Indonesia has asked former colonial ruler the Netherlands to return eight historical artefacts from its museums, including bones of the Java Man, the first known fossils of the Homo erectus species from which humans are believed to have evolved.
Bonnie Triyana, a historian and a member of the Indonesian repatriation team, said the pieces include statues from Java's Singosari, or the Islamic holy book Koran owned by an Indonesian national hero, and bones excavated in Java in the 19th century by Dutch paleoanthropologist Eugène Dubois, which became known as Java Man.
"The main purpose is to return the items and produce knowledge," he told Reuters on Friday.
