Secret of The Universe, Science and The Holy Qur'an

Origin of The Universe

The problem of the origin of the solar system and of the entire universe is of great theoretical and practical importance. All scientists agree that celestial bodies were formed of identical matter. Various hypotheses were enunciated to explain the origin of the solar system. One of the first was the hypothesis advanced by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) in 1755.

He said the universe was formed of the primary matter filling cosmic space. The particles of this, apparently, solid matter were in a state of rest but differed from each other in density and mass. Attracted by mutual gravitation, they began to move and form separate condensations. These condensations continued to interact, the bigger condensations attracting the smaller ones in the sphere of their action. Thus were formed large knots of matter. But besides gravitational forces there are forces of mutual repulsion, under the action of which colliding particles bounce away from each other in different directions. The direction that the moving particles were given most frequently became predominant, and a mass of knots of matter began to revolve in one direction round a bigger knot, round a central body-The Sun.

The particles revolving round the Sun represented rings of a meteor shower, which had its own centres of attraction-the nuclei of future planets. Gradually uniting under the force of gravitation all meteors are thus transformed into a system of planets circling round the Sun.

In 1796 Pierre Laplace (1748-1827) advanced a similar hypothesis of the origin of the solar system and other worlds. His hypothesis was that the matter of which the Sun, the planets and their satellites consist was at one time of rarefied of gaseous cloud (nebula), Which was in a state of rotation (the cause of which is unknown). On account of the attraction between the particles, this nebula began to condense in its centre and this led to the formation of the primeval Sun. In the beginning it was enveloped in a nebula revolving evenly round it. The particles nearest to the Sun thus described orbits of lesser radius, while those more distant described orbits of bigger radius in the same span of time. Therefore, the farther away from the centre, and the weaker the gravitation, the greater the centrifugal force became. At a certain distance from the centre these forces struck a balance. The boundary separating the given system from the others passed throughthis point.

Giving away its heat into space, the revolving nebula gradually cooled down aqnd, consequently, contracted. That led to an increase of the velocity of rotation, which at length attained a value at which the centrifugal force exceeded the inward pull of gravity. On account of this, the nebula began to lose its spherical form and to change into a more and more pronounced spheroid. Round its equator the nebula began to disintegrate into several narrow and thin rings. Under the influence of uneven cooling, the rings broke off and, owing to the attraction between the particles, the planets revolving round the Sun were formed.

In contrast to Kant's hypothesis, which drew no attention, Laplace's propositions became very popular as soon as they were published, and they influenced the development of astronomy in the nineteenth century. Laplace's hypothesis explained why the planets revolved round the Sun in the same direction as the Sun was rotating round its own axis, why their orbits were arranged nearly in the same plane, why they were rotating round their axis in the same direction as Sun, and so on.

At present the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace, whose content is very nearly the same, are known as the Kant-Laplace hypothesis.

Further study of the universe and the solar system revealed numerous facts that contradicted the Kant-Laplace propositions. It became known, for example, that the satellites of some planets do not rotate in the same direction as the planets themselves (this concerns some of the satellites of Uranus and Jupiter).

Other cosmogonical hypothesis (the hypotheses of Moulton, Chamberlin, Jeans and others) developed out of the Kant-Laplace hypothesis in the twentieth century.

In the past few decades the Soviet scientists who have been developing cosmogonical hypotheses have introduced essential corrections into the scientific ideas advanced in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One of them, Otto Schmidt, believed the early hypotheses were untenable because they were only qualitative. Modern cosmogony, he said, should also engage in quantitative study based on mathematical and statistical methods.

In 1944 Schmidt put forward a new hypothesis in which it was assumed that the planets of the solar system originated from a gas -dust nebula attracted by the Sun as it moved in interstellar space.

The solid meteorite particles revolving round the Sun united under the influence of gravitation and gave rise to the planets. This process of unification of the planets proceeded rather intensively so long as the meteor shower was dense, but in the last 2,000 million years the addition of meteorite to the Earth has been very inconsiderable. The redistribution of the meteorite mass within the Earth proceeded only in a viscous-plastic state without transition through a fluid stage. The Earth, according to Schmidt, was never hot, its average temperature never exceeding 4 degree. The subsequent heating of the Earth is associated with the decay of radioactive elements.

Schmidt's hypothesis plausibly explains all the structural features of the solar system: the circular orbits, the revolution of the planets, the laws governing the scaping of the planets, the division of the planets into two groups (large planets and planets of the terrestrial type); moreover, on the assumption that planets received their quantity of motion from without during the capture of a gas-dust cloud, at the expense of the enormous momentum of rotation of the Galaxy, it solves the major problem of the distribution of mass and momentum in the solar system.

