Verhoeven’s Living Negritos and the Story of Zakharias Ze

Abstract

A Catholic priest and amateur palaeontologist, Father Theodor Verhoeven (SVD) is best known for his discovery of sites on Flores Island (Indonesia) that yielded fossilized remains of Middle Pleistocene stegodons and lithic materials suggesting early occupation by pre-sapiens hominins. Eventually, these finds influenced investigations that resulted in the discovery of Homo floresiensis in Liang Bua cave. Verhoeven’s earliest fieldwork, however, concerned other Florenese caves, where he found Late Holocene remains of small-bodied Homo sapiens which he identified as ‘negritos’ or ‘proto-negritos.’ In this article, I present new evidence revealing that Verhoeven believed negritos survived on Flores as discrete populations during his own time and, moreover, that one such negrito was a fellow Catholic priest. Though Verhoeven died 13 years before the discovery of floresiensis, his views on both prehistoric and living ‘negritos’ suggest that he would likely—though ultimately incorrectly—have interpreted both as descendants of floresiensis and earlier hominin contemporaries of Middle Pleistocene stegodons. The significance of Verhoeven’s palaeoanthropological and archaeological discoveries for subsequent, professional research illustrates one of the most remarkable collaborations between academics and amateurs in the history of anthropology.