- Researcher says some might find it hard to accept that early humans they assumed to be their ancestors ‘were stupid’
- Report suggests that isolation may have made Peking Man less adaptable
“Peking Man”, the Stone Age humans who are believed to be ancestors of the Chinese, left little evidence that they had ever evolved, according to a Chinese scientist.
] were stupid,” said Professor Wei Qi, a researcher with the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
In 1929, a nearly complete skull of Homo erectus pekinensis was discovered in a cave at Zhoukoudian in southwest Peking, as the Chinese capital was then known.
Peking Man became a household name as the earliest human sub species discovered in China, and some scientists maintained that they passed their DNA on to present-day Chinese.
In a paper for the journal Fossils to be published at the end of the month, Wei compared stone tools found at the Peking Man site to those made by the Nihewanians, palaeolithic humans who lived in what is now Yangyuan, northern Hebei province, more than a million years ago.
According to the theory of evolution, the human brain’s complexity should increase over time, expanding creativity and improving the quality of tools.
Wei said his study found very little evidence of evolution in Peking Man. He said they tended to work a piece of stone by repeatedly striking it on one side but rarely turning it.
Most of the stones worked by the Nihewanians for cutting or other purposes had marks all over them. “It means they would try another side to get a better result,” Wei said. “That is a sign of intelligence.”
He said there was more evidence in Peking Man finds, including many coarse artefacts and few finely processed tools.
Other researchers have said the same thing over the years. Pei Wenzhong, a palaeontologist who discovered some of the first Peking Man remains, said the tools appeared primitive compared to other early human artefacts, but there was no investigation at the time.
Wei, who analysed more than 140 finds dated to roughly 700,000 years ago, said the structural changes in Peking Man skulls found in different layers of sediment from various times suggested an unusually slow evolution over half a million years.
Professor Chen Quanjia, a palaeoanthropologist with the college of humanities at Jilin University in northeastern China, said there was an appearance of roughness to Peking Man tools, but that did not mean a lack of intelligence.
“The blame lies in the material,” he said.
Peking Man made tools with quartz, the only material available in the area. Quartz is not easy to handle, often creating a rough surface that makes further processing difficult.
Wei said material could not explain the difference. A few fine tools made with quartz were found at Zhoukoudian but they were dated to about 300,000 years ago.
“Making high-quality tools with quartz is not a problem, but [that becomes possible] only when the maker becomes smart enough,” he said.
Why Peking Man crafts were so poor remains a big question. Wei said that some patterning on their tools suggested they might be an offshoot of the Nihewanians that was driven out and settled in Zhoukoudian – now a World Heritage Site – about 200km (124 miles) away.
In that isolated environment, Peking Man might have interbred over many generations, Wei said.
This increases the chances of offspring being born with so-called deleterious traits such as inherited conditions and illnesses that affect quality of life and the ability to adapt and survive.
Source: SCMP
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