the knowledge of the ancient history, and also local leaders who were involved in this. We want to recognize that part of the history as well.”
