A species that lives close to humans. Synanthropes are closely related to humans, often this connection has the character of freeloading. Species of Sinanthropus can perform the functions of natural orderlies, be carriers or carriers of dangerous to humans... ... Financial Dictionary

Noun, number of synonyms: 1 person (86) ASIS Dictionary of Synonyms. V.N. Trishin. 2013… Synonym dictionary

- (sinanthropus) one of the ancient forms of fossil humans, which was previously isolated in independent genus, and are currently classified as archanthropes (Ivanova, 1965). S. made primitive tools and used... ... Geological encyclopedia

Sinanthropus - For a long time However, the appearance of the Acheulean man himself was not known. The only European find (we mean the so-called Heidelberg jaw, found in 1907 near Heidelberg, in Germany, where it comes from... ... The World History. Encyclopedia

Wed. lat. sina China gr. anthropos man) oldest type fossil man, close to Pithecanthropus; the remains of Sinanthropus were found in China, near Beijing. New dictionary of foreign words. by EdwART, 2009. synanthropus [cf. lat. Sina China + gr.… … Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

- (from Late Latin Sina China and Greek ánthropos man) a representative of the most ancient fossil people (see Archanthropes), the skeletal remains of which were first discovered in China in the 20s. 20th century in the Kotsetang cave, near the railway station. d. station... ... Big Soviet encyclopedia

- (from Late Latin Sina China and Greek anthropos man) a fossil form of man, identified by D. Black in 1927 on the basis of one tooth found in the Zhoukoudian area near Beijing in China. Later (1929) a skull cap was discovered, behind which... ... Soviet historical encyclopedia

M. Fossil man who lived during the Lower Paleolithic period and is a representative of the most ancient stage of human development. Ephraim's explanatory dictionary. T. F. Efremova. 2000... Modern Dictionary Russian language Efremova

Sinanthropus, Sinanthropus, Sinanthropus, Sinanthropus, Sinanthropus, Sinanthropus, Sinanthropus, Sinanthropus, Sinanthropus, Sinanthropus, Sinanthropus, Sinanthropus (Source: “Complete accentuated paradigm according to A. A. Zaliznyak”) ... Forms of words

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Homo erectus pekinensis (Sinathropus pekinensis)

Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animals
Type: Chordata
Subtype: Vertebrates
Class: Mammals
Subclass: Placental
Squad: Primates
Family: Hominids
Subfamily: Hominins
Tribe: Hominini
Subtribe: Hominina
Genus: People
View: Homo erectus
Subspecies: Homo erectus pekinensis
Latin name
Homo erectus pekinensis (Black, 1927)

Anatomy

The volume of his brain reached 950-1150 cm³; left lobe of the brain, where the motor centers are located right side body, was slightly larger compared to the right lobe. Hence, right hand was more developed than the left. Height - 1.55-1.6 m.

Life

In addition to plant foods, he consumed animal meat. Perhaps he mined and knew how to maintain a fire. Used animal skins as clothing. The following were discovered: a thick, about 6-7 m, layer of ash, tubular bones and skulls of large animals, tools made of stones, bones, and horns. Scientists believe that synanthropes were cannibals and hunted representatives of their own species.

Archaeological culture

History of discovery

The first Sinanthropus skull was discovered in the grottoes of Zhoukoudian near Beijing in 1927 by Chinese anthropologist Pei Wenzhong (1904-1982). For many years, an international team of scientists worked here: Johann Gunnar Anderson, Birger Bohlin (Sweden), Davidson Black (Canada), Pei Wenzhong (China), Otto Stansky (Austria), Walter Granger (USA), etc. As an adviser to French geologist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin participated in the excavations, who, together with Henri Breuil, made discoveries in 1931 indicating that Sinanthropus used primitive tools and fire. In 1927, Davidson Black managed to convince the Rockefeller Foundation to allocate money to finance major excavations at Zhoukoudian.

Swedish geologist Johann Gunnar Anderson and American paleontologist Walter W. Granger came to Zhoukoudian in 1921 in search of prehistoric fossils. Local quarries directed them to Dragonbone Hill, where Anderson discovered quartz deposits that were not native to the area. Immediately realizing the importance of this find, he turned to his colleague and announced: “Here is primitive man; now all we have to do is find him!” .

