Sangiran Museum in Surakarta

Sangiran is an archaeological site in Java, Indonesia. This area has an area of 48 km ² and is located in Central Java, 15 kilometers north of Surakarta in 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. In 1996 this site is listed in the UNESCO World Heritage Site.



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, that is from when 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.

In the first 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.