In 1957 the American theoretical physicist John Wheeler coined his term Wormhole. In physics, a wormhole is a hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that is basically a 'shortcut' through space and time. Spacetime can be viewed as a 2D surface, and when 'folded' over, a wormhole bridge can be formed. A wormhole has at least two mouths which are connected to a single throat or tube. If the wormhole is traversable, matter can 'travel' from one mouth to the other by passing through the throat. While there is no observational evidence for wormholes, spacetimes-containing wormholes are known to be valid solutions in general relativity.

However, the idea of wormholes was invented already in 1921 by the German mathematician Hermann Weyl in connection with his analysis of mass in terms of electromagnetic field energy.

The name "wormhole" comes from an analogy used to explain the phenomenon. If a worm is travelling over the skin of an apple, then the worm could take a shortcut to the opposite side of the apple's skin by burrowing through its center, rather than travelling the entire distance around, just as a wormhole traveler could take a shortcut to the opposite side of the universe through a topologically nontrivial tunnel.

The basic notion of an intra-universe wormhole is that it is a compact region of spacetime whose boundary is topologically trivial but whose interior is not simply connected. Formalizing this idea leads to definitions such as the following, taken from Matt Visser's Lorentzian Wormholes.

If a Minkowski spacetime contains a compact region Ω, and if the topology of Ω is of the form Ω ~ R x Σ, where Σ is a three-manifold of nontrivial topology, whose boundary has topology of the form dΣ ~ S², and if, furthermore, the hypersurfaces Σ are all spacelike, then the region Ω contains a quasipermanent intra-universe wormhole.

Characterizing inter-universe wormholes is more difficult. For example, one can imagine a 'baby' universe connected to its 'parent' by a narrow 'umbilicus'. One might like to regard the umbilicus as the throat of a wormhole, but the space time is simply connected.

It is known that (Lorentzian) wormholes are not excluded within the framework of general relativity, but the physical plausibility of these solutions is uncertain. It is also unknown whether a theory of quantum gravity, merging general relativity with quantum mechanics, would still allow them. Most known solutions of general relativity which allow for traversable wormholes require the existence of exotic matter, a theoretical substance which has negative energy density. However, it has not been mathematically proven that this is an absolute requirement for traversable wormholes, nor has it been established that exotic matter cannot exist.

A black hole is a region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing, not even electromagnetic radiation (e.g. visible light), can escape its pull after having fallen past its event horizon. The term derives from the fact that the absorbsion of visible light renders the hole's interior invisible, and indistinguishable from the black space around it.

Despite its interior being invisible, a black hole may reveal its presence through an interaction with matter that lies in orbit outside its event horizon. For example, a black hole may be perceived by tracking the movement of a group of stars that orbit its center. Alternatively, one may observe gas (from a nearby star, for instance) that has been drawn into the black hole. The gas spirals inward, heating up to very high temperatures and emitting large amounts of radiation that can be detected from earthbound and earth-orbiting telescopes. Such observations have resulted in the general scientific consensus that—barring a breakdown in our understanding of nature—black holes do exist in our universe.

The idea of an object with gravity strong enough to prevent light from escaping was proposed in 1783 by the Reverend John Michell an amateur British astronomer. In 1795, Pierre-Simon Laplace, a French physicist independently came to the same conclusion. Black holes, as currently understood, are described by the general theory of relativity. This theory predicts that when a large enough amount of mass is present in a sufficiently small region of space, all paths through space are warped inwards towards the center of the volume, preventing all matter and radiation within it from escaping.

While general relativity describes a black hole as a region of empty space with a pointlike singularity at the center and an event horizon at the outer edge, the description changes when the effects of quantum mechanics are taken into account. Research on this subject indicates that, rather than holding captured matter forever, black holes may slowly leak a form of thermal energy called Hawking radiation. However, the final, correct description of black holes, requiring a theory of quantum gravity, is unknown.

The term black hole to describe this phenomenon dates from the mid-1960s, though its precise origins are unclear. Physicist John Wheeler is widely credited with coining it in his 1967 public lecture Our Universe: the Known and Unknown, as an alternative to the more cumbersome "gravitationally completely collapsed star". However, Wheeler himself insisted that the term had actually been coined by someone else at the conference and adopted by him as a useful shorthand. The term was also cited in a 1964 letter by Anne Ewing to the AAAS.

According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, as mass is added to a degenerate star a sudden collapse will take place and the intense gravitational field of the star will close in on itself. Such a star then forms a "black hole" in the universe.

The phrase had already entered the language years earlier as the Black Hole of Calcutta incident of 1756 in which 146 Europeans were locked up overnight in punishment cell of barracks at Fort William by Siraj ud-Daulah, and all but 23 perished.

Popular accounts commonly try to explain the black hole phenomenon by using the concept of escape velocity, the speed needed for a vessel starting at the surface of a massive object to completely clear the object's gravitational field. It follows from Newton's law of gravity that a sufficiently dense object's escape velocity will equal or even exceed the speed of light. Citing that nothing can exceed the speed of light they then infer that nothing would be able to escape such a dense object. However, the argument has a flaw in that it doesn't explain why light would be affected by a gravitating body or why it would not be able to escape. Nor does it give a satisfactory explanation for why a powered spaceship would not be able to break free.

