Indonesia Zone

Sangiran is an archaeological site in Sragen, Central Java, Indonesia. This area has an area of 48 km ², 15 kilometers north of Surakarta in Bengawan Solo River valley and is situated at the foot of Mount Lawu. Sangiran administratively located in Sragen regency and district of Karanganyar in Central Java. In 1977, Sangiran determined by the Minister of Education and Culture of Indonesia as a cultural reserve. Sangiran Site is categorized as Cultural World Heritage number 593 by UNESCO on December 5, 1996 in Merida, Mexico.

At the beginning of the study, Sangiran is a dome called Sangiran Dome. Top of the dome is then opened through a process of erosion to form a depression. At that depression can be found in soil layers that contain information about life in the past.

In 1934 anthropologist Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald began research in the area. In the following years, the results of excavations of fossils from the first human ancestor, Pithecanthropus erectus ( "Java Man"). There are about 60 more fossils of other Meganthropus palaeojavanicus fossils have been found on these sites.

Sangiran Museum, located in this region, presented the history of early humans from about 2 million years ago until 200,000 years ago, namely from the time the late Pliocene to late middle Pleistocene. In this museum there is a collection of 13,086 ancient human fossils and the ancient human site stood the most comprehensive in Asia. It can also be found in vertebrate fossils, animal fossils water, rocks, sea plants and fossil stone tools.

The ancient archeological site of Sangiran still keeps a hidden mystery to reveal. Up to now, there have been fifty kinds of hominid fossils discovered in Sangiran. It is 65 percent of the discoveries of hominid fossils in Indonesia or 50 percent of discoveries in the world. The total numbers of fossils discovered in Sangiran are approximately 13,809 pieces which 2,934 of them are presented in the display room and the rest 10,975 pieces are kept in the storage room. The other hominid fossils of Sangiran are kept in Bandung Geology Museum and Yogyakarta Paleoanthropology Laboratory. Based on the fossils discoveries, Sangiran Site becomes the most important prehistoric human civilization site. It is the right place to study human evolution.