If you don't think Java was ever dominant (and frankly I think it still is), then probably we just disagree about the definition of the word "dominant".

It was a dominant language. But you said "perfectly dominant", which I took to mean "the one dominant language". Java was not that - not overwhelmingly more popular than C++, for instance.

Java was perfectly dominant in it's realm only. Obviously Java is not competing in the realm of machine code generation at all, and assembly language should always exist too.

C/C++ is the perfect example of a language lasting multiple decades without each new generation trying to throw it all out and start from scratch, but simply evolving it.