Peking Man at Zhoukoudian

Zhoukoudian, a hill known locally as Dragon Bone Hill, southwest of Beijing, holds one of the richest early human sites on Earth. Fossils and stone tools of Homo erectus were found in the caves of Locality 1 between the 1920s and 1930s. In 1927 the anatomist Davidson Black described a first tooth as a new species, Sinanthropus pekinensis, 'Peking Man', and in 1929 Pei Wenzhong found the first complete skull. In total, the excavations produced the remains of some 40 individuals. Dating work published in 2009 put the oldest layers at about 770,000 years ago, and the site was occupied on and off for hundreds of thousands of years.

The fossils took the story of Homo erectus beyond Java and offered a second window into early human life in Asia, with tens of thousands of stone tools and animal bones. Whether these people controlled fire is still debated, because later studies found that some supposed hearths were natural ash deposits washed into the cave. Tragedy followed. In late 1941, as war reached Beijing, the original fossils were packed for shipment to the United States and vanished. They have never been recovered. Casts, drawings and the scientists' detailed descriptions, together with later finds at the site, are what remain.