[Daniel]

China.org has a page on Peking Man at http://www.china.org...aixun/74857.htm. Some of the statements on this page on this page appear very questionable to me.

The page states: "In December 1929, a Chinese paleoanthropologist named Pei Wenzhong discovered a complete skull of "Peking Man" on Dragon Bone Hill northwest of Zhoukoudian." However, the talk.origins FAQ at http://www.talkorigi...oms/peking.html suggests that none of the Peking Man skulls yet discovered are complete and UNESCO says that Pei found an almost complete skull cap (http://www.unesco.org/ext/field/beijing/whc/pkm-site.htm) as opposed to the complete skull. Did Pei in fact find an entire skull, and if so, where is it now? Are there pictures of it on the Web?

China.org also says, "The discovery pushed the history of Beijing's civilization back to some 600,000 years." What evidence is there that Peking Man existed in a state of civilization? This would definitely contradict Bai Shouyi's Outline History of China, which states on p. 31 that "Peking Man's main productive activities were hunting and gathering."

Then there is the claim, "These fossilized remains prove that "Peking Man" was primitive man in an evolutionary process from ancient ape to modern man, and is the ancestor of the Chinese nation." How do the fossils show that that the Chinese nation today is descended from Peking Man and not from a later-arriving group of humans? This claim also does not square with the genetic evidence that all humans share a common H. sapiens ancestor from Africa within the last 200,000 years.

Is there any basis for China.org's version of history and biological theory?

[Yun]

Quote

This claim also does not square with the genetic evidence that all humans share a common H. sapiens ancestor from Africa within the last 200,000 years.

For nationalistic purposes, many Chinese scholars maintain that Peking Man evolved indigenously in north China, rather than sharing an origin point in Africa like other human ethnic groups.

Charles Hucker describes the Zhoukoudian find as being "bone fragments of some 40 individuals, including 14 skulls."

This is a picture I found of some of the skull fragments pieced together:


This is a composite reconstruction of several fragments:



A few more reconstructions (not including the two on the left):
http://zoology.byu.e...5/h_erectus.htm

This is a cast made of the reconstructed skull:



However, according to http://www.mos.org/e...view.php?fid=43 the original skull fragments were lost in the Second World War, and only the casts remain in New York.

Another interesting article: http://www.uiowa.edu...ses/Peking1.htm

An artist's impression of the habitat of Peking Man:
http://donsmaps.com/...choukoutien.jpg

(from http://donsmaps.com/caselli.html )

Since I am not an evolutionist, I withhold my judgment on whether "Peking Man" was an ape or a human being.

[nishishei]

This is Multiregional Model (homo erectus throughout the world independently developed into homo sapiens) vs. Out-of-Africa Model (homo erectus were completely replaced with a fitter homo sapiens from Africa rather recently; homo erectus went extinct).

Chinese scientists favor the Multiregional Model more due to fossil evidence and nationalism; while the West seems to believe the mtDNA evidence more (which favors the mitochondrial Eve and Out-of-Africa notions). The reality is probably between the extremes of both models but leaning towards Out-of-Africa (in that some genetic mixing probably did occur after homo sapiens from Africa encountered homo erectus).

[Goujian]

I just find the out-of-Africa theory kind of weird and unreasonable. Why did Africa develop the stronger Homo Sapiens that could replace all other existing homo erectus? Because the earliest evidence of Homo Sapiens was discovered in Africa, does that mean that earliest homo sapiens existed in Afria? Why were all other homo sapiens related to the earliest in Africa?

[Daniel]

Thank you for the pictures, Yun. Clearly the pictures all show incomplete skulls that have been reconstructed. I guess we cannot know for sure exactly what Professor Pei found since his discovery was lost in the war. But is his journal reproduced somewhere describing his find in 1929?

I do not entirely understand how the concept that Peking Man is the ancestor of the Chinese nation serves Chinese nationalism. Peking Man was a Homo erectus, according to all information I can find. The evidence that Homo erectus originated in Africa is even clearer than the evidence that Homo sapiens originated in Africa. What difference does it make?

By my understanding, it is almost a statistical impossibility for the same species to originate independently in several places at once. Modern Chinese are, without a doubt, Homo sapiens, as are all other humans, by the only objective test for species: Chinese and all other humans can interbreed and give birth to fertile children. Homo erectus was a different species from Homo sapiens. If Chinese were descended from a different species, they ought to be even more different from Homo sapiens than Homo erectus was, and therefore not interfertile with other people. But this is not the case.

The evidence that H. sapiens began in Africa is based not only on fossils, but, as nishisei mentioned, on mitochondrial DNA evidence. The greatest diversity in mtDNA is found in African peoples, and the only known explanation for that fact is that African peoples had a common ancestor a longer time ago than peoples from any other continent. By contrast, if all Chinese had a common ancestor in Peking Man, 4 to 6 hundred thousand years ago, Chinese mtDNA diversity ought to be greater than African mtDNA diversity, which suggests a common ancestor for Africans within the last 200,000 years. This, too, is not the case.

I do not think anyone knows why H. sapiens originated in Africa. Science is not yet able to predict where a new species will emerge. I think it is clear, though, that hundreds of thousands of years ago, most of the erectus population lived in Africa (the Ice Age making much of the rest of the planet rather inhospitable), so there were more potential candidates for a new species in Africa than elsewhere.

[Goujian]

The nationalism claim can hardly be substantiated. The PRC got rid of almost all Chinese measurement system, and adopted the international system; adopted international holidays and the only national holiday is the Spring Festival; adopted the international calendar and even don't use the traditional way of counting the year like Taiwan, ZhongHua Mingguo Shi Nian, the Year Ten of ROC and used the Christian year; adopted the "international clothing" in replace of the Sun Yanset suit. The list can go on and on.

In a way, the PRC and CCP tried hardest to be "international."

A few days ago, I watched the CCTV program about the Out-of-Africa theory.

[Daniel]

It occurs to me to add, there's no real reason to believe that H. sapiens replaced H. erectus by being stronger. Probably both Australopithecus robustus and the Neandertals were physically stronger than we sapients. We won out in the end probably because we were smarter, better at communicating, and better organized than erectus, not because we were stronger.

Goujian raises a valid point about the PRC's policy, but I am not sure that the people claiming Peking Man is the ancestor of China are the same ones responsible for the reforms he mentions.