Two concepts introduced by Albert Einstein are needed to explain the phenomenon. The first is that time and space are not two independent concepts, but are interrelated forming a single continuum, spacetime. This continuum has some special properties. An object is not free to move around spacetime at will, instead it must always move forwards in time, and not only must an object move forwards in time, it also cannot change its position faster than the speed of light. This is the main result of the theory of special relativity.

The second concept is the base of general relativity: mass deforms the structure of this spacetime. The effect of a mass on spacetime can informally be described as tilting the direction of time towards the mass. As a result, objects tend to move towards masses. This is experienced as gravity. This tilting effect becomes more pronounced as the distance to the mass becomes smaller. At some point close to the mass the tilting becomes so strong that all the possible paths an object can take lead towards the mass. This implies that any object that crosses this point can no longer get further away from the mass, not even using powered flight. This point is called the event horizon.

The Big Bang is the cosmological model of the universe that is best supported by all lines of scientific evidence and observation. The essential idea is that the universe has expanded from a primordial hot and dense initial condition at some finite time in the past and continues to expand to this day. Georges Lemaître proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, although he called it his 'hypothesis of the primeval atom'. The framework for the model relies on Albert Einstein's General Relativity as formulated by Alexander Friedmann. After Edwin Hubble discovered in 1929 that the distances to far away galaxies were generally proportional to their redshifts, this observation was taken to indicate that all very distant galaxies and clusters have an apparent velocity directly away from our vantage point. The farther away, the higher the apparent velocity. If the distance between galaxy clusters is increasing today, everything must have been closer together in the past. This idea has been considered in detail back in time to extreme densities and temperatures, and large particle accelerators have been built to experiment on and test such conditions, resulting in significant confirmation of the theory. But these accelerators can only probe so far into such high energy regimes. Without any evidence associated with the earliest instant of the expansion, the Big Bang theory cannot and does not provide any explanation for such an initial condition, rather explaining the general evolution of the universe since that instant. The observed abundances of the light elements throughout the cosmos closely match the calculated predictions for the formation of these elements from nuclear processes in the rapidly expanding and cooling first minutes of the universe, as logically and quantitatively detailed according to Big Bang nucleosynthesis.

Fred Hoyle is credited with coining the phrase 'Big Bang' during a 1949 radio broadcast, as a derisive reference to a theory he did not subscribe to. Hoyle later helped considerably in the effort to figure out the nuclear pathway for building certain heavier elements from lighter ones. After the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964, and especially when its collective frequencies sketched out a blackbody curve, most scientists were fairly convinced by the evidence that some Big Bang scenario must have occurred.

The Big Bang theory developed from observations of the structure of the universe and from theoretical considerations. In 1912 Vesto Slipher measured the first Doppler shift of a "spiral nebula" (spiral nebula is the obsolete term for spiral galaxies), and soon discovered that almost all such nebulae were receding from Earth. He did not grasp the cosmological implications of this fact, and indeed at the time it was highly controversial whether or not these nebulae were "island universes" outside our Milky Way. Ten years later, Alexander Friedmann, a Russian cosmologist and mathematician, derived the Friedmann equations from Albert Einstein's equations of general relativity, showing that the universe might be expanding in contrast to the static universe model advocated by Einstein. In 1924, Edwin Hubble's measurement of the great distance to the nearest spiral nebulae showed that these systems were indeed other galaxies. Independently deriving Friedmann's equations in 1927, Georges Lemaître, a Belgian physicist and Roman Catholic priest, predicted that the recession of the nebulae was due to the expansion of the universe.

In 1931 Lemaître went further and suggested that the evident expansion in forward time required that the universe contracted backwards in time, and would continue to do so until it could contract no further, bringing all the mass of the universe into a single point, a "primeval atom", at a point in time before which time and space did not exist. As such, at this point, the fabric of time and space had not yet come into existence. This perhaps echoed previous speculations about the cosmic egg origin of the universe.

Starting in 1924, Hubble painstakingly developed a series of distance indicators, the forerunner of the cosmic distance ladder, using the 100-inch (2,500 mm) Hooker telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory. This allowed him to estimate distances to galaxies whose redshifts had already been measured, mostly by Slipher. In 1929, Hubble discovered a correlation between distance and recession velocity—now known as Hubble's law. Lemaître had already shown that this was expected, given the Cosmological Principle.

During the 1930's other ideas were proposed as non-standard cosmologies to explain Hubble's observations, including the Milne model, the oscillatory universe (originally suggested by Friedmann, but advocated by Einstein and Richard Tolman) and Fritz Zwicky's tired light hypothesis.

