Sinanthropus, in other words - 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?
NOT SO FAR FROM MODERN PEOPLE
The first Sinanthropus skull was discovered in the grottoes of the Zhoukoudian Cave, located about 50-60 km from Beijing, by the Chinese anthropologist Pai Wen Zhong in 1927. Excavations in the cave were carried out from 1927 to 1937, then they were interrupted by World War II and resumed in 1949. They were conducted according to all the prescribed rules, and in their course the skeletons of 40 individuals were described.
It was clear from the start that a new variety 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 was approaching and, perhaps, even intersected with the existence of people of the modern type.
On closer examination, as the famous Sinologist and writer Alexei Maslov writes, it turned out that Sinanthropus is not so far from modern people in its development. Outwardly, of course, in our opinion, he was not very attractive: he had very heavy brow ridges, a strongly sloping forehead, that is, he was terribly primitive on his face.
But he was also strikingly modern. His brain volume was close to that of modern homo sapiens. If the average brain volume of Sinanthropus was 1,075 cm3, then there were some individuals in which this figure reached 1,300 cm3, which is close to a modern man, who on average has a brain of 1,350 cm3.
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That is, Sinanthropus combined a completely modern brain and a primitive appearance. The growth of these hominids mainly varied within the range of 150-160 cm, the weight due to their dense constitution 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 are somewhat wider than those of today's people, moreover, the bones of the limbs did not practically differ from ours. The left lobe of the brain of the Beijing people, where the motor centers of the right side of the body are located, was slightly larger compared to the right lobe.
Consequently, the Sinanthropus' right hand was more developed than the left. In addition to plant foods, they ate animal meat. Sinanthropus possessed a relatively developed culture of community, they made tools and were actively engaged in gathering.
In their large cave, Zhoukoudian, a fire burned, which they kept unquenchable, as far as the sediments can tell, for hundreds or even thousands of years.
THE DIRECT ANCESTOR OF THE CHINESE
It is curious that along with Soviet and European reconstructions of the appearance of Sinanthropus, painting him if not a semi-ape, then 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 protruding superciliary arches. Most anthropologists in the Celestial Empire, in fact, believe that Sinanthropus was "quite Chinese."
Thus, the patriarch of Chinese anthropology, a person who, along with Pei Wenzhong, who directly discovered Sinanthropus, Jia Lanpo, has no doubts that not the remains of some kind of primitive man homo erectus that lived 500-400 thousand years ago were found near Beijing, but a ready-made ancestor of the Chinese.
“The Peking man is already beginning to embody all the characteristics of the 'yellow race': the concave interior of the incisors, the characteristic base of the nose and wide cheekbones. Thus, the Peking man was the ancestor of the modern Chinese."
The American anthropologist of German origin Franz Weidenreich once drew attention to the fact that the incisors of the synanthropists had a spatula-like shape characteristic of the Mongoloids. This allowed him, at the international congress of anthropologists, held in 1938 in Copenhagen, to declare that the Mongoloids and American Indians descended directly from Sinanthropus.
Sinanthropus, like the Mongoloids, has spatulate incisors, as well as nut-like swellings on the lingual surface of the lower jaw. Thus, according to Weidenreich, the Mongoloids lead their family independently of other people directly from the Sinanthropus himself, who lived in Asia, that is, where the Mongoloids still live today.
Then many anthropologists, including Soviet ones, joined Weidenreich's point of view. Among them were K. Kuhn, A. Thoma, G. F. Debets, G. P. Grigoriev and others. They significantly supplemented 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 in modern Mongoloids, the long bones of the limbs do not differ from the long bones of the Caucasians, as you know, descend from the Cro-Magnons. In Sinanthropus, the long bones of the limbs were very thick and had a narrow cerebral canal.
Thus, all people had a common ancestor - Cro-Magnon, 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 findings generally destroy the usual idea of race formation.
In fact, we are not presented with different races with a single origin (for example, in Africa), but representatives of different orders of people who developed in parallel in different places and never crossed!
Sinanthropus was distinguished by one more feature - along its skull, from the forehead to the back of the head, there was a powerful sagittal ridge, which could be found in some species of australopithecus or in modern gorillas. Developed chewing muscles were attached to this crest. In monkeys, they are usually covered with skin folds, however, as soon as the creature rises to its hind legs, the ridge begins to clearly stand out on the head.
As the same Maslov notes, isn't that 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 their development, could well be perceived as ancestors and sages by subsequent Chinese. In addition, the obvious extinction of the synanthropes is somehow not traced - they seem to dissolve in a new generation of humanity.
Perhaps this happened against the backdrop of a number of geological disasters in China, after which the old generation of Sinanthropus passed into the category of ancestors - now they were remembered and worshiped.
CHINA IS THE HOMELAND OF EUROPEANS?
In general, many interesting anthropological findings are being made in China. So, in Hubei province, in Yongxian county, in 1989-1990, two skulls were discovered. This find further confused the idea of 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 at 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.
Strikingly, the skulls from Yongxian, with their even more developed superciliary arches, repeat the finds in Java, that is, they turned out to be closer to Pithecanthropus, and not to the Peking man.
But this was not the only surprise: although in the structure of the cheekbones of the skull, these are close to most Chinese skulls, but fascial measurements showed their striking closeness to the much later skulls found in … Europe.
Their striking closeness to homo heidelbergensis, the Heidelberg man, was established, which presumably gave rise to two varieties of homo sapiens at once: modern humans and Neanderthals, who died out about 30-40 thousand years ago.
At present, anthropologists also know such predecessors of the Peking man as the Lan-Tian Sinanthropus from Central China (1.15-1.13 million years) and the even more ancient Sinanthropus from Danau (Southwest 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 skull of a Heidelberg man from Yongxian, then it may even turn out that China is the most ancient homeland of not only the Mongoloid, but also the Caucasoid race. Not a fact, of course, but not excluded.
Victor BUMAGIN