Walking into Zhoukoudian Peking Man Site Museum to Explore Peking Man's Footprints

Zhoukoudian Town, Fangshan District, Beijing, has undulating peaks and gurgling rivers. 192 1 year, when An Tesheng, a Swedish geologist, visited Zhoukoudian, he came to Gulong. He said: "There is a hunch that the remains of our ancestors are lying here." Later, the first complete "Peking man" skull fossil was found here, which caused a sensation in the world.

The great discovery of rewriting history

From a distance, Zhoukoudian Peking Man Site Museum looks like a stone tool left by primitive people in the wilderness, and its rough and hard folding surface looks like the blade of a stone tool. The building gradually descends from south to north, blending with the skyline and natural environment of the surrounding mountains. The building area of the museum is 8093 square meters, including two floors above ground and one underground. There are more than 0/000 pieces of fossil specimens, cultural relics and models on display in the museum, which are divided into four exhibition halls, systematically introducing the discovery, excavation, research and protection of Zhoukoudian site.

Walking into the first exhibition hall, old black and white photos tell the story that happened on this site a hundred years ago.

1927 In the spring, the large-scale excavation of Zhoukoudian site began. The project was originally led by China geologist Li Jie and Swedish paleontologist Brin. As can be seen from the photos at the scene, the method of digging from top to bottom was adopted at that time. That year, another well-preserved human tooth fossil was unearthed. After research, BU Shengda, an anatomist of Peking Union Medical College, named this ancient human as "Peking Man", commonly known as "Beijinger".

1929 On the afternoon of February 2, archaeologist Pei Wenzhong led several technicians to excavate nervously in the cold wind. As the cave is dug deeper and deeper, the space on the excavation surface becomes narrower and narrower, so it is impossible to use steam lamps. The staff had to dig with one hand and light with a candle in the other. Suddenly, Pei Wenzhong shouted, "What is this? It's a personal head! " The long-awaited thing finally appeared.

This skull fossil is half buried in hard soil and half buried in loose soil. Pei Wenzhong hollowed out the soil around the fossils and gently pried it out with a crowbar. Fossils are very wet when they are unearthed, and they break at the touch. Pei Wenzhong and two technicians lit charcoal fire overnight to bake it. After drying, they paste several thick layers of cotton paper with water, and then paste gypsum and sacks to continue baking. When the plaster outside becomes dry and hard, the fossils wrapped inside are not easy to be damaged. Finally, Pei Wenzhong wrapped the skull fossil with his two old quilts, tied it with a blanket outside, and personally sent it to the Cenozoic laboratory of China Geological Survey by long-distance bus.

In an old photo, Pei Wenzhong stood facing the camera with a wrapped skull fossil in his hand. The tools used in archaeological excavation at that time were displayed in the showcase next to it. "This is the' Peking Man' skull fossil model excavated by Pei Wenzhong in Zhoukoudian in 1929." The commentator said that this skull belongs to a boy of eight or nine years old, with a thick bone wall, about twice that of modern people, and a small brain capacity, about 9 15 ml.

Dong Cuiping, director of Zhoukoudian Peking Ape Site Museum, said that the discovery of the first complete skull fossil of Peking Ape shocked the international academic circles, which not only provided important physical evidence for Darwin's evolution from ape to man, but also advanced the history of human evolution for hundreds of thousands of years. The discovery and research of Peking man and his cultural relics have solved the long-standing argument that Homo erectus is an ape or a human since the discovery of Javanese at the end of 19, established the position of Homo erectus in human development, and made a breakthrough contribution to exploring the origin and development of human beings. The typical form of Homo erectus is still dominated by "Beijingers".

The continuous sequence of ancient human evolution

Since the excavation of Zhoukoudian site, 27 fossils and cultural relics of different periods have been found. The ancient human fossils unearthed this time cover three stages in the history of human evolution-Homo erectus, early Homo sapiens and late Homo sapiens, which constitute a continuous sequence of ancient human evolution and have important scientific research value.

