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Boule therefore came to the following conclusion: “By the sum total of their characters, the mandibles and teeth of Sinanthropus denote a large Primate that was . . . certainly less human than the Mauer [Heidelberg] jaw, which is probably older than the Peking fossils” (Boule and Vallois 1957, p. 140).

In his physiological demotion of Peking man, Boule is in harmony with some modern researchers, such as Binford and Ho, who hesitate to attribute typically human behavior to the Choukoutien hominids.

Figure 9.2. Restored jaws of an adult Sinanthropus male (above) and female ( below). They display substantial sexual dimorphism, an apelike feature (Boule 1937, p. 13).

Binford and Ho characterized Sinanthropus behaviorally as a simple scavenger who was not clearly responsible for either the animal bones or beds of ashes at the cave of Choukoutien. They concluded: “What, then, was life like in the ‘cave home of Beijing man?’ We think we must conclude that we do not know” (Binford and Ho 1985, p. 429). We agree with this honest statement, which respects the limitations of the empiric method when applied to such questions.

9.1.12 The Fossils Disappear

As we have previously mentioned, one reason that it may be difficult to resolve many of the questions surrounding Peking man is that the original fossils are no longer available for study. By 1938, excavations at Choukoutien, under the direction of Weidenreich, were halted by guerilla warfare in the surrounding Western Hills. Later, with the Second World War well underway, Weidenreich left for the United States in April of 1941, carrying a set of casts of the Peking man fossils.

In the summer of 1941, it is said, the original bones were packed in two footlockers and delivered to Colonel Ashurst of the U.S. Marine Embassy Guard in Peking. In early December of 1941, the footlockers were reportedly placed on a train bound for the port of Chinwangtao, where they were to be loaded onto an American ship, the President Harrison, as part of the U.S. evacuation from China. But on December 7, the train was intercepted, and the fossils were never seen again. In a statement published on March 22, 1951 in the New York Times, Pei Wenzhong (W. C. Pei) said the Americans found the fossils at the University of Tokyo after the war and secretly transported them to the American Museum of Natural History. The chairman of the department of anthropology at the Museum denied the charge (Bowden 1977, pp. 106–107).

After World War II, the Chinese Communist government continued the excavations at Choukoutien, adding a few fossils to the prewar discoveries. The present total of Homo erectus (Sinanthropus) discoveries since 1927 is 6 fairly complete skullcaps along with 12 other skull fragments, 15 pieces of lower jaws, 157 teeth, 3 fragments of upper arm bones, 1 clavicle, 7 fragments of thighbones, 1 fragment of a shinbone, and 1 wrist bone. These are said to represent the remains of 40 individuals ( Wu and Lin 1983, p. 89). Recent opinion is that the clavicle is not from a hominid. In any case, most of the Peking man fossil bones, over 90 percent, were lost during the Second World War.

9.1.13 An Example of Intellectual Dishonesty

In an article about Zhoukoudian (Choukoutien) that appeared in the June 1983 issue of Scientific American, two Chinese scientists, Wu Rukang and Lin Shenglong, presented misleading evidence for human evolution.

Wu and Lin made two claims: (1) The cranial capacity of Sinanthropus increased from the lowest level of the Zhoukoudian excavation (460,000 years old) to the highest level (230,000 years old), indicating that Sinanthropus evolved towards Homo sapiens. (2) The type and distribution of stone tools also implied that Sinanthropus evolved.

In support of their first claim, Wu and Lin analyzed the cranial capacities of the 6 relatively complete Sinanthropus skulls found at Zhoukoudian. Wu and Lin (1983, p. 94) stated: “The measured cranial capacities are 915 cubic