Editing Java Man (section)

===Reclassification as ''Homo erectus''===
{{further|Homo erectus}}
Based on Weidenreich's work and on his suggestion that ''Pithecanthropus erectus'' and ''Sinanthropus pekinensis'' were connected through a series of [[interbreeding]] populations, German biologist [[Ernst Mayr]] reclassified them both as being part of the same species: ''[[Homo erectus]]''.{{sfn|Boaz|Ciochon |2004|pp=66–67}} Mayr presented his conclusion at the [[Cold Spring Harbor Symposium]] in 1950,{{sfn|Schmalzer|2008|p=98. The original paper is {{harvnb|Mayr|1950}}}} and this resulted in Dubois's ''erectus'' species being reclassified under the [[genus]] ''Homo''. As part of the reclassification, Mayr included not only ''Sinanthropus'' and ''Pithecanthropus'', but also ''Plesianthropus'', ''Paranthropus'', ''Javanthropus'', and several other genera as [[Synonym (taxonomy)|synonyms]], arguing that all human ancestors were part of a single genus (''Homo''), and that "never one more than one species of man existed on the earth at any one time".{{sfn|Delisle|2007|p=298, citing Mayr's 1950 paper}} A "revolution in taxonomy", Mayr's single-species approach to human evolution was quickly accepted.{{sfn|Boaz|Ciochon|2004 |p=67}} It shaped [[paleoanthropology]] in the 1950s and lasted into the 1970s, when the African genus ''[[Australopithecus]]'' was accepted into the human [[phylogenetic tree|evolutionary tree]].{{sfnm|1a1=Schmalzer|1y=2008|1p=98 ["the "single-species" thesis to which he was committed became the theoretical foundation for paleoanthropology for years to come"]|2a1=Boaz|2a2=Ciochon|2y=2004|2p=67 ["was to sweep anthropology in the 1950s"&nbsp;... "Thus was born the single-species hypothesis, a powerful model that endured until the late 1970s when fossil discoveries in Africa disproved it, at least for the early part of the hominid fossil record"]}}

In the 1970s, a tendency developed to regard the Javanese variety of ''H. erectus'' as a subspecies, ''Homo erectus erectus'', with the Chinese variety being referred to as ''Homo erectus pekinensis''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Sartono |first=S. |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ejsyIZMsC9oC&pg=PA327 |chapter=Implications arising from Pithecanthropus VIII|title=Paleoanthropology: Morphology and Paleoecology |editor=Russell H. Tuttle |publisher=Mouton & Co. |date=1975 |isbn=978-90-279-7699-4 |page=328}}</ref>