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. In 1926-7 the
Canadian anatomist Davidson Black first identified Sinanthropus pekinensis
(“Peking Man”) from several teeth found at a limestone quarry
50 km south of Beijing (fig. 1). A molar and premolar excavated in 1921-1923
at Dragon Bone Hill in Zhoukoudian by paleontologist Otto Zdansky were sent
to Black for identification. Black and geologist J. Gunnar Andersson then
organized field work led by Birger Bohlin, who found another molar in 1927,
enabling Black to make a positive identification. 
Expanded excavations by the Chinese paleontologists Z. Yang and W.C. Pei
in 1928-1929 found jaw fragments and a well-preserved skull at
Zhoukoudian’s Locality 1. When freed of its limestone matrix, the skull
was clearly that of a human ancestor, resembling the Trinil 2 skullcap, and
vindicating Black’s original identification.
.
Fig.1: The quarry at Zhoukoudian called Dragon Bone Hill (Longghushan)
(photo: R.Ciochon). .
Black (fig.2)
continued to work on the Zhoukoudian material in his lab at Peking Union
Medical College until his premature death in 1934. His work was taken over
by the anatomist Franz Weidenreich (1875-1948), who made c asts of the growing
number of hominid fossils. With Japanese invasions in 1937 he stored the
fossils in a bank vault, but was not permitted to remove them from China
when World War II broke out. Fig. 2: Davidson Black (1884-1934).
All but a few teeth were subsequently lost.
The accurate casts, however, including a relatively large sample of six skulls,
permitted Weidenreich’s (1943) detailed identification of Sinanthropus
pekinensis. The Chinese skulls resembled those from Java, but had a higher
cranial capacity averaging 1000-1100 cc, compared to about 800-900 cc for
Pithecanthropus. Both are now classified as Homo erectus.
References:
Boaz, N. T. and R.L. Ciochon,
2004. Dragon Bone Hill: An Ice-Age Saga of Homo erectus. New
York, Oxford University Press.
This article appears on page 18 in Vol.4, No.1 of Athena
Review.
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