Excavations were started immediately by Anderson's assistant, the Austrian paleontologist Otto Stanski, who discovered a fossilized human molar. He returned to the same site in 1923, and the materials excavated in two subsequent excavations were sent for analysis to Uppsala University in Sweden. In 1926, Anderson announced the discovery of two human molars in this material, and Stansky published his findings.

Canadian anatomist Davidson Black from Beijing Union Medical College(Peking Union Medical College), excited by the findings of Anderson and Stansky, received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and resumed excavations at the same site in 1927 with the participation of Western and Chinese scientists. Swedish paleontologist Anders Birger Bohlin dug up the lost tooth and Black placed it in a gold locket on his watch chain. Black published his analysis in the journal Nature, identifying it as belonging to a new species and genus, which he named Sinanthropus pekinensis, but many fellow scientists were skeptical of such an identification based on a single tooth, and the Rockefeller Foundation demanded more samples before agreeing to provide additional money.

In 1928, a lower jaw, several teeth and skull fragments were discovered. Black donated these finds to the Foundation and was rewarded with an $80,000 grant, which he used to establish a laboratory for Cenozoic research.

During excavations led by Chinese archaeologists Yang Zhongjian, Pei Wenzhong and Jia Lanpo, a second skull cap was discovered in 1930, and three skull caps were discovered in 1936. Mostly skulls and their fragments were discovered; and isolated postcranial fragments. In total, the remains of forty individuals and more than 200 human fossils were announced (including six skulls or skull caps, 19 large and many small skull fragments, 15 jaws, 157 teeth, three humerus pieces, one clavicle, one lunate and one tibia bones). Excavations were stopped in 1937 due to the Japanese invasion of China. The discovered material disappeared during World War II while being shipped to the United States.

After the communist victory in civil war in China in 1949, excavations were on a short time resumed. New excavations were carried out in 1951, 1958-1960 and 1978-1980. In the 1959 season, another jaw was found belonging to elderly woman. In June 2009, excavations were resumed.

A number of Western scientists were skeptical about the Chinese finds of fossil hominids. However, Zhoukoudian was still declared one of the World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. A study of sand from the grotto where the finds were made made it possible to establish the age of Sinanthropus from Zhoukoudian - 770 thousand years (±80 thousand years).

Role in anthropogenesis

see also

Notes

  1. Paul Rincon. , BBC News(March 11, 2009). Retrieved May 22, 2010.
  2. Shen, G; Gao, X; Gao, B; Granger, De. Age of Zhoukoudian Homo erectus determined with (26)Al/(10)Be burial dating (English) // Nature: journal. - 2009. - March (vol. 458, no. 7235). - P. 198-200. - ISSN 0028-0836. - DOI:10.1038/nature07741. - Bibcode: 2009Natur.458..198S. - PMID 19279636.
  3. "Peking Man" older than thought, BBC News (11 March 2009). Retrieved May 22, 2010.
  4. Bayer B., Birstein U. et al. History of mankind. - 2002. - ISBN 5-17-012785-5.
  5. Josef Augusta, Zdenek Burian. Life of an ancient man. - Prague: Artia, 1960. - Comm. to map 5.
  6. Mysteries of anthropology (unavailable link)
  7. (undefined) . www.bibliotekar.ru. Retrieved March 7, 2016.
  8. The First Knock at the Door, Peking Man Site Museum.
  9. Swinton, W.E., Physician contributions to nonmedical science: Davidson Black, our Peking Man, Canadian Medical Association Journal 115(12):1251-1253, 18 December 1976; p. 1253.
  10. Morgan Lucas (undefined) (PDF). Archived from the original on April 8, 2008.
  11. Sat. “There is great reward for hard work. About the discovery of the Sinanthropus skull" (1929)
  12. Archeology of foreign Asia. - M., 1986. - P. 260.
  13. Unesco description of the Zhoukoudian site (undefined) .

Sinanthropus, otherwise known as Peking man, one of the varieties of Homo erectus, is mainly considered to be a dead-end branch of primitive fossil people. But is everything so simple in this matter?

The first Sinanthropus skull was discovered in the grottoes of Zhoukoudian Cave, located approximately 50-60 km from Beijing, by Chinese anthropologist Pai Wen Zhong in 1927. Excavations in the cave were carried out from 1927 to 1937, then were interrupted by World War II and resumed in 1949. They were carried out according to all prescribed rules, and in their course the skeletons of 40 individuals were described.

