Relationship among Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and Other Proposed Fossil Groups 185Homo erectus from Western Europe
Although the fossil evidence indicates the presence of the
genus Homo on the Eurasian landmass 1.8 mya (at Dmanisi,
Georgia), the fossil evidence from western Europe dates
to about 800,000 years ago. The evidence from the Grand
Dolina site—in the Sierra de Atapuerca region of north-
central Spain (see Table 8.1)—consists of fragments of
four individuals dating to 800,000 years ago. A skull from
Ceprano in Italy is thought to be approximately the same
age if not older. Again, whether one lumps these specimens
into the inclusive but varied species H. erectus or into sev-
eral separate species differs according to the approach taken
by paleoanthropologists with regard to the fossil record.
Some other fossils attributable to H. erectus—such
as a robust shinbone from Boxgrove, England, and a
large lower jaw from Mauer, Germany—are close to half
a million years old. It is clear that the jaw came from a
skull that was wide at the base, typical of H. erectus. These
remains resemble H. erectus material from North Africa
from the same time period. This observation and the fact
that the earliest evidence of the genus Homo in western
Europe comes from Spain and Italy suggest continuedcountryside to discover the “owner” of the teeth and perhaps
a species of early human ancestor. At a place called Dragon
Bone Hill in Zhoukoudian, 48 kilometers (30 miles) from
Beijing, on the day before closing camp at the end of his first
year of excavation, he found one molar tooth. Subsequently,
Chinese paleoanthropologist W. C. Pei, who worked closely
with Black, found a skull encased in limestone.
Between 1929 and 1934, the year of his death from sili-
cosis—a lung disease caused by exposure to silica particles
in the cave—Black labored along with Pei and French Jesuit
paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in the fossil-rich
deposits of Zhoukoudian, uncovering fragment after frag-
ment of ancient remains. On the basis of the anatomy of that
first molar tooth, Black named these fossils Sinanthropus
pekinensis, or “Chinese human of Peking” (Beijing), called
“Peking Man” for short at the time. They are now recog-
nized as an East Asian representative of H. erectus.
After Black’s death, Franz Weidenreich, a German anat-
omist and paleoanthropologist, was sent to China by the
Rockefeller Foundation to continue this work. As a Jew in
Nazi Germany in the early 1930s, Weidenreich had sought
refuge in the United States. By 1938, he and his colleagues
recovered the remains of more than forty individuals, more
than half of them women and children, from the limestone
deposits of Zhoukoudian. Most fossils were fragmentary,
represented by teeth, jawbones, and incomplete skulls. A
spectacular composite specimen was reconstructed from the
most complete remains. World War II (1939–1945) brought
a halt to the digging, and the original Zhoukoudian speci-
mens were lost during the Japanese occupation of China.
The fossils had been carefully packed by Weidenreich and
his team and placed with the U.S. Marines, but in the chaos
of war, these precious fossils disappeared.
Fortunately, Weidenreich had made superb casts of most
of the Zhoukoudian fossil specimens and sent them to the
United States before the war. After the war, other specimens
of H. erectus were discovered in China, at Zhoukoudian
and a number of other localities (see Figure 8.3). The old-
est skull is about 700,000 to 800,000 years old and comes
from Lantian in central China. Even older is a fragment of
a lower jaw from a cave in south-central China (Lunggupo)
that is as old as the oldest Indonesian fossils. Like some of
their Indonesian contemporaries, this Chinese fossil is rem-
iniscent of African H. habilis. In contrast to these ancient
remains, the original Zhoukoudian fossils appear to date
between 300,000 and 600,000 years ago.
Although the two populations overlap in time, the ma-
jority of the Chinese fossils are, on the whole, not quite
as old as those from Indonesia. Not surprisingly, Chinese
H. erectus is less ancestral in appearance. Its average cra-
nial capacity is about 1,000 cc, compared to 900 cc for
Indonesian H. erectus. The smaller teeth and short jaw of
the Chinese fossil specimens are further evidence of their
more derived status.
The original Homo erectus fossils from Zhoukoudian had been
packed for shipment to the United States for safekeeping during
World War II, but they mysteriously disappeared. Fortunately, excel-
lent casts of the specimens and detailed anatomical descriptions (by
Weidenreich) were made before the fossils were lost during the war.© John Reader/Photo Researchers, Inc.