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."

Perilous perch. The excavation will take place at the edge of an unstable 40-meter-high cliff. CREDIT: R. STONE/SCIENCE [Larger version of this image]

Last week, work commenced on a new excavation here in the cave-riddled hills of Zhoukoudian, 50 kilometers southwest of Beijing, where early last century scientists discovered Peking Man: a trove of Homo erectus fossils as well as rudimentary tools and the bones of woolly rhinos and other Ice Age fauna. The new dig aims to both stabilize the iconic site and unearth evidence that could influence simmering debates, such as whether Peking Man was a hunter or a scavenger and whether the hominin tamed fire. "I strongly support new excavations," says paleoanthropologist Russell 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."

Peking Man (now called Beijing Man in Chinese) has a storied history. European scientists discovered a few ancient teeth here at Dragon Bone Hill in the 1920s before archaeologist Pei Wenzhong made a stunning find in 1929: a nearly complete skull. Up until the Japanese invasion in 1937, Pei and others unearthed some 200 bones, including five more partial skulls—all of which vanished during World War II—and thousands of pieces of worked stone. In a paper last March in Nature, IVPP Vice-Director Gao Xing and colleagues used the ratio of aluminum-26 and beryllium-10 in quartz crystals to date the Peking Man strata to 680,000 to 780,000 years old, about 200,000 years older than previously thought.

The new excavation is in a 20-square-meter meter section of the western end of Site 1, where remains of some 40 H. erectus individuals have been unearthed. One objective is to stabilize the site, perched on the edge of a cliff and at risk of collapse, says Gao, the project leader. The first 2 months will be spent removing a hazardous outcropping. Team members will be roped like mountain climbers. "It`s very dangerous to work here," Gao says.

Gao is downplaying expectations of what he describes as a salvage archaeology operation. The biggest prize, he says, would be a skull: It would be "sheer luck" to find one, he says. Only casts remain of the missing skulls. Gao says he would be happy with a jawbone, which could clarify evolutionary relationships with other hominin subspecies, or finger bones, which could shed light on Peking Man`s dexterity for fashioning tools. Researchers also hope to examine stone tools in situ. A better understanding of the timeline of hominin occupation "may be more important than the discovery of isolated fossils," Gao says.

Under no illusions. Finding a skull would be sheer luck, says Gao Xing. CREDIT: R. STONE/SCIENCE [Larger version of this image]

Excavations will continue through October. Outside the glare of that spotlight, Gao and others are planning field surveys and excavations at localities across China under a 5-year, $2 million project funded by the science ministry. Gao is eyeing one site in particular: a cave in Jianshi in central China`s Hubei Province, dating to more 1 million years ago. "It has great potential" to yield H. erectus fossils, he says. Of course, they would have to be especially dazzling to nudge Zhoukoudian and Peking Man off center stage.