From the very beginning, it was clear that a new species of fossil humans had been found. Where was Sinanthropus placed on the historical tree? It, according to the dating made, was attributed to the Middle Pleistocene, approximately between 900 thousand and 130 thousand years ago. Thus, the upper limit of his existence approached and perhaps even intersected with the existence of modern people.

Upon closer examination, as the famous sinologist and writer Alexey Maslov writes, it turned out that Sinanthropus is not so far from modern people in its development. Outwardly, he was, of course, in our opinion, not very attractive: he had very heavy brow ridges, a strongly sloping forehead, that is, his face was terribly primitive.

But at the same time it was also strikingly modern. The volume of his brain was close to the volume of the brain of modern homo sapiens. If the average brain volume of Sinanthropus was 1,075 cm3, then there were individual individuals in which this figure reached 1,300 cm3, which is close to to modern man, which on average has a brain of 1,350 cm3.

That is, Sinanthropus combined a completely modern brain and primitive appearance. The height of these hominids mainly varied between 150-160 cm, and their weight, due to their dense build, could reach 80-90 kg. Sinanthropus did not live long and rarely crossed the 35-year mark.

Their teeth were also quite modern, although the molars and incisors were somewhat wider than those of modern people, and the bones of the limbs were practically no different from ours. The left lobe of the Beijing people's brain, where the motor centers of the right side of the body are located, was slightly larger compared to the right lobe.

Consequently, the right hand of Sinanthropus was more developed than the left. In addition to plant foods, they ate animal meat. Sinanthropus had a relatively developed communal culture, made tools and was actively involved in gathering.

In their large cave, Zhoukoudian, a fire burned, which they kept unquenchable, as far as can be judged from the deposits, for hundreds, or even thousands of years.

DIRECT ANCESTOR OF THE CHINESE

It is curious that, along with Soviet and European reconstructions of the appearance of Sinanthropus, which depict him, if not as a prosimian, then as a kind of degenerate, there are reconstructions made by Chinese specialists.

Sinanthropus is very similar to them... to the modern Chinese. Perhaps with a strongly sloping forehead, slightly protruding jaws and sharply prominent brow ridges. Most anthropologists of the Celestial Empire, in fact, believe that Sinanthropus was “completely Chinese.”

Thus, the patriarch of Chinese anthropology, the man who, along with Pei Wenzhong, directly discovered Sinanthropus, Jia Lanpo has no doubt at all that it was not the remains of some species that were found near Beijing primitive man homo erectus, who lived 500-400 thousand years ago, was the ready ancestor of the Chinese.

“The Peking man is already beginning to embody all the characteristics of the “yellow race”: the concave inside of the incisors, the characteristic base of the nose and wide cheekbones. Thus, Peking Man was the ancestor of modern Chinese."

American anthropologist of German origin Franz Weidenreich once drew attention to the fact that the incisors of Sinanthropus had a spade-shaped shape characteristic of the Mongoloids. This allowed him to declare at the international congress of anthropologists, held in 1938 in Copenhagen, that the Mongoloids and American Indians descended directly from Sinanthropus.

Sinanthropus, like the Mongoloids, has spade-shaped incisors, as well as nut-shaped swellings on the lingual surface of the lower jaw. Thus, according to Weidenreich, the Mongoloids trace their origins independently of other people directly from Sinanthropus himself, who lived in Asia, that is, where the Mongoloids live today.

Then many anthropologists, including Soviet ones, joined Weidenreich’s point of view. Among them were K. Kuhn, A. Toma, G. F. Debets, G. P. Grigoriev and others. They significantly expanded the argumentation of the so-called polycentrism, now also known as the theory of multiregional anthropogenesis, or accepted it, albeit with many reservations.

Over time, scientists paid close attention to the fact that the long bones of the extremities of modern Mongoloids do not differ from the long bones of Caucasians, who are known to be descended from Cro-Magnons. In Sinanthropus, the long bones of the limbs were very thick and had a narrow medullary canal.

Thus, all people had a single ancestor - the Cro-Magnon man, and in the long-standing scientific dispute about the origin of humanity, the monocentrists are still right. However, now more and more researchers are inclined to believe that Asian finds generally destroy the usual idea of ​​​​race formation.

In fact, what appears before us is not different races that have a single origin (for example, in Africa), but representatives of different orders of people who developed in parallel in different places and never intersected!