After World War II, two distinct possibilities emerged. One was Fred Hoyle's steady state model, whereby new matter would be created as the universe seemed to expand. In this model, the universe is roughly the same at any point in time. The other was Lemaître's Big Bang theory, advocated and developed by George Gamow, who introduced big bang nucleosynthesis and whose associates, Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman, predicted the cosmic microwave background radiation. Ironically, it was Hoyle who coined the phrase that came to be applied to Lemaître's theory, referring to it derisively as "this big bang idea" during a BBC Radio broadcast in March 1949. For a while, support was split between these two theories. Eventually, the observational evidence, most notably from radio source counts, began to favor the latter. The discovery and confirmation of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964 secured the Big Bang as the best theory of the origin and evolution of the cosmos. Much of the current work in cosmology includes understanding how galaxies form in the context of the Big Bang, understanding the physics of the universe at earlier and earlier times, and reconciling observations with the basic theory.

Huge strides in Big Bang cosmology have been made since the late 1990s as a result of major advances in telescope technology as well as the analysis of copious data from satellites such as COBE, the Hubble Space Telescope and WMAP. Cosmologists now have fairly precise measurement of many of the parameters of the Big Bang model, and have made the unexpected discovery that the expansion of the universe appears to be accelerating.

Origin of the Universe according to The Holy Qur'an

Al Baqarah (2) : 29

29. It is He Who hath created for you all things that are on earth; Moreover His design comprehended the heavens, for He gave order and perfection to the seven firmaments; and of all things He hath perfect knowledge.

As Sajdah (32) : 4-6

4. It is Allah Who has created the heavens and the earth, and all between them, in six Periods, and is firmly established on the Throne (of Authority): ye have none, besides Him, to protect or intercede (for you): will ye not then receive admonition?

5. He rules (all) affairs from the heavens to the earth: in the end will (all affairs) go up to Him, on a Day, the space whereof will be (as) a thousand years of your reckoning.

6. Such is He, the Knower of all things, hidden and open, the Exalted (in power), the Merciful;-

Fushshilat (41) : 9-12

9. Say: Is it that ye deny Him Who created the earth in two Periods? And do ye join equals with Him? He is the Lord of (all) the Worlds.

10. He set on the (earth), mountains standing firm, high above it, and bestowed blessings on the earth, and measure therein all things to give them nourishment in due proportion, in four Periods, in accordance with (the needs of) those who seek (Sustenance).

11. Moreover He comprehended in His design the sky, and it had been (as) smoke: He said to it and to the earth: "Come ye together, willingly or unwillingly." They said: "We do come (together), in willing obedience."

12. So He completed them as seven firmaments in two Periods, and He assigned to each heaven its duty and command. And We adorned the lower heaven with lights, and (provided it) with guard. Such is the Decree of (Him) the Exalted in Might, Full of Knowledge.

An Naazi'aat (79) :27-30

27. What! Are ye the more difficult to create or the heaven (above)? ((Allah)) hath constructed it:

28. On high hath He raised its canopy, and He hath given it order and perfection.

29. Its night doth He endow with darkness, and its splendour doth He bring out (with light).

30. And the earth, moreover, hath He extended (to a wide expanse);

Al Anbiyaa' (21) : 30-33

30. Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before we clove them asunder? We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?

31. And We have set on the earth mountains standing firm, lest it should shake with them, and We have made therein broad highways (between mountains) for them to pass through: that they may receive Guidance.

32. And We have made the heavens as a canopy well guarded: yet do they turn away from the Signs which these things (point to)!

33. It is He Who created the Night and the Day, and the sun and the moon: all (the celestial bodies) swim along, each in its rounded course.

Ath Thalaaq (65) : 12

12. Allah is He Who created seven Firmaments and of the earth a similar number. Through the midst of them (all) descends His Command: that ye may know that Allah has power over all things, and that Allah comprehends, all things in (His) Knowledge.

Al A'raaf (7) : 54

54. Your Guardian-Lord is Allah, Who created the heavens and the earth in six Periods, and is firmly established on the throne (of authority): He draweth the night as a veil o'er the day, each seeking the other in rapid succession: He created the sun, the moon, and the stars, (all) governed by laws under His command. Is it not His to create and to govern? Blessed be Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds!

If we saw the above composition of articles then could be concluded that the process of the earth incident and sky (the universe), that the earth beforehand the realisation, afterwards in the further process was followed by the stabilisation of the sky incident that had a position on the earth.

Javanese Hominid Sites

1. Sangiran

The Sangiran area has yielded a number of human fossil bones of Pithecanthropus and Meganthropus. To clarify the stratigraphic horizons of these human fossil-bearing beds, the Indonesia-Japan Joint research team spent about 170 days, between 1976 and 1979, in surveying the area. As a result, the team was able to subdivide the Kalibeng, Pucangan, Kabuh and Notopuro Formations by means of pyroclastic markers, and to reveal the complicated geological structure of the Sangiran Dome.

