Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [383]
As we shall see, that is what did happen once the tools and signs of fire became widely known. For example, Breuil (1932, p. 14) said about the relationship of Sinanthropus to the tools and signs of fire: “Several distinguished scientists have independently expressed to me the thought that a being so physically removed from Man. . . . was not capable of the works I have just described. In this case, the skeletal remains of Sinanthropus could be considered as simple hunting trophies, attributable, as were the traces of fire and industry, to a true Man, whose remains have not yet been found.” But Breuil himself thought that Sinanthropus was the manufacturer of tools and maker of fire at Choukoutien.
9.1.8 Recent Views
Modern investigators have tended to confirm Breuil’s views. Like Breuil, they hold that certain deposits in the Choukoutien caves are deep layers of ash, indicating the massive use of fire. For example, Wu Rukang and Lin Shenglong (1983, p. 93) reported that there are four “large thick layers of ashes” and that the thickest layer is six meters [about 19.7 feet ] thick in certain places.
Paleontologist Jia Lanpo stated (1975, pp. 33–36) that there are four thick layers of ash and that the layer in the upper-middle part of the cave is six meters deep and consists of beds of ash of different colors—purple, red, yellow, white, and black. He also reported burned bones, colored black, blue, white, grey, green, or dull brown. Jia believed that Peking man knew how to use but not make fire, that the fires once lit were kept burning continuously for a long time—even passed down from generation to generation. We are not, however, aware of the discovery anywhere else in the world of a cave as old as Choukoutien having such huge beds of ash, providing, of course, that the above reports, identifying the deposits as ash layers, are correct.
Father P. O’Connell, a Roman Catholic priest who lived in China during the period of the Peking man discoveries, offered an intriguing explanation for the massive ash deposits at Choukoutien. He suggested that the site had been used for producing lime for the construction of the ancient city of Cambalac, situated on land now occupied by present-day Beijing (O’Connell 1969). Lime, a caustic substance produced by heating limestone to a high temperature, is used in making mortar and plaster.
But almost all modern investigators agree with Breuil that Sinanthropus was responsible for the signs of fire. Breuil wrote in the 1930s: “Sinanthropus kindled fire and did so frequently, he used bone implements and he worked stone, just as much as the Paleolithics of the West. In spite of his skull, which so closely resembles that of Pithecanthropus, he was not merely a Hominian, but possessed an ingenious mind capable of inventing, and hands that were sufficiently adroit and sufficiently master of their fingers to fashion tools and weapons” ( Boule and Vallois 1957, p. 144). One gets an impression of a fairly humanlike being, a hunter who brought game felled with his stone weapons back to his cave home, where he cooked the flesh on fires he kindled for that purpose.
A somewhat different view of Sinanthropus at Choukoutien is provided by Lewis R. Binford and Chuan Kun Ho, anthropologists at the University of New Mexico. Concerning the signs of fire, they stated: “The so-called ash layers are not hearths and may not all be ash layers. . . . There seems to be little doubt that much of the content of the so-called ash layers is largely owl or other raptor droppings. They are systematically described as dominated by rodent bone. . . . It would appear that at least some of them were originally huge guano accumulations inside the cave. In some cases, these massive organic deposits could have burned. . . . The assumption that man introduced and distributed the fire is unwarranted, as is the