Peking Man: The Fossils That Vanished in 1941

The Zhoukoudian fossils were first named *Sinanthropus pekinensis*, and you will also see the name *Homo erectus pekinensis* in older books and museum labels. Today they are generally classified within the early human species *Homo erectus*, according to the Smithsonian Human Origins Program. The name Peking Man covers the whole collection from the site, many individuals rather than one person.

The collection was large. It included skulls, jaws, teeth and limb bones from more than 40 individuals, as the Chinese Academy of Sciences describes it. Those were real people, whose remains lay at Zhoukoudian for hundreds of thousands of years before anyone dug them up.

What they showed was just as important as how many there were. The fossils helped establish that early humans lived in East Asia during the Pleistocene, the Ice Age, and they became central evidence in the study of human evolution. The site also held stone tools, hearths, ash deposits and burnt bones, which UNESCO describes as evidence of fire use at Zhoukoudian.

Zhoukoudian, once spelled Choukoutien, lies about 42 kilometres southwest of Beijing in Fangshan District. The story of its fossils starts with two visitors from Europe. The Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson and the Austrian paleontologist Otto Zdansky investigated the site in 1921 and 1923 and recovered human teeth.

Systematic excavation began in 1927 as a joint project of the Geological Survey of China and Peking Union Medical College. The scientific lead was the Canadian anatomist Davidson Black. The Chinese archaeologist Pei Wenzhong joined the work, and on December 2, 1929, he recovered the first relatively complete Peking Man skull.

Black died in 1934. The German anatomist Franz Weidenreich then directed the Cenozoic Research Laboratory and the study of the fossils. Fieldwork went on until 1937, when the Sino-Japanese War stopped it, according to a peer-reviewed history in the journal PaleoAnthropology. For a sense of what anatomists like Black and Weidenreich read from bones like these, our piece on what bones tell archaeologists covers the basics.

What did Peking Man look like? The National Museum of China describes low, heavily built skulls with marked brow ridges, and strong teeth and jaws, along with limb bones from the same population.

Around the bones, the site held stone tools and the traces of fire. UNESCO lists hearths, ash deposits and burnt bones among the finds. Exactly how the people of Zhoukoudian used fire, and how often, is a question best kept tied to that physical evidence. What can be said plainly is that tools and fire belong to the same site as the fossils.

The answer depends on which institution you ask, because the dating methods and readings of the site differ. The Smithsonian gives the Zhoukoudian *Homo erectus* fossils an age of about 780,000 to 400,000 years. UNESCO describes Peking Man at the site as Middle Pleistocene, about 700,000 to 200,000 years old. Either way, the fossils are hundreds of thousands of years old, and both figures come with the institution's own reading of the site. If you want to know how ranges like these are produced, our story on how old bones are dated explains the methods.

The original fossils disappeared in December 1941 during a wartime attempt to move them from Peking Union Medical College for safekeeping. That much is documented. What happened next is not.

The account repeated most often says the fossils were packed into two wooden footlockers for protection and were meant to be shipped to the United States, in the care of U.S. Marines. A 2021 archival study in PaleoAnthropology, titled "Treacherous Evidence," challenged that version. The study argues that there is no secure documentary evidence that the U.S. military ever received the fossils. In that reading, the last reliably documented stage is their preparation and transfer for evacuation in Beijing. After that, the trail goes cold.

It helps to separate what is documented from what is not. Fieldwork had stopped in 1937, and the fossils were kept for study at Peking Union Medical College. Reference casts had already been presented to the American Museum of Natural History in 1941. In December 1941 the originals were prepared and handed over for evacuation. Everything after that point rests on later accounts and theories.

So, when someone asks "where are the bones of Peking Man?", the plain answer is that nobody knows. The fossils have never been recovered, and their final documented location is disputed.

People have been looking for decades. Searches and investigations continued after the war in China, in Japan and in the United States. In 2005, Beijing's Fangshan District, where Zhoukoudian lies, announced a renewed search, a campaign reported at the time by Archaeology Magazine. Chinese scientists have kept looking for documentary clues since, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Several explanations have been proposed. The fossils may have been seized by Japanese forces, lost during transport, hidden somewhere in China, or later moved by sea. None of these has been demonstrated, and each remains a possibility rather than an answer. That is where the case stands: a documented disappearance, several theories, and no fossils.

For another story of famous human fossils with a strange path through the twentieth century, see the Dragon Man skull from Harbin, which spent decades hidden in a well.

Before the originals vanished, Franz Weidenreich and his colleagues made detailed plaster casts of the Zhoukoudian fossils, along with drawings and written descriptions. These are why scientists can still study Peking Man today. A cast keeps the shape and size of a bone, which is what an anatomist measures, so the loss of the originals took away the bone itself while leaving its form on record.

The American Museum of Natural History states that the first-generation reference casts were officially presented to the museum in 1941 and are the principal surviving record of the original fossil humans. In 1995, the museum used them to reconstruct a *Homo erectus* skull from Zhoukoudian. The Smithsonian Human Origins Program also holds high-quality casts, descriptions and digital scans, used for research and for public education.

If you hope to see a cast in person or use an image of one, confirm current access and reproduction permissions with the American Museum of Natural History or the Smithsonian Human Origins Program.

The Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987, inscribed under criteria iii and vi, according to the UNESCO inscription decision. The protected property covers 480 hectares, with an 888-hectare buffer zone around it.

UNESCO describes 23 fossil localities at the site, holding ancient human remains, animal fossils, stone tools, hearths, ash deposits and burnt bones. Scientific work continues, and the excavated localities and their surroundings are protected under Chinese cultural-heritage regulations. The fossils may be missing, but the site that held them is still being studied.