Geologic Setting and Previous Investigation

The Sangiran area is a hilly area around the Sangiran village located about 10 km north of Surakarta (Solo). Its maximum altitude is 183 m, and structural dome trending NNE-SSW occupies its central part. This structure which is called the Sangiran Dome is approximately 8 km long and 4 km wide. It has been dissected by tributaries of the Solo River, namely the Cemoro, Brangkal, Pohjajar Rivers and many smaller streams. Consequently, the strata around the dome are well exposed.
Van Es (1931) who first published a geological map of the Sangiran area, 1:20,000 in scale, divided its strata in ascending order into: a) Bluish gray (marine) clay, b) Turritella beds (argilaceous sand), c) Balanus limestone, d) Corbicula beds, e) Volcanic breccia, f) Black (freshwater) clay with intercalations of g (Diatom beds), h (Tuffaceous layer), and i (Yellow marine clay), k) Lower conglomerate-tuff series, and l) Upper conglomerate-boulder breccia-tuff series. He recognized unconformable relationship between b and c, c and d, and f and k, and assigned a-b to the lower Pliocene, c to the middle Pliocene, d-f to the upper Pliocene and k-l to the Pleistocene.
Von Koenigswald (1940) who published a geological map of the Sangiran area on the same scale as that of van Es (1931), subdivided the strata into the Upper Kalibeng beds (marine sand and clay, Balanus limestone and Corbicula beds), the Pucangan beds (lower volcanic breccia, black freshwater clay with marine intercalation), the Kabuh beds (Grenzbank, lower conglomerate and tuff), and the Notopuro beds (upper volcanic breccia, upper conglomerate and tuff) in ascending order. He found erosional hiatuses between the Upper Kalibeng and the Pucangan beds and between the Kabuh and Notopuro beds. He estimated the total thickness of these strata at about 350 m. The subdivisions by von Koenigswald are based on Duyfjes lithostratigrapic units (1936), the type localities of which were established in the eastern part of the Kendeng Hills, 100 to 180 km east of the Sangiran area. In this type area, Duyfjes (1936 and 1938a-d) assigned the Kalibeng Formation, the Pucangan Formation and the Kabuh-Notopuro Formations to be Pliocene, lower Pleistocene and middle Pleistocene respectively. Von Koenigswald (1940) regarded the Pucangan beds containing Jetis fauna as early Pleistocene age, and the Kabuh beds containing Trinil fauna as middle Pleistocene age, on the basis of his vertebrate stratigraphy in Central and East Java. The overlying Notopuro beds in Central and East Java were assigned by van Bemmelen (1949) to the upper middle and lower upper Pleistocene.
Sartono (1961, 1970 and 1975) who published geological maps of the Sangiran area divided the strata, in ascending order, into the Upper Kalibeng beds (marine clays and marls, marine sand with Turritella, Balanus limestone, and Corbicula beds), the Pucangan beds (volcanic breccia and black limnic clay with marine intercalations), the Kabuh beds (sandstone and volcanic tuff, and lower conglomerate) and the Notopuro beds (upper conglomerate and volcanic layers). He assigned the Upper Kalibeng beds to the upper Pliocene, the Pucangan beds to the lower Pleistocene and the Kabuh and Notopuro beds to the middle Pleistocene. In a recent paper which contains a geological map of the central part of the Sangiran area, Sartono (1978) changed the "beds" into "Formation".

Stratigraphy of Late Cenozoic Strata

Since the late Cenozoic strata of the Kendeng Hills between Surabaya and Trinil were subdivided into the Kalibeng, Pucangan, Kabuh and Notopuro Formations by Duyfjes (1936), these lithostratigraphic units have been widely used for the subdivisions of human fossil-bearing formations west of Trinil. In the course of our survey in the Sangiran area, well exposed sections, however, were chosen as the standard for each formation in the area. While the formation names by Duyfjes were used for convenience during the field survey. Furthermore, the aggregation of the above mentioned units can be named the Kendeng Group.
The late Cenozoic strata of the Sangiran area are subdevided, in ascending order, into the Kalibeng, Pucangan, Kabuh and Notopuro Formations, and the Terrace and Recent alluvial deposits. The lower part of the Kalibeng Formation (late Miocene and early Pliocene) and the basement rocks (early Miocene, Oligocene, Eocene and pre-Tertiary) are not exposed in the Sangiran area. They are observed only as rock fragments and matrix in clastic substance of mud volcanoes.

Geological Stucture of the Sangiran Dome

The Sangiran Dome is an elliptical structure, approximately 4 km wide and 8 km long, trending in a NNE direction. Its geostructural center with mud volcanoes is situated in the southwestern part of the dome. This dome is made up of an outer elliptical ridge and an inner circular ridge, as well as the central hills. The outer ridge is comprised of the Kabuh and Notopuro Formations and coincides with the outline of the dome. The inner ridge consists of the Lower Lahar of the Pucangan Formation. The central hills, which are distributed along faults of two fault systems, are mainly built up by the Lower Lahar of the Pucangan Formation. A lowland between the outer and inner ridges is underlain by the Black Clay of the Pucangan Formation, and a lowland inside the inner circular ridge is mainly occupied by muddy and clayey sediments of the Kalibeng and Pucangan Formations. The lowland have been subjected to landsliding. In general, the geological structure and lithofacies of strata in the Sangiran dome are reflected in the above -mentioned topographic features.
The central part of the Sangiran Dome has a complicated geological structure which is obscured by landslide masses from place to place. Its elucidation is, however, important for obtaining the complete geological columns of the Kalibeng and Pucangan Formations. These geological columnar sections will clarify the stratigraphy of Pf mandible by Sartono (1978), a hominid skull by Jacob (unpublished), and a hominid skull by Jubiantono (unpublished), as well as the origin of mud volcanoes. The Sangiran Dome is characterized by radial and concentric faults, mud volcanoes and central depression blocks. The mud volcanoes erupted plastic mud with exotic blocks such as marl, shale, sandstone, nummulitic limestone, andesite, etc. The biggest block, 2.7 m long, is of Eocene nummulitic limestone. The natural methane gas is currently escaping from the smallest mud volcano northeast of Ngampon village. These erupted substances indicated that the diapiric flow originated from considerable depths. Thus, it is inferred that the process of updoming resulting from a diapiric rise of deepseated muddy sediments led to radial and concentric faults, eruption of mud volcanoes and depression of central blocks. This successive updoming process must have occurred after the deposition of the Notopuro Formation and before the deposition of the Terrace deposits.

2. Sambungmacan

In 1973, a fossil human skull was found during construction of a short canal at the meander site of the Solo River near Sambungmacan in Central Java. Although it is now possible to pinpoint the exact discovery point of the skull, there has been a continuing discussion concerning the age of this specimen and the stratigraphical sequence of the Sambungmacan area.
The first report on the stratigraphy of the area was by Hasibuan (1973), followed by Djubiantono (1977) and Jacob et al. (1978) with their combined study on stone artifacts.
An intensive geological survey of the area was undertaken by the CTA-41 Project during the 1976 and 1977 field seasons, and a preliminary report was issued by the Indonesia - Japan Cooperation Programme CTA-41 (1979). Sartono (1979) discussed the age of the skull and the stratigraphy of the area on the basis of these data, adding his own observations during a brief excursion and concluding as follows:
a) The geology of the area consists of the Upper Kalibeng Formation of the Late Pliocene age and the terrace deposits of Late Pleistocene age, and lacks the Pucangan and Kabuh Formations.
b) The skull from the short cut site belongs to Solo man (Homo erectus ngandongensis) of Late Pleistocene age on the basis of its morphology.
This conclusion, especially concerning stratigraphy, is not in accord with the previously expressed opinions by most of the above-mentions authors. Therefore, it is regarded as necessary that the present authors describe in details below the field evidence from their own intensive field work.

Geology and Stratigraphy

During the 1976 and 1977 field seasons, an intensive geological investigation was carried out to establish in detail the stratigraphic sequence of sediments exposed along a short cut canal of the area.
The oldest rocks exposed in the bottom of the canal consists of white to yellowish marly limestone with molluscan fossils. This limestone is correlated with the Kalibeng Formation on contained fossil. The gray silt intercalating with thin tuff and sand layers rest unconformably upon the tilted Kalibeng marly limestone. The abuntment relation between the silt and the Kalibeng limestone is clearly visible at the northern part of the canal.
Disconformably on the above-mentioned strata lie cross-laminated sand and gravel beds of weakly consolidated medium- to coarse-grained sand, pebble to cobble-size gravel and silt. The basal part of these beds, yielding many mammalian fossils, is slightly more consolidated. It gives a "grenzbank" appereance in some places.
All those older strata were then covered discordantly by horizontal river terrace deposits which consists of loose sand and gravel beds including black clays.
Field evidence indicates that the gray silt must be separated as a stratigraphic unit from the Kalibeng Formation because of the unconformable relation between them. It follows that the gray silt may be an equivalent of the Pucangan Formation, but definite conclusion must be postponed owing to a lack of fossil evidence and fission track dating. The cross-laminated sand and gravel beds are tentatively correlated with the Kabuh Formation by reason of stratigraphic position and their lithofacies.
The horizon of the skull of Solo man which was found from the short cut canal is still a problem needing clarification.

3. Trinil

Trinil in East Java has been known to paleoanthropologists since 1894 when Dubois announced the first discovery of a Pithecanthropus erectus skull on the east bank of the Solo River. The site lies about 60 km ENE of Solo and 3 km north of the Solo-Ngawi highway and has an almost flat topography in the meander area of the Solo River. The fossil site lies 175 m ENE from the present Pe monument.
The geology and stratigraphy of the Trinil and surrounding areas were first studied by Carthaus (1911) and Dozy (1911) who were members of the Selenka expedition to the area in 1907 and 1908, and had made some excavations at the Pithecanthropus site. Afterwards van Es (1931) and Duyfjes (1936) published the results of their investigations on the geology of the area. Most other investigators who studied the area after 1936 used Duyfjes' description as the basis of their investigations.
In 1976 and 1977, the former Geological Survey of Indonesia in collaboration with Quaternary scientists of Japan (CTA 41 Project), conducted a field survey in the Trinil area and produced a geological map on the scale of 1:250. The aim of the joint survey was to reconfirm the stratigrapic position of Pithecanthropus erectus of Dubois (1894).

