Abstract
Peking Man: Geological and Palaeontological Evidence.—An account of the discovery of Peking man is contributed by P. Teilhard du Chardin to L'Anthropologie, t. 41, pts. 1-2, which deals in some detail with the geology and palaeontology of the cave of Chou Kou Tien. It is evident that the cave was not an open fissure in which the remains were carried by torrential action, as was at one time thought, but a true cave which was gradually filled by a succession of deposits. The nature of these deposits points unquestionably to the fact that the cave was the habitation of carnivores, and presumably of man. It presents analogies with the caves of Europe, but the evidence of stratigraphy and palaeontology points to the far greater antiquity of the levels in which human remains have been found. Hitherto only one pleistocene formation had been recognised in China, that of the yellow loess characterised by Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Bos primigenius, Cervus elaphua, Hycena crocuta, etc., and worked quartzites of Mousterian and Aurignacian type. Now, however, it is evident that beneath the loess deposit of the Upper and Middle Pleistocene, and hitherto confused with it, is a series of sands, clays, and reddish loess representing a distinct formation with a characteristic fauna, Rhinoceros cf. sinensis, Hyæna sinensis, H. machair-odus, etc. This formation begins at the end of the tertiary and the beginning of the lower quaternary. It is to this Early Pleistocene that the fossiliferous deposits of Chou Kou Tien belong. On this point the palæontological evidence is decisive. No fossil characteristic of the yellow loess has been found at Chou Kou Tien, the fauna of which corresponds with the pleistocene fauna of the Nihowan deposits, yet is lacking in those forms which assign the latter to the tertiary. In the rhinoceros, hyæna, horse, Canis, sinensis, Machairodus, there is exact correspondence.
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Research Items. Nature 127, 795–797 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/127795a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/127795a0