Sinanthropus was distinguished by one more feature - along its skull, from the forehead to the back of the head, there was a powerful sagittal crest, which could be found in some species of australopithecines or in modern gorillas. Developed chewing muscles were attached to this ridge. In monkeys they are usually covered with folds of skin, but as soon as the creature rises to its hind legs, the crest begins to clearly stand out on the head.

As Maslov notes, is this why many ancient Chinese images show great wise ancestors and predecessors in the form of strange creatures with horns or a crest on their heads?

Sinanthropus, due to its development, could well be perceived as ancestors and sages by subsequent Chinese. In addition, the obvious extinction of synanthropes is somehow not traceable - they seem to dissolve into the new generation of humanity.

Perhaps this happened against the backdrop of a series of geological disasters in China, after which the old generation of Sinanthropes became ancestors - now they were remembered and worshiped.

CHINA - THE HOMELAND OF EUROPEANS?

In general, many interesting anthropological discoveries are being made in China. Thus, in Hubei province, in Yongxian county, two skulls were discovered in 1989-1990. This find further confused ideas about the settlement of ancient people.

Experts from the Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology from the city of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, under the leadership of Li Tianyuan, identified them as homo erectus and determined their age to be 600 thousand years. It would seem that there was nothing surprising in the find, but the most interesting, as often happens, was hidden in the details.

In a striking way, the skulls from Yongxian, with their even more developed brow ridges, repeat the finds in Java, that is, they turned out to be closer to Pithecanthropus, and not to Peking man.

But this was not the only surprise: although these skulls are close in structure to most Chinese skulls, fascial measurements showed their striking closeness to much later skulls discovered in... Europe.

Their striking closeness to homo heidelbergensis was established - the Heidelberg man, who allegedly gave rise to two varieties of homo sapiens at once: humans modern look and Neanderthals, who became extinct about 30-40 thousand years ago.

Currently, anthropologists also know such predecessors of Peking Man as Sinanthropus Lan-tian from Central China (1.15-1.13 million years old) and the even more ancient Sinanthropus from Danau (Southwestern China), who lived 1.8-1 .6 million years ago. So Chinese experts sometimes make assumptions that the Chinese nation is already about a million years old, or even more.

And if we take into account the existence of the Heidelberg Homo skull from Yongxian, it may even turn out that China is the oldest homeland of not only the Mongoloid, but also the Caucasian race. Not a fact, of course, but it is possible.

Many of us are interested in the ancient history of our planet. We know that, according to science, we have numerous ancestors from the animal kingdom. We also know that Sinanthropus is a representative of such an ancient person. Let's talk about this in more detail.

Definition of a phenomenon

Synanthropes are a subspecies that lived approximately 600-400 thousand years ago on our land during the period of severe glaciation.

Sinanthropus is called “Homo erectus” (human erectus) or also “Beijing people”, since the first fossil Sinanthropus was discovered in China, not far from the current capital of this state.

In terms of external parameters, this man looked like this: his height corresponded to the height of modern Chinese, his right hand was better developed than his left, and his brain volume was about 1000 cubic centimeters.

What was such a person capable of?

Of course, Sinanthropus is a representative of this. This is confirmed by modern scientific research in the field of ancient anatomy and physiology, and archaeological excavations.

Thus, in the homes of these people, remains of ash were found, which indicates that synanthropes could use fire, remains of animal bones, their teeth, and simple tools in their everyday life.

There is an assumption that this type of people could hunt animals and eat the meat of their relatives. However, this version was born in the Western world, while Chinese scientists deny it, they interpret archaeological finds in the habitats of Sinanthropus in its own way.

Thus, Chinese scientists believe that the fact that parts of human skulls (mainly top part skulls), testifies to the ancient religious ritual burial of the remains of the dead. This type of burial, by the way, has been preserved among some peoples at the pre-civilization stage of development. During this ritual, the already decayed bones of relatives are returned to the common ritual fire and are there as a symbol of the unity of the entire tribe.

History of the discovery of Sinanthropus bones

The fact that Sinanthropus is a representative ancient man, it became scientific fact relatively recently: only at the beginning of the last century. It was then, in 1927, that major studies were held in China in which both Chinese scientists and Western researchers participated.

Then the remains of the skeleton and pieces of skulls of this ancient man were discovered. In total, about 20 skeletal fragments were found.

