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Peking Man: New Research

An international research con-ference and symposium enti-tled “Peking Man: New

Research” was held at Stony BrookUniversity on May 1–2, 2014. Theevent was sponsored by the Confu-cius Institute at Stony Brook Univer-sity and led by Richard Leakey ofthe Turkana Basin Institute and WuLiu of the Institute of VertebratePaleontology and Paleoanthropology(IVPP) at the Chinese Academy ofSciences. Leading paleoanthropolo-gists gathered to present new

research on the famous fossil andarcheological remains of “PekingMan” (Homo erectus) at Zhoukou-dian near Beijing, as well as recentresearch at a number of other Pleis-tocene hominin localities in China.Together, the presentations high-lighted the central role of the Chi-nese fossil and archeological recordsin our understanding of homininevolution. Many of the talks focusedon two general themes: the taxon-omy and evolution of Chinese Pleis-tocene hominins and the taphonomyof Zhoukoudian cave sites.

Eric Delson (CUNY) and KarenBaab (Stony Brook) discussed recentresearch on cranial shape variationamong Homo erectus involving 3Dgeometric morphometrics. Sincesome of the first discoveries ofHomo erectus fossils occurred atZhoukoudian, it is not surprisingthat Chinese examples of this specieshave long been central to its taxo-nomic definition. However, as shownby Delson and Baab, the Zhoukou-dian fossils display a distinct cranialmorphology relative to other fossilsattributed to Homo erectus from

Figure 1. Participants in the Peking Man conference and symposium. Photo courtesy of the Confucius Institute at Stony Brook University.[Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]

EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY 23:162–163 (2014)

Africa, Eurasia, and Southeast Asia.Moreover, the degree of morphologi-cal variation within the Zhoukoudiansample is greater than the varia-tion within present-day humanpopulations. This is also true forthe Dmanisi sample and otherpaleopopulations of Homo erectus,which is interesting given that theDmanisi specimens accumulatedover a much shorter time intervalthan did the Zhoukoudian speci-mens. Ultimately, however, the largeamount of variation among speci-mens attributed to Homo erectus isnot totally unexpected for a single,long-lived species with a wide geo-graphic distribution. A single speciesattribution for Asian, African, andEurasian Homo erectus was also sug-gested by research presented by Xiu-jie Wu (IVPP) on cranial vaultendocast morphology, which foundfew differences in brain structureand hemispheric specializationamong specimens from different geo-graphic regions.

As discussed by Wu Liu (IVPP),when Weidenreich first describedfossils from Zhoukoudian, he notedcertain morphological affinities withmodern Chinese people. Decadeslater, such similarities were consid-ered evidence in support of the Mul-tiregional Hypothesis for the originof modern humans (Homo sapiens).In recent years, the number of latePleistocene hominin fossil localitiesin China has increased dramatically,and this has led to revised views ofthe origin of our species in thisregion. As Liu argued, recent fossilfinds at sites such as Tianyuan Cave(>39 kya) and Zhiren Cave (>100kya) displaying both primitive andderived features can be consideredevidence of a modern human emer-

gence scenario for East Asia involv-ing archaic human admixture withmodern humans. On the other hand,Marta Lahr (Cambridge) arguedbased on ancient DNA analyses thathominin populations were likely verysmall during the late Pleistocene,which would have limited gene flowbetween archaic and modernhumans. She further suggested thatthe derived traits of late Pleistocenefossils are far more prominent thanare the purported primitive traits.Ultimately, she concluded that themajority of evidence supports therecent African origin model of mod-ern humans with a very limitedamount of genetic admixture witharchaic humans. Russell Ciochon(Iowa), also citing ancient DNA anal-yses, proposed the novel hypothesisthat recently identified genetic simi-larities between late PleistoceneDenisovan hominins and modernSoutheast Asians could have origi-nated by introgression with AsianHomo erectus and that admixturecould have also taken place east ofWallace’s Line.

Much of the discussion of cavetaphonomy was centered on thequestion of whether homininsactually occupied Zhoukoudian cavesites or whether their bones wereaccumulated there by carnivores.Ciochon argued for the latter posi-tion. He suggested that the presenceof carnivore bite marks on manyHomo erectus fossils, as well as otheraspects of fossil preservation, indi-cate that these hominins were likelypreyed upon by large-bodied carni-vores that inhabited the cave. How-ever, Shuangquan Zhang (IVPP)discussed recent archeological findsfrom excavations high up in the geo-

logical sequence in layer 4 that per-haps indicate hominin inhabitationof the cave during that time, includ-ing stone tools and butchered ani-mal bones. In addition, Xing Gao(IVPP) presented robust geochemi-cal evidence from layer 4 of con-trolled use of fire by hominins. Nohominin fossils have yet been dis-covered in layer 4, but the inhabi-tants are assumed to have beenHomo erectus. Haowen Tong (IVPP)analyzed faunal remains from Tia-nyuan Cave and ZhoukoudianUpper Cave (>10 kya) and con-cluded based on this evidence thatwhile the Upper Cave was probablyoccupied continuously by hominins,Tianyuan Cave was more likelyinhabited by both porcupines andhominins intermittently.

In sum, the conference and sym-posium were a great success. Thetalks were well received by all whoattended, including many membersof the general public, and they led tomany constructive discussionsamong the participants. Forums ofthis kind that foster communicationbetween paleoanthropologists fromChina and the rest of the world areunfortunately rare. Hopefully, thisevent will encourage future meetingsof this kind.

Deming YangIan J. Wallace

Dorien de VriesInterdepartmental Doctoral Program in

Anthropological Sciences, Stony BrookUniversity, Stony Brook, New York

E-mail: deming.yang@stonybrook.edu

VC 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com).

DOI 10.1002/evan.21420

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