Introduction
Peking Man (Homo erectus pekinensis) is an example of Homo erectus. The first evidence for Peking Man was discovered in 1921 by Austrian paleontologist Otto Zdansky who found a single hominin molar within a deposit at a quarry near the Chinese town of Zhoukoudian (then Chou K’ou Tien) approximately 30 miles (around 48 km) from Beijing (formerly Peking) (Reader 1988: 94). Further evidence of Peking Man came in 1927 when a third tooth (Zdansky had found another while sorting the excavated material (Reader 1988: 99)) was discovered by Swedish researcher Dr. Birger Böhlin. This tooth was turned over to Canadian anatomist Davidson Black for study (Conroy 1997: 303). Black considered the tooth to belong to a previously unknown species of hominin, the oldest discovered on the Asian mainland, which he named Sinanthropus pekinensis (Black 1927). The first Peking Man skull was discovered by Chinese paleontologist, archaeologist, and anthropologist Whenzong Pei on the 2nd of...
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References
Binford, L.R. & C.K. Ho. 1985. Taphonomy at a distance: Zhoukoudian, "The cave home of Beijing Man"? Current Anthropology 26(4): 413-442.
Black, D. 1927. On a lower molar hominid tooth from the Chou Kou Tien deposit. Peking: Geological Survey of China.
Chia, L.P. 1975. The cave home of Peking Man. Peking: Foreign Languages Press.
Conroy, G.C. 1997. Reconstructing human origins: a modern synthesis. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Howells, W.W. 1983. The origins of the Chinese people: interpretations of the recent evidence, in D.N. Keightley (ed.) The origins of Chinese civilisation. 297-321. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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Shen, G., X. Gao, B. Gao & D.E. Granger. 2009. Age of Zhoukoudian Homo erectus determined with 26Al/10Be burial dating. Nature 358: 198-200.
Sautman, B. 2001. Peking Man and the politics of palaeoanthropological nationalism in China. The Journal of Asian Studies 60(1): 95-124.
Wu, R. & S. Lin. 1983. Peking Man. Scientific American 248: 86-94.
Further Reading
Day, M.H. 1986. Guide to fossil man. London: Cassell.
The Peking Man World Heritage Site at Zhoukoudian. n.d. Available at: http://www.unesco.org/ext/field/beijing/whc/pkm-site.htm.
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Agutter, R.M. (2014). Peking Man. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_713
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