Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian
Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian
About this place
On a panel in situ : "Locality 1 or Peking Man Cave was originally a limestone cave. About half million years ago, Peking Man came to stay here intermittently for some three hundred thousand years. A thick deposit was formed as the cave became gradually filled up. The deposit which has been systematically excavated is divided into 13 layers and extends in an east-west direction, with a total length of 140 meters, a thickness of 40 meters and a width of no more than 42 meters.
This site was discovered in 1921 and the intensive excavation began in 1927. Although interrupted during the Second World War, the excavation during the past several decades has removed a total of 27,000 cubic meters of materials mainly from the middle and east parts of this locality. This site yielded nearly two hundred pieces of Peking Man fossil ash as evidence of fire use as well as more than one hundred species of fossil animal, which made it to be the most important site of the same geological age all over the world".
Brief description
Source : http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/449
Scientific work at the site, which lies 42 km south-west of Beijing, is still underway. So far, it has led to the discovery of the remains of Sinanthropus pekinensis, who lived in the Middle Pleistocene, along with various objects, and remains of Homo sapiens sapiens dating as far back as 18,000–11,000 B.C. The site is not only an exceptional reminder of the prehistorical human societies of the Asian continent, but also illustrates the process of evolution.