Zhoukoudian site
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How it came to be
Zhoukoudian lies about 42 km south-west of Beijing, in limestone hills where the North China Plain meets the mountains. In 1918 the Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson was told of a rich fossil deposit here. In 1921 the Austrian palaeontologist Otto Zdansky, who came with him, found the first human tooth in a fissure at Dragon Bone Hill.
In 1929 the Cenozoic Research Laboratory was founded to study the site, and on 2 December that year the Chinese anthropologist Pei Wenzhong found a nearly complete skullcap. According to UNESCO, Peking Man lived about 700,000 to 200,000 years ago. More than 100,000 stone tools have been found, along with hearths, ash and burnt bone that show the use of fire.
Excavation stopped after the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937. In December 1941 crates holding the fossils left the college and were never seen again. Digging resumed after the war and has produced new fossils. The site was inscribed in 1987.
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