However, as a result of the tragic events of the middle of the last century, caused by the World War, all these finds were lost.

Who does Sinanthropus represent: modern versions

In modern China, attempts have been made repeatedly to renew archaeological research in the field of finds from a century ago.

Some parts of skulls and skeletons were found in the town of Zhoukoudian. Therefore in modern world This ancient person is usually called by this name “Zhoukoudian”. This confirms the fact that Sinanthropus is a representative of the most ancient branch of people.

However, in modern scientific knowledge There is no consensus regarding this ancient fossil species of anthropoids.

Some scientists believe that it was the evolution of synanthropes that contributed to the formation, therefore, these people are the ancestors of modern Chinese. But other researchers believe that this branch of anthropoids became a dead end and completely ceased to exist in the process of evolution.

It is very difficult to say which of them is right today, since ancient history There are still too many blank spots left on our planet.

Therefore, the question of whether Sinanthropus is a representative of ancient ancestors or not cannot be given a definite answer. Perhaps, in this question, everyone is free to look for the answers that seem most acceptable to him.

However, the fact that such a subspecies existed is evidenced by numerous archaeological excavations, which are difficult to argue with.

Apparently, it will be the next generations of scientists who will have to solve this complex riddle that universal history has prepared for us. Let's hope everything works out for them.


Sinanthropa, otherwise - Peking man, one of the varieties homo erectus, is mainly considered to be a dead-end branch of primitive fossil people. But is everything so simple in this matter?

NOT SO FAR FROM MODERN PEOPLE

The first Sinanthropus skull was discovered in the grottoes of Zhoukoudian Cave, located approximately 50-60 km from Beijing, by Chinese anthropologist Pai Wen Zhong in 1927. Excavations in the cave were carried out from 1927 to 1937, then were interrupted by World War II and resumed in 1949. They were carried out according to all prescribed rules, and in their course the skeletons of 40 individuals were described.

From the very beginning, it was clear that a new species of fossil humans had been found. Where was Sinanthropus placed on the historical tree? It, according to the dating made, was attributed to the Middle Pleistocene, approximately between 900 thousand and 130 thousand years ago. Thus, the upper limit of his existence approached and perhaps even intersected with the existence of modern people.

Upon closer examination, as the famous sinologist and writer Alexey Maslov writes, it turned out that Sinanthropus is not so far from modern people in its development. Outwardly, he was, of course, in our opinion, not very attractive: he had very heavy brow ridges, a strongly sloping forehead, that is, his face was terribly primitive.

But at the same time it was also strikingly modern. The volume of his brain was close to the volume of the brain of modern homo sapiens. If the average brain volume of Sinanthropus was 1,075 cm3, then there were individual individuals in which this figure reached 1,300 cm3, which is close to modern humans, who on average have a brain of 1,350 cm3.

That is, Sinanthropus combined a completely modern brain and primitive appearance. The height of these hominids mainly varied between 150-160 cm, and their weight, due to their dense build, could reach 80-90 kg. Sinanthropus did not live long and rarely crossed the 35-year mark.

Their teeth were also quite modern, although the molars and incisors were somewhat wider than those of modern people, and the bones of the limbs were practically no different from ours. The left lobe of the Beijing people's brain, where the motor centers of the right side of the body are located, was slightly larger compared to the right lobe.

Consequently, the right hand of Sinanthropus was more developed than the left. In addition to plant foods, they ate animal meat. Sinanthropus had a relatively developed communal culture, made tools and was actively involved in gathering.

In their large cave, Zhoukoudian, a fire burned, which they kept unquenchable, as far as can be judged from the deposits, for hundreds, or even thousands of years.

DIRECT ANCESTOR OF THE CHINESE

It is curious that, along with Soviet and European reconstructions of the appearance of Sinanthropus, which depict him, if not as a prosimian, then as a kind of degenerate, there are reconstructions made by Chinese specialists.

Sinanthropus looks very similar to them... to the modern Chinese. Perhaps with a strongly sloping forehead, slightly protruding jaws and sharply prominent brow ridges. Most anthropologists of the Celestial Empire, in fact, believe that Sinanthropus was “completely Chinese.”

Thus, the patriarch of Chinese anthropology, the man who, along with Pei Wenzhong, directly discovered Sinanthropus, Jia Lanpo has no doubt at all that not the remains of some kind of primitive creature were found near Beijing human homo erectus, who lived 500-400 thousand years ago, and was a ready-made ancestor of the Chinese.

