World Cultural Heritage: Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian (3)

Cultural heritage value:

The discovery of the Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian shocked China and the whole world

The discovery of the Peking Man provided a large number of convincing evidence for the origins of man. Many facts have shown that the Peking Man lived between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago, and belonged to the primitive men evolving between ape-man and Homo sapiens.. The discovery is very valuable in the study of biology, history and the development of the human beings.

The discovery opened the early chapter of the human history

In the early period of the Paleolithic Age, the Peking Man had learned to make stone artifacts and used them as weapons or primitive production tools, improving themselves against nature. This indicates that they had learned to use primitive production tools for labor work, which is the fundamental difference between mankind and ape.

The discovery brought the history of fire usage by humans forward by hundreds of thousands of years

In the caves where the Peking Man had lived, layers of thick colorful ashes were found, with its thickness reaching four to six meters. This shows that the Peking Man had learned how to use fire, control fire, and preserve the fire, and this is an important sign that human beings had evolved from animal creatures into civilized species.

The discovery provided evidence for studying the evolvement of Beijing’s ecological environment

By studying the Peking Man and their surrounding natural environment, it showed that the geology and landform of Beijing about 500,000 years ago is similar to Beijing now. There were dense forests in the mountains and hills, with many kinds of animals. However, the land was once covered by large grassland and desert with the remains of ostriches and camels. All evidence indicates that Beijing once experienced warm and humid as well as cold and dry climates during the past years.

The discovery and study of the Peking Man and its culture solved the argument of whether the homo erectus is an ape or man, which has puzzled the scientific community for nearly half a century since the ancient man at Java was discovered in 19th century. Facts prove that in the early period of human history, there was indeed a period of Homo erectus judging from the evidence of physical characters, cultural characteristics and social organizations. Homo erectus were the descendants of the Australopithecus and also the ancestor of Homo sapiens. The Homo erectus is an important central link in human evolution from apes to man. So far, the shape of Peking Man at Zhoukoudian has still been considered as the typical shape of the Homo erectus, and the Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian is still the site with most abundant, systematic and valuable materials among all of the Palaeoanthropic sites during the same period around the world. The Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian is a well-deserved treasury of the ancient human culture.