Download the high-resolution image here

The Peking Man

On December 2nd, at 4:00 pm, in 1929, Wenzhong Pei found the oldest human fossil known to us "working in a 40-meter crevasse in frigid weather with a hammer in one hand and a candle in the other". They called it the Peking man, after the Romanized name of the city of Beijing.

Source: Durant, Will, The Story of Civilization, Vol. 1: Our Oriental Heritage New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954.

First cranium of Homo erectus pekinensis (Sinathropus pekinensis) discovered in 1929 in Zhoukoudian, today missing (replica)
First cranium of Homo erectus pekinensis (Sinathropus pekinensis) discovered in 1929 in Zhoukoudian, today missing (replica)
Public Domain

Back to archive



Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!