“The Peking man is already beginning to embody all the characteristics of the “yellow race”: the concave inside of the incisors, the characteristic base of the nose and wide cheekbones. Thus, Peking Man was the ancestor of modern Chinese."

American anthropologist of German origin Franz Weidenreich once drew attention to the fact that the incisors of Sinanthropus had a spade-shaped shape characteristic of the Mongoloids. This allowed him to declare at the international congress of anthropologists, held in 1938 in Copenhagen, that the Mongoloids and American Indians descended directly from Sinanthropus.

Sinanthropus, like the Mongoloids, has spade-shaped incisors, as well as nut-shaped swellings on the lingual surface of the lower jaw. Thus, according to Weidenreich, the Mongoloids trace their origins independently of other people directly from Sinanthropus himself, who lived in Asia, that is, where the Mongoloids live today.

Then many anthropologists, including Soviet ones, joined Weidenreich’s point of view. Among them were K. Kuhn, A. Toma, G. F. Debets, G. P. Grigoriev and others. They significantly expanded the argumentation of the so-called polycentrism, now also known as the theory of multiregional anthropogenesis, or accepted it, albeit with many reservations.

Over time, scientists paid close attention to the fact that the long bones of the extremities of modern Mongoloids do not differ from the long bones of Caucasians, who are known to be descended from Cro-Magnons. In Sinanthropus, the long bones of the limbs were very thick and had a narrow medullary canal.

Thus, all people had a single ancestor - the Cro-Magnon man, and in the long-standing scientific dispute about the origin of humanity, the monocentrists are still right. However, now more and more researchers are inclined to believe that Asian finds generally destroy the usual idea of ​​​​race formation.

In fact, what appears before us is not different races that have a single origin (for example, in Africa), but representatives of different orders of people who developed in parallel in different places and never intersected!

Sinanthropus was distinguished by another feature - along its skull, from the forehead to the back of the head, there was a powerful sagittal crest, which could be found in some species of australopithecines or in modern gorillas. Developed chewing muscles were attached to this ridge. In monkeys they are usually covered with folds of skin, but as soon as the creature rises to its hind legs, the crest begins to clearly stand out on the head.

As Maslov notes, is this why many ancient Chinese images show great wise ancestors and predecessors in the form of strange creatures with horns or a crest on their heads?

Sinanthropus, due to its development, could well be perceived as ancestors and sages by subsequent Chinese. In addition, the obvious extinction of synanthropes is somehow not traceable - they seem to dissolve into the new generation of humanity.

Perhaps this happened against the backdrop of a series of geological disasters in China, after which the old generation of Sinanthropus became the ancestors - now they were remembered and worshiped.

CHINA—THE HOMELAND OF EUROPEANS?

In general, many interesting anthropological discoveries are being made in China. Thus, in Hubei province, in Yongxian county, two skulls were discovered in 1989-1990. This find further confused ideas about the settlement of ancient people.

Experts from the Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology from the city of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, under the leadership of Li Tianyuan, identified them as homo erectus and determined their age to be 600 thousand years. It would seem that there was nothing surprising in the find, but the most interesting, as often happens, was hidden in the details.

In a striking way, the skulls from Yongxian, with their even more developed brow ridges, repeat the finds in Java, that is, they turned out to be closer to Pithecanthropus, and not to Peking man.

But this was not the only surprise: although these skulls are close in structure to most Chinese skulls, fascial measurements showed their striking closeness to much later skulls discovered in... Europe.

Their striking closeness to homo heidelbergensis was established - Heidelberg man, who allegedly gave rise to two varieties of homo sapiens at once: modern humans and Neanderthals, who became extinct about 30-40 thousand years ago.

Currently, anthropologists also know such predecessors of Peking Man as Sinanthropus Lan-tian from Central China (1.15-1.13 million years old) and the even more ancient Sinanthropus from Danau (Southwestern China), who lived 1.8-1 .6 million years ago. So Chinese experts sometimes make assumptions that the Chinese nation is already about a million years old, or even more.

And if we take into account the existence of the Heidelberg Homo skull from Yongxian, it may even turn out that China is the oldest homeland of not only the Mongoloid, but also the Caucasian race. Not a fact, of course, but it is possible.

Victor BUMAGIN