Source: CCTV.com

03-28-2007 17:24

I believe many people are familiar with the place being shown on the screen right now. Many people have been there and recognize the face and know it is the Peking Man. The discovery of the Peking Man is one of the most important archeological discoveries in the 20th century. More than 60 years ago, Weidenreich, a German paleoanthropologist, responsible for the excavation on Zhoukoudian Site, said the Peking Men were a group of prehistoric man-eaters. Is it true that the Peking Man so adored by modern people were beasts that killed their own people? We have trouble accepting this scientific fact. Today’s Approaching Science will tell you a shocking story.

In the summer of 1935, the city of Beijing was caught up in a war with Japan. In an office of the Peking Union Medical College, a German was celebrating. He was Weidenreich, a world famous paleoanthropologist. He would be responsible for the excavation and research of the Peking Man at the Zhoukoudian Site.

The discovery of the Peking Man shocked the world. At that time, paleoanthropologists throughout the world were seeking the ancestors of humankind but they had failed. Until 1927, when an intact ape man’s skull, some stone tools and vestiges of fire were discovered in a cave in Zhoukoudian. The discovery at Zhoukoudian was at that time the oldest discovery of human remains ever found. The finding lengthened human history some 500,000 years.

Weidenreich devoted himself to the excavation and his life was forever changed after that point.

In the winter of 1936, the excavation in Zhoukoudian had a breakthrough. Chinese scholar Jia Lanpo found three skulls sitting one by one.

Jia Yuzhang, Jia Lanpo’s son, “My father found three skulls within eleven days, so he was very excited.”

In 1937, the Anti-Japanese War broke out and the excavation in Zhoukoudian was forced to end. Just at that time, Weidenreich began to become suspicious of the number of excavated bones. He noticed in the past ten years that 14 skulls had been unearthed. Of all these skulls, only five were intact. There were 14 limb bones and some teeth and mandibles as well.

The number of skulls made Weidenreich excited but at the same time he was puzzled. Why were the limb bones so small in number? It was extraordinary. In general, trunk bones and limb bones are much more common findings and are much larger than skulls. Other animal fossils that were discovered in Zhoukoudian also proved this. Why did the number of Peking Man fossils turn out to be so different? Were some limb bones missing?

In fact, scientists had collected and counted every fossil possible no matter how broken it was. So it was simply impossible that that many bones could be missing. Were the fossils destroyed by nature? At the same place, a large number of animal fossils were also discovered. Nature couldn’t just destroy fossils relating to the Peking Men. Did some outside force such as water bring the skulls into the cave? However, this possibility was quickly discarded as no trace of water could be found where the skulls were. What was the real cause?

On February 25, 1939, almost at the same time as the Peking Man was discovered, archeologists on an island southwest of Rome discovered a surprising scene similar to that of the Peking Man in a 200,000-year cave by accident. In the back of the cave, at the center of a circle made by stones, was a skull with the bottom at the top. It was surprising that there was a big hole at the bottom and that the skull was so seriously broken as if it had been hit by something big.