Peking Man

Peking Man Fossil range: Pleistocene
Peking Man skull
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Subphylum: Vertebrata Class: Mammalia Order: Primates Family: Hominidae Genus: Homo Species: H. erectus Subspecies: H. e. pekinensis
Trinomial name
Homo erectus pekinensis (Black, 1927)

Peking Man (sometimes now called Beijing Man), is a prominent example of Homo erectus. It was originally called Sinanthropus pekinensis and currently is best known as Homo erectus pekinensis. The remains were first discovered in 1923-1927 during excavations at Zhoukoudian (Choukoutien) near Beijing (Peking), China. The finds have been dated from roughly 250,000-400,000 years ago in the Pleistocene.

Fossils of Homo erectus have also been found in Africa, Indonesia, and Georgia (Caucasus region of Europe). Although Homo erectus ("upright man") is an extinct species of the genus Homo has been placed from about 1.8 million years ago (mya) to 50-70,000 years ago, the early phase in Africa, from 1.8 to 1.25 (or 1.6) mya, often is considered to be a separate species, Homo ergaster, or it is seen as a subspecies of erectus, Homo erectus ergaster (Mayr 2001). The differences between the early populations of H. erectus in Africa and the later populations found in Asia, Europe, and Africa are substantial enough for the separation by many researchers into the early African H. ergaster and the mainly Asian populations H. erectus (Smithsonian 2007b).

It is considered to be the first hominid to spread out of Africa.

Although H. erectus was originally believed to have disappeared roughly 400,000 years ago, the dating of deposits thought to contain H. erectus fossils in Java were placed at only 50,000 years ago, meaning that at least one population would have been a contemporary of modern humans (Smithsonian 2007a).Homo erectus served as a foundation for subsequent stages, and it is considered to have given rise to Neandertals and Homo sapiens (Mayr 2001). H. erectus is inferred to have been the first human ancestor to walk truly upright and the first hominid to spread out of Africa.

Original fossils

Zhoukoudian Peking Man Site - the Museum (taken in July 2004). At the centre: what Peking Man looked like.

First studies began at Zhoukoudian in 1921 with an investigation of a number of caves in the limestone there. According to later accounts of Otto Zdansky, who was working for geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson, a local man lead western archaeologists to what is today known as the Dragon Bone Hill, a place full of fossilized bones. Zdansky began his own excavation and eventually found bones that resembled human molars. In 1926, he took them to the Peking Union Medical College, in Peking, where Canadian anatomist Davidson Black analysed them. He later published his finds in the journal Nature.

The first specimens of Homo erectus had been found in Java in 1891 by Eugene Dubois, with the Java Man initially being named Pithecanthropus erectus but later transferred to the genus Homo.

The Rockefeller Foundation agreed to fund the work at Zhoukoudian. By 1929, Chinese archaeologists Yang Zhongjian and Pei Wenzhong, and later Jia Lanpo, had taken over the excavation. Over the next seven years, they uncovered fossils of more than 40 specimens including 6 nearly complete skullcaps. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Franz Weidenreich were also involved.

Excavation ended in July 1937 when the Japanese occupied Beijing. Fossils of the Peking Man were placed in the safe at the Cenozoic Laboratory of the Peking Union Medical College. Eventually, in November 1941, secretary Hu Chengzi packed up the fossils so they could be sent to USA for safekeeping until the end of the war. They vanished en route to the port city of Qinghuangdao. They were probably in possession of a group of US marines who the Japanese captured when the war began between Japan and USA.

Various parties have tried to locate the fossils but, so far, without result. In 1972, a US financier Christopher Janus promised a $5,000 (U.S.) reward for the missing skulls; one woman contacted him, asking for $500,000 (U.S.) but she later vanished. Janus was later indicted for embezzlement. In July 2005, the Chinese government founded a committee to find the bones to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.

There are also various theories of what might have happened, including a theory that the bones had sunk with a Japanese ship Awa Maru in 1945.

The Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1987.

Paleontological conclusions

Because all the pre-war findings at Zhoukoudian were lost during transit to the USA, subsequent researchers have had to rely on casts and existing writings from the original discoverers.

Contiguous findings of animal remains and evidence of fire and tool usage, as well as the manufacturing of tools, were used to support H. erectus being the first "faber" or tool-worker. The analysis of the remains of "Peking Man" led to the claim that the Zhoukoudian and Java fossils were examples of the same broad stage of human evolution. This is also the official view of the Chinese Communist Party.

This interpretation was challenged in 1985 by Lewis Binford, who claimed that the Peking Man was a scavenger, not a hunter. The 1998 team of Steve Weiner of the Weizmann Institute of Science concluded that they had not found evidence that the Peking Man had used fire.

Popular culture

• The disappearance of Peking Man's remains, and speculation of where they ended up, is the plot of January 7, 1975 episode Season 7, Episode 160 of Hawaii Five-O, "Bones of Contention". [1]

• Canadian science-fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer won an Aurora Award for his 1996 short story "Peking Man," which connects the lost bones to the Dracula legend; the story first appeared in the anthology Dark Destiny III: Children of Dracula edited by Edward E. Kramer, and is reprinted in Sawyer's collection Iterations.
• The discovery of Peking Man is referred to in the book The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan.

• Peking Man is part of the central plot in the mystery Sleeping Bones by Katherine V. Forrest.

• A Peking Man fossil is among those which can be found in the Nintendo DS video game Animal Crossing: Wild World.

• Peking Man is part of the central plot of Philip K. Dick's The Crack In Space

• Peking Man is part of the plot of Clive Cussler's Flood Tide

• Peking Man is the main part of the central plot of Carolyn G. Hart's mystery novel Skulduggery, set in San Francisco's Chinatown in the early 1980s. ISBN 0-7862-2672-2

• The mystery of the missing Peking Man fossils is central to the 1999 novel Lost in Translation, by Nicole Mones.

• Sega and Vivarium's "Seaman 2 Peking Genjin no Ikusei Kit" (Peking Man Growth Kit) for the PlayStation 2 will let players interact with a 20 centimeter tall Peking Man clone.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Jake Hooker - The Search for the Peking Man (Archaeology magazine March/April 2006)

Part of the series on Human evolution

Hominini

Sahelanthropus tchadensis • Orrorin tugenensis • Ardipithecus

Australopithecines

Australopithecus: A. anamensis • A. afarensis • A. bahrelghazali • A. africanus • A. garhi

Paranthropus: P. aethiopicus • P. boisei • P. robustus

Humans and Proto-humans

Kenyanthropus platyops

Homo: H. habilis • H. rudolfensis • H. georgicus • H. ergaster • H. erectus (H. e. lantianensis • H. e. palaeojavanicus • H. e. pekinensis • H. e. soloensis) • H. cepranensis • H. antecessor • H. heidelbergensis • H. neanderthalensis • H. rhodesiensis • H. floresiensis • Homo sapiens (H. s. idaltu • H. s. sapiens)

Topics: Timeline of human evolution • List of human fossils • Human evolutionary genetics

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