Geology and Stratigraphy

Physiographically, Trinil and the surrounding areas belong to the southernmost part of the Kendeng anticlinorium. In this area, the Pliocene-Pleistocene sedimentary and volcanic rocks exhibit a homoclinal structure which gently dips southwards, although good outcrop can only be observed along the Solo River. Several geologic measured sections were made by the authors along the lower and upper stream of the Solo River between the villages of Papungan and Karanggeneng Kliteh. The older rock assemblage exposed in this area is a clay member of the so called Kalibeng Formation, unbedded and a deep marine facies. To the north of Pentuk village, the Solo River exposes the uppermost part of this member. This exposures consists of yellowish grey clay rich in planktonic foraminifera. The occurrence of Globorotalia plesiotumida, G. tumida, Sphaeroidinella dehiscens and Pulleniatina obliquiloculata indicates Early Pliocene age of Zone N.19 of Blow (1969).
The siltstone and limestone member of the Kalibeng Formation overlies conformably the clay member. It is typically of shallow marine sediment about 25 to 47 m thick. The siltstone itself is 0.5 to 37 m thick and contains abundant molluscs and benthonic foraminifera. Among the benthonic foraminiferal species Pseudorotalia indopacifica, P. gaimardii, Eponides praecintus and Cellanthus craticulatus are conspicuous. The limestone, about 1.5 to 15 m thick, is dominated in the lower part by corals and molluscs. This fauna, however, is lacking in the upper part of the unit. The uppermost part of the limestone unit is actually marl bearing carbonate fragments containing frequent planktonic foraminifera. Among the species recognized are Neogloboquadrina acostaensis, Globigerina praecalida, Globorotalia tumida, Hastigerina aequilateralis and Pulleniatina. Based on the above association, this part of the Kalibeng Formation is considered to be Pliocene in age.
The siltstone and limestone member is further covered conformably by another clay member of the same formation. This unit is a bluish-grey clay containing rounded fragments of carbonate rock ranging in size from a few millimeters to about 5 cm. It also contains abundant allochthonous planktonic foraminifera whose test surfaces had been eroded during transportation. The thickness of this unit ranges from 3 to 7 m.
The Pucangan Formation is the next younger unit conformably overlying the Kalibeng Formation. It is 22 to 32 m thick, consisting of volcanic breccia with intercalations of clay and grey siltstone. The breccia is dominantly composed of tuffaceous matrix with subrounded to rounded rock fragments mostly andesitic in composition, ranging in size of a few millimeters to more than 5 cm.
The Kabuh Formation which unconformably overlies the Pucangan Formation, 45 to 53 m thick, is dominantly composed of sandstone and siltstone with gravel bed intercalations. The sandstone is fine- to medium-grained and often exhibits cross-bedded structures. The Pithecanthropus erectus I of Dubois (1894) was confirmed to have been unearthed from the gravel bed located at the base of the Kabuh Formation.
The Notopuro Formation, more than 10 m thick, is composed of sand and gravel and frequently contains pumice balls.
The terrace deposits unconformably overlies the Kalibeng-Notopuro Formations. It is composed of gravel and sand not less than 4 m thick.

4. Mojokerto

A geological survey was carried out in an area around the site of Pithecanthropus modjokertensis north of Perning near Mojokerto, East Java. The purpose of this survey was to clarify the horizon of P. modjokertensis discovered in 1936 by Andoyo. The site of this fossil is shown in the geological maps of Duyfjes (1936) and von Koenigswald (1940). According to the lattter geological map, the site is located on the left side of a tributary of the Klagen River about 3 km north of Perning village. The horizon is also shown by Duyfjes (1936) as occurring in the d member, about 100 m thick, of the Pucangan Formation exposed in the northern wing of the Kedungwaru Anticline.
The Pucangan Formation in this area was divided into 7 members by Duyfjes (1936), designated a, b, c, d, e, f and g members in ascending order. The lithofacies of each member is as follows:

g. Coarse and fine-grained tuffaceous sandstone about 35 m thick.

f. Dolomite and/or tuffaceous sandstone with marine molluscs (Molluscan Horizon III). The thickness is about 10 m.

e. Greenish clay about 10 m thick.

d. Coarse-grained sandstones with irregular beds of sorted conglomerate containing andesite gravels. This member, in the lower part, contains intercalations of thin fine-grained tuffaceous sandstone beds. Its thickness is about 100 m.

c. Fine-grained tuffaceous sandstones with occasional clay intercalations. Its thickness is about 10 m.

b. Dolomitic, clayey, tuffaceous sandstones with marine molluscs and many coral pillars (Molluscan Horizon II). It is about 15 m thick and occasionally contains gravel.

a. Clayey, tuffaceous sandstones containing thin layers of tuffaceous sandstone. The thickness is about 25 m.

