On the trail of Peking Man
A new novel based on fact attempts to trace the lost skulls from the Zhoukoudian archaeological site
The sega of the missing skulls of Peking Man, a collection of Homo erectus fossil specimens unearthed in the Zhoukoudian area of Beijing’s Fangshan district, remains a major mystery to this day.
In spite of their significance in academic studies, they disappeared during World War II, according to scholars.
Last week, the two-part novel “Dragon Bones”, which relates the legends surrounding the lost skulls, was released by Beijing Yanshan Press. The Chinese refer to fossils in general as “dragon bones” though the book is also named after the hill on which the Peking Man’s remains were found.
Material relevant to the fossils was discovered by Swedish geologist Johan Andersson, a mining adviser to the Chinese government, in 1921.
Large-scale archaeological excavations in Zhoukoudian began six years later and the astonishing find followed in 1929.
The specimens, which date back than 700,000 years, were considered by German anthropologist Franz Weidenreich as belonging to the ancestors of today’s Chinese people. Some scholars at home and abroad even speculated that the skulls pointed to the direct origin of modern man.
The novel has been penned by Wu Jiang, a journalist, and Cui Guomin, a government official. Wu, a media veteran, based his writing on interviews with the late scholar Jia Lanpo who hosted the archaeological project in Zhoukoudian in the 1930s. Cui wrote from his experience as the first director of a committee devoted to looking for the Peking Man skulls that was set up |by Fangshan district authorities in 2005.
“In our continuous research, we found more than 100 possibilities of where the Peking Man skulls went,” Cui says.
“We often found ourselves going round in circles. But the experience also give us abundant references for the book.”
The fossils were housed in the Peking Union Medical College Hospital until 1941, when Chiang Kai-shek of the Kuomintang agreed to send them to the American Museum of Natural History in New York for temporary custody due to concerns that Japan’s possible capture of the hospital could lead to their loss.
On December 8, 1941, the day after Japan bombed Pearl Harbour, the fossils were being escorted by US soldiers on a train to Qinhuangdao port in North China’s Hebei province. All the goods on the train were taken by the Japanese army and the fossils have not been seen since. More than 70 years later, their whereabouts is still not known.
“In recent years, veteran Japanese soldiers gave us some clues but they led nowhere,” says Cui. “Even though this is a novel, we wanted to respect historical accuracy.”
He says the loss of the fossils is a “national pain”.
“Our book recalls how people cared about the Zhoukoudian site and their eagerness to bring the lost fossils home.”
The Peking Man site in Zhou-koudian was added by Unesco to its World Heritage list in 1987, one of the earliest in China.
According to Wu, the Chinese government had tried to get information about the lost fossils from Japan from 1946 to 48, but failed.
He also says that there is a theory that the real fossils might have been replaced by the Americans before they arrived in Qinhuangdao.
“Different theories are presented in the novel,” says Wu.
“We wanted to offer firsthand research so that readers could get the whole picture and put the scattered puzzles together.”
Other than exploring the Peking Man’s line, the novel also provides a general background of developments in Chinese archaeology since 1900.
“The book tells the public how archaeology works,” says Xu Guangji, a researcher from the archaeological institute of the think tank Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Some of the stereotyping of foreign scientists working in old China – Andersson and the KMT – “was corrected this time”, says Xu.
“Their endeavours to protect the relics should also be remembered,” he adds.
Nevertheless, critics have issues with the book.
Li Qiao, a Beijing-based cultural critic, says: “Too many professional details can distract the reader and this is the case here. However ‘Dragon Bones’ sets the tone for similar works to follow.”
