Location and site

Excavations here from 1936 to 1941 led to the discovery of the first hominid fossil at this site. Later, 50 fossils of Meganthropus palaeo and Pithecanthropus erectus/Homo erectus were found – half of all the world’s known hominid fossils. Inhabited for the past one and a half million years, Sangiran is one of the key sites for the understanding of human evolution. Sangiran Early Man Site is situated about 15 kilometers in the north of Surakarta, also called Solo, the name of the first village, town in Central Java, Indonesia, covering an area of 5,600 hectares.

Registration criteria

Criterion (iii): This property is one of the key sites for the understanding of human evolution that admirably illustrates the development of Homo sapiens sapiens, over two million years from the Lower Pleistocene to the present through the outstanding fossils (human and animal) and artefactual material that it has produced.

Criterion (vi): The property is displaying many aspects of very long-term human physical and cultural evolution in an environmental context.  It will continue to be so and remain dynamically informative.

Historical reference

• There is a very significant geological sequence from the upper Pliocene until the end of Middle Pleistocene by depicting the human, faunal, and cultural evolutions within the last 2.4 million years.
• The property also yields important archaeological occupation floors dating back to the Lower Pleistocene around 1.2 million years ago.

Source: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/593/