Stratigraphy

The study area is occupied by the Kabuh Formation and the volcanic facies of the Pucangan Formation of Duyfjes (1936). The axis of the Kedungwaru Anticline, trending approximately in an east-west direction, is located in the center of the surveyed area. The Pucangan and Kabuh Formations are distributed symmetrically in the north and south flanks of the anticline which is cyllindrical in shape with the dip of strata steeper further from the axis.
A rather continuous succession was observed along the road between Perning and Sumbertengah. Many outcrops occur, especially, on the northern flank of the anticline. The lithofacies of the Pucangan and Kabuh Formations discovered along the road crossing the northern flank are as follows.
The lowest member, consisting of a bluish gray, fine-grained sand with molluscs and foraminifera, corresponds to the Molluscan Horizon II of Duyfjes (1936). Overlying this are alternating layers of light gray sand and silt. Sand dominates in the upper layers.

Early Men of Java

The island of Java was one of the big islands that were located in the Indonesian archipelago. The javanese inhabitants lived in the middle and eastern part of the island. The discovery of Pithecanthropus fossils by Eugene Dubois at the end of 19-th century was an epochmaking event in the history of the search for evidence of human evolution. Despite its importance, the find was for a long time the subject of controversies as to the genealogical position of specimens, for they were composed of a skull-cap having mixed characteristics of man and ape, and a femur possessing features comparable to those of modern man.

The most discussed of all human fossils was discovered in 1891 by E. Dubois, a Dutch army surgeon stationed on the island of Java. He had opened a quarry for vertebrate fossils in a 3-feet bed of gravel exposed in the bank of the Solo River, and there he came upon several human bones - a skull cap, a left thigh bone, fragment of nasal bones, and three teeth. Although each bone was isolated, and the thigh bone was found almost 50 feet from the skull, Dubois assumed that they belonged to one species if not to one individual, and recent application of the fluorine test confirms his inference that they are at least of the same age.

Discovered by Eugene Dubois in 1891 near Trinil in Java. Its age is uncertain, but thought to be about 700,000 years. This find consisted of a flat, very thick skullcap, a few teeth, and a thigh bone found about 12 meters away (Theunissen, 1989). The brain size is about 940 cc. Trinkaus and Shipman (1992) state that most scientists now believe the femur is that of a modern human, but few of the other references mention this.

The skull cap was remarkably thick, the brow ridges very massive, and the forehead low and receding. The brain of this skull, estimated to have had a volume of 900 cubic centimeters, is intermediate in size between that of the largest apes (about 600 cubic centimeters) and the average for the lowest type of living men (about 1240 cubic centimeters). Moreover, the scars of attachment for the great neck muscles at the base of the skull clearly imply that the head was carried forward, as in the apes, instead of being well balanced on the neck, as in modern man.

Soon after discovery, this find was hailed as a "missing link" between the apes and man and was given the name Pithecanthropus erectus [Gr. pithecos, an ape + anthropos, a man]. Almost at once it became a subject of controversy. Skeptics argued that it was an abnormal individual, perhaps an idiot; but statisticians pointed out the extreme improbability of an abnormal individual being the sole survivor of a population to be preserved and discovered. All uncertainty was cleared up by the extensive and careful restudy of the area by Koenigswald between the years 1935 and 1940, which brought to light three additional skulls. The last nad most importance of these includes the upper jaw, part of the lower jaw, and several teeth, along with the posterior and basal part of the braincase. It is somewhat larger and more massive than the original skull and is believed to be that of a male, whereas the original was female. These skulls, fully confirm the interpretation previously made of the brain size and the shape of the head and face of Pithecanthropus, and prove beyond possible doubt that this is a well-defined but primitive human type.

Sangiran 2, "Pithecanthropus II", Homo erectus
A very similar but more complete braincase was found at Sangiran in Java in 1937 by G.H.R. von Koenigswald. It is even smaller, with a brain size of only 815 cc.

The small brain, low forehead, heavy brow ridges, protruding mouth, and receding chin give the skull a striking resemblance to that of a great ape, yet the brain is far larger than that of any great ape, the toothline is even, the canine teeth are relatively small and the dentition is in all respect human rather than simian; moreover, the straight thigh bone proves that he walked upright. Volcanics associated with the fossils indicate an age of about 500.000 years. There is no longer any doubt that Pithecanthropus was human and he is now placed in the genus Homo.

Six faunal zones are now known in the Pleistocene deposits of Java, and all the remains of Pithecanthropus are from a single one of these, the so called Trinil horizon. Other human remains of more modern type are found in some of the higher zones.