Richard Stone
ZHOUKOUDIAN, CHINA—On a sweltering late June day, Zhang Xiaoling hunches under a makeshift canvas roof over one of Asia`s most famous Stone Age sites. It`s roasting in the shelter, but Zhang, a stone-tools specialist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing who just earned her Ph.D., is grinning from ear to ear. "I think we`ll find something soon," she says. "I`m so excited."
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Last week, work commenced on a new excavation here in the cave-riddledhills of Zhoukoudian, 50 kilometers southwest of Beijing, whereearly last century scientists discoveredPekingMan: a troveofHomo erectusfossils as well as rudimentary tools and thebones of woolly rhinos and other Ice Age fauna. The new digaims to both stabilize the iconic site and unearth evidencethat could influence simmering debates, such as whetherPekingManwas a hunter or a scavenger and whether the hominin tamedfire. "I strongly support new excavations," says paleoanthropologistRussell L. Ciochon of the University of Iowa in Iowa City. "For too many years, Zhoukoudian has been treated more as a shrine rather than a valuable paleoanthropological site."
PekingMan(now called BeijingManin Chinese) has a storiedhistory. European scientists discovered a few ancient teethhere at Dragon Bone Hill in the 1920s before archaeologist PeiWenzhong made a stunning find in 1929: a nearly complete skull.Up until the Japanese invasion in 1937, Pei and others unearthedsome 200 bones, including five more partial skulls—allof which vanished during World War II—and thousands ofpieces of worked stone. In a paper last March inNature, IVPPVice-Director Gao Xing and colleagues used the ratio of aluminum-26and beryllium-10 in quartz crystals to date thePekingManstratato 680,000 to 780,000 years old, about 200,000 years older thanpreviously thought.
The new excavation is in a 20-square-meter meter section ofthe western end of Site 1, where remains of some 40H. erectusindividuals have been unearthed. One objective is to stabilizethe site, perched on the edge of a cliff and at risk of collapse,says Gao, the project leader. The first 2 months will be spentremoving a hazardous outcropping. Team members will be ropedlike mountain climbers. "It`s very dangerous to work here,"Gao says.
Gao is downplaying expectations of what he describes as a salvagearchaeology operation. The biggest prize, he says, would bea skull: It would be "sheer luck" to find one, he says. Onlycasts remain of the missing skulls. Gao says he would be happywith a jawbone, which could clarify evolutionary relationshipswith other hominin subspecies, or finger bones, which couldshed light onPekingMan`s dexterity for fashioning tools. Researchersalso hope to examine stone tools in situ. A better understandingof the timeline of hominin occupation "may be more important than the discovery of isolated fossils," Gao says.
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Excavations will continue through October. Outside the glareof that spotlight, Gao and others are planning field surveysand excavations at localities across China under a 5-year, $2million project funded by the science ministry. Gao is eyeingone site in particular: a cave in Jianshi in central China`sHubei Province, dating to more 1 million years ago. "It has great potential" to yieldH. erectusfossils, he says. Of course,they would have to be especially dazzling to nudge ZhoukoudianandPekingManoff center stage.
