Sangiran

Sangiran is an archaeological site on the island of Java in Indonesia. The excavation area comprises about 48 km ² and is located in the province of Central Java, about 15 kilometers north of Surakarta.

It was recognized by UNESCO as World Heritage in 1996.

1934 began the anthropologist Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald with investigations in this area. In the following years some of the oldest fossils of the genus Homo outside Africa have been discovered during excavations. They were initially called Pithecanthropus erectus or Java Man; since the 1980s, all similar to ancient fossils from Java will be provided to Homo erectus.

To date, the fossil remains were discovered about 40 individuals on Java, including findings, which are called Meganthropus and may have been close to Homo erectus.