World Cultural Heritage: Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian (2)

The Zhoukoudian Site is an important Paleolithic site in northern China and the most famous is the "the First Site at Zhoukoudian," namely the Peking Man Site. The site was first discovered by a Swedish scholar named Johan Gunnar Andersson in 1921 and the earliest site discovered at Zhoukoudian is the Sixth Site also discovered by Andersson. In 1921, Andersson, Walter W. Granger, an American paleontologist, and Otto Zdansky, an Austria paleontologist, jointly uncovered the First Site and the Second Site at Zhoukoudian. In 1927, Davidson Black officially named the three ancient human teeth founded in Zhoukoudian as "Homo erectus pekinensis," and in the same year, excavation work at the Zhoukoudian Site officially began. Chinese geologist Li Jie participated in the excavations and the Third and Fourth sites at Zhoukoudian were discovered, with Swedish paleontologist Anders Birger Bohlin being one of the founders of these sites. In 1929, Pei Wenzhong discovered the Fifth, Seventh, and Eighth sites, as well as the first skull bone of the Peking Man, causing a commotion worldwide. At the same year, with the Peking Man Site as the first site, other sites were named in order from the second to the ninth sites. Before finding the 20th Site, all the sites were discovered under the leadership of Pei or Jia Lanpo including the site of the Upper Cave Man. Sites from the 20th to 24th were found under the leadership of Jia.

After more than 80 years of intermittent excavations, the scientific investigation work of the Zhoukoudian Site is still ongoing. The First Site has been excavated over 40 meters deep, but that is less than half of the cave. The Peking Man fossils have been found in both the second and third layer, unearthing six bones, 12 fragments of skull bones, 15 mandibles, 157 teeth, seven femurs, one tibia, three humeri, one clavicle and one semilunar bone, as well as some fragments of skull and facial bones. These osseous remains of Peking Man were from about 40 individuals. However, the majority of fossils were lost around the attack on Pearl Harbor. The existing human fossils from the First Site preserved in China mainly include seven teeth, one humerus, one tibia, one parietal bone, one occipital bone, as well as a well-preserved mandible. The three teeth found before 1927 are in Sweden and preserved by Bohlin, who had participated in the excavation work at Zhoukoudian. The number and types of the fossils of ape-men, stoned artifacts, and mammalian fossils unearthed from the Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian, as well as the sites for the use of fire, are incomparable by other sites of the same times.

The fire sites found at the First Site at Zhoukoudian has brought the history of using fire by human beings forward for hundreds of thousands of years. Five ash layers which are six meters thick in the thickest part, three sites of ash heaps and a large number of burned bones were discovered at the First Site at Zhoukoudian. It made clear that the Peking Man not only knew how to use fire, but also know how to keep the fire burning.

There were also tens of thousands of stone artifacts unearthed from the site that are the key representative of the Peking Man culture. The Peking Man had created three different stone processing methods. They mainly smashed the stones into small pieces of between 20 and 40 millimeters and the stone tools were divided into two categories: One includes hammers used for hammering and smashing and drilling, while the other includes scrapping, sharpening, chopping and smashing, carving, coning and spherification tools. The raw materials were all from nearby and the stone products were mostly small. There were various types of stone artifacts and those from earlier times were a little larger, with the chopping and smashing tools being the most important. The stone artifacts gradually became smaller and the sharpening tools experienced rapid development. During the later times, the stone artifacts became even smaller and the stone awl was the most unique tool during this time.

The research shows that the Peking Man had lived 700,000 to 200,000 years ago. The average cranial capacity of Peking Man is 1,088 cc while that of the modern man is 1,400 cc. The average height of a male Peking Man was 156 centimeters and that of female Peking Man was 150 centimeters. The Peking Man belonged to the Stone Age and their main methods of processing stone artifacts was hammering and smashing, and occasionally striking. They caught and hunted large animals. According to statistics, they also had a short lifespan, with 68 percent dying before 14 years old, and less than 5 percent living past 50 years old. The early period of the Stone Age is considered to have elapsed 700,000 to 400,000 years ago, the middle period through 400,000 to 300,000 years ago, and the later period at 300,000 to 200,000 years ago. The Peking Man belonged to the primitive men between ape-man and Homo sapiens. These findings have a very important value in the biology, history and the history of human development.