Acta Anthropologica Sinica ›› 2004, Vol. 23 ›› Issue (03): 175-186.

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The first skull of Peking Man was found in Layer 11, not in layer 10

LIN Sheng-long   

  • Online:2004-09-15 Published:2004-09-15

Abstract: In 1929, Prof. Pei found the first skull of Peking Man from the Lower Cave in the northern Lower Fissure.At the same year, Teilhard et al. described the strata which bore the first skull. They divided the sequence in Loc.1 into 10 Layers[6]. In 1933, Black et al. published 《Fossil Man in Chi-na》[7], in which the authors distinguished the deposits of the cave into 3 regions: Main Deposit, Lower Fissure and Kotzetang and 11 layers were identified. The first skull was located below the bottom of the northern Lower Fissure which is a very smaller part of whole Peking Man Cave. In 1959, Prof. Jia di-vided the strata of Main Deposit into 13 layers[9]. Recently, Xu Qinqi et al. published a research paper, they considered that “Teilhard' s Layer 8-9 are the same at Black' s Layer 8—10; Teilhard' s Layer 10 equals Black' s Layer 11”, “the first skull found in Layer 10 according to Teilhard and Young (1929) or Layer 11 by Black et al. (1933), i. e. the red sandy clay. The only difference is in the name they gave to the layer. Teilhard et al. called it Layer 10, but Black et al. called it Layer 11. ” They also considered that “In 1959 Jia pointed out that Layers 11 —13 were excavated in 1949 and 1951, but the first discovered skull wasfound in 1929, so the skull was from Layer 10 of Jia' s scheme (1959), which is called a red sandy day”, “According to Jia (1959), the human fossil material of Peking Man is distributed in Layers 3 —10”[3].
Auther of this paper investigates the data of excavation process of Peking Man site during 1929 — 1930 in detail.The result shows that in 1930, Prof. Pei excavated the whole deposits of Lower Cave, which were identified as Layer 11 in 1933 by Black et al. Layer 11 located below Main deposit Layer 10 or Layer δin northern Lower Fissuce, thickness about 10m. Locus E skull and Locus F fossils were found in the top and base of Layer 11. So Black' s Layer 11 does not correspond to Teilhard' s Layer 10 and Jia' s Layer 10. The first skull of Peking Man wasfound in Layer 11, not in Layer 10. The fossil materials of Peking Man are distributed in Layer 3—11. Peking Man lived in the Zhoukoudian region at least by 600ka.

Key words: Horizon; The first skull of Peking Man; Locality 1 of Zhoukoudian