In October 1887, Dubois abandoned his academic career and left for the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) to look for the fossilized ancestor of modern man. Having received no funding from the Dutch government for his eccentric endeavorsince no one at the time had ever found an early human fossil while looking for ithe joined the Dutch East Indies Army as a military surgeon. Because of his work duties, it was only in July 1888 that he began to excavate caves in Sumatra. Having quickly found abundant fossils of large mammals, Dubois was relieved of his military duties (March 1889), and the colonial government assigned two engineers and fifty convicts to help him with his excavations. After he failed to find the fossils he was looking for on Sumatra, he moved on to Java in 1890.