An Arkansas antievolution bill considered in March 2001 made the following claim about Java Man:
Two normal human skulls were also found, but purposely hidden for 30 years.
This refers to some modern human fossils often called Wadjak Man and the claim that they were covered up for 30 years by Eugène Dubois is an extremely common creationist falsehood. Dubois is the discoverer of Java Man which he named Pithecanthropus erectus. The creationist article “Scientific Honesty” quotes Marvin Lubenow’s Bones of Contention: A Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils as saying:
The Wadjak [modern man] skulls were found in 1888 and 1890. Dubois brought them back from Java in 1895 and kept them sequestered in his home in Haarlem, Holland. He made no public announcement about these fossils until May 1920, thirty years after they were found.
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…if Dubois had revealed the Wadjak fossils at the time he revealed Pithecanthropus, his beloved Pithecanthropus would never have been accepted as the missing link. Dubois was well aware of that fact. There is evidence that Wadjak was approximately the same age as Pithecanthropus, so to sell Pithecanthropus, Dubois had to hide Wadjak.
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To preserve the uniqueness of Pithecanthropus as the missing link, Dubois had to make sure that no fossils of more modern morphology could be assigned to the same stratigraphic level or given the same date.…
A Bible studies article tells us that
However, DuBois failed to disclose his other discoveries. He found 2 other skulls at the same level, Wadjak I and II, with cranial capacities of 1550 and 1650 c.c. (true Homo sapiens). Rather than announcing that the discovery of Wadjak I and II had disproved his previous find, he hid the skulls under the floor boards of his bedroom for 26 years! By hiding the evidence, he was able to mislead people for years at the expense of truth.
Another creationist in “Evolution: A Fact?” tells us
What they all did not know is that Dubois had concealed the fact that he had also discovered at nearby Wadjak and at approximately the same level, two human skulls [Know as the Wadjak skulls] with a cranial capacity of about 1550-1600 cc, somewhat above the present human average. To have revealed this fact at that time would have rendered it difficult, if not impossible, for his Java Man to have been accepted as a “missing link”. It was not until 1922 when a similar discovery was about to be announced, that Dubois revealed that he had possessed the Wadjak skulls for over 30 years! His failure to reveal this find to the scientific world can only be considered as an act of dishonesty and calculated to obtain acceptance of Pithecanthropus as an ape-man.
Kelly L. Segraves, in a section of The Way it Was, tells us that Wadjack skulls (“human skulls”) were found 15-20 feet away from Java Man fossils found by Dubois.
Two more creationist sites relaying these claims are this and that. The infamous creationist, Duane Gish, has also repeated these claims in his books and in debates.
The simple fact is that Dubois did not hide these fossils but rather published in the scientific literature twice in 1890 and once in 1892 (see this for more information including the references to his publications). Furthermore the Wadjak finds are a completely independent finds unrelated to the Java Man finds of Dubois. Despite repeated creationist claims to the contrary, the Wadjak finds were not found near where Dubois found Java man but were found 65 miles away. Creationist claims that Wadjak Man and Java Man were found on the same “level” are also false. (See “Creationist Arguments: Java Man.”)
Duane Gish was informed of publication of Wadjak by Dubois in debates in 1982 and 1992 and it was put into print as well. But that did not stop Gish from repeating this claim in books published in 1985 and 1995. (See this and that.) The creationists are still repeating these claims after twenty years of repeated corrections. Maybe the first time a creationist made the claim it was an honest mistake. But after so many years of correction after correction, a mistake is no longer an excuse. It is now a lie pure and simple. And as a closing shot, I will point out that this site’s creator had clearly read (and indeed cited and copied a graphic from) the “Fossil Hominids FAQ” by Jim Foley, which is where several of my above references come from, and still had the galls to claim that Dubois hid Wadjak Man.