Peking man lived in a cave in a limestone hill, made tools, cracked
animal bones to get the marrow out, and used fire. Incidentally, the
bones of Peking man were found because Chinese dig for what they call
“dragon bones” and “dragon teeth.” Uneducated Chinese buy these things
in their drug stores and grind them into powder for medicine. The
“dragon teeth” and “bones” are really fossils of ancient animals, and
sometimes of men. The people who supply the drug stores have learned
where to dig for strange bones and teeth. Paleontologists who get to
China go to the drug stores to buy fossils. In a roundabout way, this
is how the fallen-in cave of Peking man at Choukoutien was discovered.
Peking man was not quite as tall as Java man but he probably stood
straighter. His skull looked very much like that of the Java skull
except that it had room for a slightly larger brain. His face was less
brutish than was Java man’s face, but this isn’t saying much.
Peking man dates from early in the interglacial period following the
second alpine glaciation. He probably lived close to 350,000 years
ago. There are several finds to account for in Europe by about this
time, and one from northwest Africa. The very large jawbone found
near Heidelberg in Germany is doubtless even earlier than Peking man.
The beds where it was found are of second alpine glacial times, and
recently some tools have been said to have come from the same beds.
There is not much I need tell you about the Heidelberg jaw save that it
seems certainly to have belonged to an early man, and that it is very
big.
Another find in Germany was made at Steinheim. It consists of the
fragmentary skull of a man. It is very important because of its
relative completeness, but it has not yet been fully studied. The bone
is thick, but the back of the head is neither very low nor primitive,
and the face is also not primitive. The forehead does, however, have
big ridges over the eyes. The more fragmentary skull from Swanscombe in
England (p. 11) has been much more carefully studied. Only the top and
back of that skull have been found. Since the skull rounds up nicely,
it has been assumed that the face and forehead must have been quite
“modern.” Careful comparison with Steinheim shows that this was not
necessarily so. This is important because it bears on the question of
how early truly “modern” man appeared.
Recently two fragmentary jaws were found at Ternafine in Algeria,
northwest Africa. They look like the jaws of Peking man. Tools were
found with them. Since no jaws have yet been found at Steinheim or
Swanscombe, but the time is the same, one wonders if these people had
jaws like those of Ternafine.
WHAT HAPPENED TO JAVA AND PEKING MEN
Professor Weidenreich thought that there were at least a dozen ways in
which the Peking man resembled the modern Mongoloids. This would seem
to indicate that Peking man was really just a very early Chinese.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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