Zhoukoudian in brief
Zhoukoudian lies about 50 kilometres southwest of Beijing, on a hill once known as Dragon Bone Hill, because local people dug up fossil bones there to sell as medicine. A large cave there, Locality 1, was filled with sediments about 770,000 to 400,000 years old, holding the bones of more than forty individuals of Homo erectus, stone tools and the bones of many animals. It was one of the most important early human sites in the world, and UNESCO listed it in 1987.
The excavations
In the 1920s the Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson and the Austrian paleontologist Otto Zdansky found a few human teeth at the site. A tooth was described in 1927 by the Canadian anatomist Davidson Black, who named a new species on that evidence alone, Sinanthropus pekinensis, “Chinese man of Peking”.
Systematic excavation began in 1927, funded in part by the Rockefeller Foundation, and in December 1929 the young Chinese geologist Pei Wenzhong found a complete skullcap. It was the first adult skull of an early human of this kind, and it confirmed Black’s ideas. Jia Lanpo, who joined the team in the 1930s, and Pei found more skulls. After Black’s death in 1934 the anatomist Franz Weidenreich took over the study of the fossils, publishing careful descriptions and casts.
The fossils were later grouped with Homo erectus, Dubois’s Java Man.
The lost fossils
In 1941, as war with Japan was spreading, the Peking Man fossils were packed up to be shipped to the United States. They disappeared on the way, in circumstances that have never been settled, and have not been found. What survives are Weidenreich’s casts, drawings, descriptions and photographs, along with some teeth that were left behind, and new bones found in excavations after 1949.
What was found
- Skulls and bones. Remains of more than 40 individuals, with a brain size from about 900 up to about 1,150 cubic centimetres in the later skulls, larger than in most early African erectus fossils.
- Tools. Thousands of stone tools, made mostly of quartz and flint.
- Fire? Layers of ash and burnt bone once seemed to be evidence of controlled fire, but later studies of the sediments suggested that some of the “ash” was natural, and the matter is argued.
- Cannibalism? Early researchers thought that broken skulls meant cannibalism or headhunting, but others suggest that animals, such as hyenas, were responsible.
The Upper Cave
In 1933 a different cave at the top of the hill, the Upper Cave, produced the skeletons of modern humans from about 35,000 to 33,000 years ago, together with ornaments of pierced shells and animal teeth.
Why it matters
Peking Man gave scientists, in the 1920s and 1930s, the first view of a large sample of an early human, and showed that human ancestors lived in Asia. It was a main reason why many researchers in the middle of the 20th century thought that humans first appeared in Asia, until the African finds. In China, Peking Man became a national symbol, and it supports a debate about whether people in Asia are descended from local erectus populations or from more recent African ancestors, a view that most genetic evidence does not support.
Visiting
The Peking Man Site Museum at Zhoukoudian, near Beijing, has displays and a walkway above the original cave. The Upper Cave and other localities can be visited. Many of the casts are in museums in Beijing and abroad.
Sources
- Black, D. (1927). On a lower molar hominid tooth from the Chou Kou Tien deposit. Palaeontologia Sinica D7.
- Weidenreich, F. (1943). The skull of Sinanthropus pekinensis: a comparative study on a primitive hominid skull. Palaeontologia Sinica D10.
- Shen, G. and others (2009). Age of Zhoukoudian Homo erectus determined with 26Al/10Be burial dating. Nature 458: 198 to 200.
- Goldberg, P. and others (2001). Site formation processes at Zhoukoudian, China. Journal of Human Evolution 41: 483 to 530.
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian.