Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [386]
Von Koenigswald (1956, p. 49) agreed with this analysis, stating: “The thigh bones of Peking man found at Chou K’ou Tien are all severely damaged and often smashed into small pieces to extract the marrow. The damage was not the work of beasts of prey, but undoubtedly of humans.”
Weidenreich (1943, p. 190) then offered this summary of his observations: “My verdict is that the destruction of the base and the blows on the top of the skull are the incidental work of man, although the possibility cannot be entirely excluded that at least those lesions which indicate they were produced by pointed or blunt agents may have been caused by stones falling from the roof of the cave on a living individual. Later on the skulls were broken as carrion by carnivores, probably hyaenas, which lived in the cave and cracked the bones as long as they were fresh.” It is not very likely that Sinanthropus and the hyenas inhabited the cave at the same time. Accepting Weidenreich’s version of events, Sinanthropus would have been an infrequent visitor, or perhaps the cave was inhabited alternately by Sinanthropus and other creatures.
As to why mostly cranial fragments were found, Weidenreich believed that with the exceptions of some long bones, only heads were carried into the caves. He stated: “the strange selection of human bones we are facing at Choukoutien has been made by Sinanthropus himself. He hunted his own kin as he hunted other animals and treated all his victims in the same way. Whether he opened the human skulls for ritual or culinary reasons cannot be decided on the basis of the present evidence of his cultural life; but the breaking of the longbones of animals and man alike, apparently for the purposes of removing the marrow, indicates that the latter alternative is the more likely. The remains of his meals became the prey of his predatory neighbors at the foothills of Choukoutien” (Weidenreich 1943, p. 190).
Some modern authorities have suggested that Weidenreich was mistaken in his interpretation of the fossil remains of Sinanthropus. Binford and Ho (1985, p. 414) pointed out that hominid skulls subjected to transport over river gravel are found with the basal section worn away. But the skulls recovered from Choukoutien were apparently not transported in this fashion.
Binford and Ho also believed that damage to one skull, which Weidenreich thought could have been caused by cutting, was typical of a kind of animal breakage. But Weidenreich (1943, p. 189) had considered this possibility and still proposed cutting by an implement as the most likely cause. Even Binford and Ho (1985, p. 415) admitted that the kind of animal breakage they were proposing had “the appearance of cut or hack marks.”
Binford and Ho also disagreed with Weidenreich’s view that the Sinanthro pus long bones were deliberately broken. They stated: “Binford has examined the photographs and casts of the bones in question, and the breakage appears to be unequivocally attributable to weathering. There is no evidence that these bones were broken fresh or by percussion” (Binford and Ho 1985, p. 414).
This statement is contradicted by Weidenreich (1941, p. 5), who said about one of the femurs: “The appearance of the bony surface exposed by . . . fractures indicates that the breakage occurred prior to mineralisation. . . . The remaining surface of the bone is practically intact and scarcely weathered.” It should be kept in mind that Weidenreich was working from the original fossils, while Binford could only study photographs and casts because the original specimens were lost during the Second World War.
Another modern authority objecting to Weidenreich’s cannibalism interpretation was Jean S. Aigner. She suggested: “The fact that the base of several