• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By spring 1927, work was underway at Choukoutien, in the midst of the Chinese civil war. During several months of painstaking excavation, there were no discoveries of any hominid remains. Finally, with the cold autumn rains beginning to fall, marking the end of the first season’s digging, a single hominid tooth was uncovered. On the basis of this tooth, and the two previously reported by Zdansky (now in Black’s possession), Black decided to announce the discovery of a new kind of fossil hominid. He wrote in Nature: “The newly discovered specimen displays in the details of its morphology a number of interesting and unique characters, sufficient, it is believed, to justify the proposal of a new hominid genus Sinanthropus, to be represented by this material” (Black 1927, p. 954).

Black was eager to show the world his discovery. Dr. Heinrich Neckles, a friend of Black, later recalled: “One night he came to my office very excited, to show the precious tooth of homo pekinensis. He wanted me to advise him about the safest method to take the invaluable find to England (where he was going shortly) safe against loss or theft. I suggested a brass capsule with a screw closure and a ring at the top, with a strong ribbon through it, so he could wear it around his neck. We had a good Chinese mechanic in the Physiology Department who made a very nice capsule for him and he was as happy as a little boy” (Hood 1964, p. 90).

In the course of his travels with his newly found tooth, Black discovered that not everyone shared his enthusiasm for Sinanthropus. At the annual meeting of the American Association of Anatomists in 1928, some of the members heavily criticized Black for proposing a new genus on so little evidence.

In addition, Zdansky was not at all very happy regarding the purposes for which his teeth were being used: “I am indeed convinced that the existing material provides a wholly inadequate foundation for many of the various theories based upon it. . . . I decline absolutely to venture any far-reaching conclusions regarding the extremely meager material described here, and which, I think, cannot be more closely identified than as Homo sp. [species undetermined ] . . . my purpose here is only to make it clear that my discovery of these teeth should be regarded as decidedly interesting but not of epoch-making importance” (Bowden 1977, pp. 80– 81).

Regarding such criticism of Black’s activities, Grafton Elliot Smith wrote: “It had no other effect upon him, beyond awaking his sympathies for anthropologists who are unfairly criticized and to make him redouble his efforts to establish the proof of his claim” (Hood 1964, p. 93).

Black kept making the rounds, showing the tooth to Ales Hrdlicka in the United States and then journeying to England, where he met Sir Arthur Keith and Sir Arthur Smith Woodward. At the British Museum, Black had casts made of the Peking man molars, for distribution to other workers. This is the kind of propaganda work necessary to bring a discovery to the attention of the scientific community. This serves to illustrate that even for a scientist political skills are not unimportant.

On returning to China, Black kept in close touch with the excavations at Choukoutien. Dynamite was used to blast out sections of rock. Crews of workers then searched through the debris, sending the larger chunks back to Peking, where any fossils were carefully extracted. The sole aim of the whole project was, of course, to find more Peking man remains. For months nothing turned up.

But Black wrote to Keith on December 5, 1928: “It would seem that there is a certain magic about the last few days of the season’s work for again two days before it ended Böhlin found the right half of the lower jaw of Sinanthropus with the three permanent molars in situ” (Hood 1964, p. 97).

Now a financial problem loomed. The Rockefeller Foundation grant that supported the digging would run out in April of 1929. So in January, Black wrote the directors,