There is a simulated sand table of Zhoukoudian site in the exhibition hall, and the distribution of fossil sites can be seen everywhere. Zhoukoudian site has an overall protection area of 4.8 square kilometers, with Gulong Mountain as the core and a protection area of 0.24 square kilometers. Eight fossil sites were found in this area, including three human fossil sites. Among the human fossils unearthed from Zhoukoudian site, the most famous ones are Peking man fossils dating from 700,000 to 200,000 years ago and caveman fossils dating from 30,000 to 1 10,000 years ago. In addition, ancient human fossils from 200,000 to 654.38 million years ago and from 42,000 to 38,500 years ago were unearthed at Sites 4 and 27, respectively.

Six relatively complete fossil models of ancient human skulls were exhibited in the museum. "This is the model number of the skull fossil, Beijinger V, belonging to an adult male with a brain capacity of about1140ml." According to the commentator, the original fossil consists of four parts, including the left temporal bone and its connecting part found in 1934, the right temporal bone fragment identified in 1936, the complete frontal bone found in 1966, and the right occipital bone and part of the parietal bone. Among them, some primitive fossils unearthed in 1934 and 1936 are missing, and the frontal bone and occipital bone unearthed in 1966 are currently preserved in vertebrate paleontology Institute of Paleoanthropology, China Academy of Sciences.

There is also a "Beijinger" limb skeleton model in the exhibition hall. By studying the unearthed human limb bones, we can calculate the height of "Beijingers" at that time-about1.56m for males and1.44m for females.

The third exhibition hall focuses on the discovery of Neanderthals. During the period of 1933, archaeologists excavated these caves and found more than 40 human fossils belonging to 8 different individuals, including 3 relatively complete skulls. By restoring the head of "Neanderthal" through the skull, we can see that "Neanderthal" is very close to the appearance of modern people. According to scientific research, the height of cavemen is about1.74m for men and1.59m for women, which is much higher than that of Beijingers.

A slender bone needle is displayed in the showcase. It is made of tiger bone, about 82 mm long and slightly bent, indicating that it has been used for a long time. The appearance of spicules shows that human beings have learned to sew clothes to resist the cold at that time.

Many animal fossils can also be seen in the museum, such as the complete skeleton of China hyena, the skull of Lee's wild boar, the skull of swollen deer, and the bones of cave bears and tigers in the caveman period. These animal fossils provide important data for paleontology and paleoenvironmental climate research.

World-famous protection and search

Hold out your palm in front of the interactive electronic screen, and compare your height and brain capacity with "Beijingers"; Walk into the 4D cinema, travel through time and space in the thunder and fog, and come to the hometown of ancient human life ... The rich multimedia and interactive facilities of Zhoukoudian Peking Man Relics Museum allow the audience to touch history and talk to their ancestors in the immersive experience.

Dong Cuiping introduced that Zhoukoudian Peking Man Site Museum has held exhibitions in Korea, Italy, Malaysia, Egypt and other countries, and also held many exhibitions in China every year, and held a popular science lecture hall on campus. During the epidemic last year, we actively promoted online short video courses. This year, we launched the live broadcast of "Jia Zi Inheritance and Seeing Four Colours of the Dragon" in Tik Tok, and cooperated with the program group "Riding in Wan Li and Leaving China Intangible Heritage" to arouse the public's attention to the inheritance and protection of cultural heritage.

The Ape Cave is the most famous site in Zhoukoudian site group. Since the excavation in the 1920s, it has been damaged by natural forces such as sunlight, rain, wind erosion and dissolution for a long time, resulting in various geological diseases. In order to protect this precious site, after 7 years' demonstration, based on the principle of "minimum coverage, elimination of hidden dangers and integration with nature", the full coverage protection project of the Ape Cave, which started on 20 15, was completed on 20 18. In 20 19, Zhoukoudian site (ape-man cave) 1 site protection building won the only gold medal of the Asia protection project of the Architects' Regional Council.

1998, 14 academicians of China Academy of Sciences jointly voiced their appeal to the world to look for the fossils lost by "Beijingers": "Because what we are looking for is not only the fossils themselves, but more importantly, we are looking for human conscience and our belief in science, progress and peace for all mankind."