Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [397]
9.2.3.3 Comparison of Faunal Evidence from Gongwangling and Chenjiawo
After arguing that the primitiveness of the Gongwangling skullcap meant that it was older than the Beijing man fossils from middle Middle Pleistocene Locality 1 at Zhoukoudian, Aigner (1981, pp. 81–82) said about Gongwangling: “The other faunal remains certainly demand an early Middle Pleistocene age for the locality, not contemporaneous with Choukoutien 13 or 1 as has been suggested by some.”
Aigner believed that the Chenjiawo site, where the Lantian man jaw was found, was in fact roughly contemporaneous with Zhoukoudian in the middle Middle Pleistocene. She therefore sought to prove that the Gongwangling site, with the primitive Homo erectus skullcap, was older than Chenjiawo, and hence older than Zhoukoudian (Aigner and Laughlin 1973, p. 102).
But W. W. Howells (1977, p. 69) noted: “According to the Chinese this is not the case, since the faunas of the two sites [Gongwangling and Chenjiawo] coincide except for a few species and contain a species of elephant unique to both; also the formation is the same at both localities and has been mapped across the interval between them.” As we have seen (Section 9.2.3.1), some of the authorities who considered the jaw and skullcap to be of the same age believed they were both contemporaneous with Beijing man.
One reason why Aigner (1981, p. 329) thought the Chenjiawo jaw was younger than the Gongwangling skull concerned fossils of Ochotonoides, an extinct mouse hare that supposedly belongs to the early Middle Pleistocene and earlier. Fossil remains of Ochotonoides were found at the same level as the Gongwangling man skullcap. This would appear to place the skullcap in the early Middle Pleistocene, before the middle Middle Pleistocene Zhoukoudian occupation. But, according to Aigner, Ochotonoides fossils were found only below the Chenjiawo jaw, suggesting the jaw belonged to a period later than the early Middle Pleistocene—i.e., the middle Middle Pleistocene.
Aigner derived her information about the position of the Ochotonoides fossils at Chenjiawo from a 1975 report by the Chinese scientists Zhou Mingzhen and Li Chuankuei. But according to Wu Xinzhi and Wang Linghong, Zhou and Li “reported the discovery of an additional maxilla and mandible of the same animal from the same layer in which the H. erectus mandible was found. In fact, no discontinuity is discernible and this suggests the various levels in question do not represent different interglacial events as Aigner and Laughlin (1973) suggested” (Wu, X. and Wang, L. 1985, p. 37). The interglacial event to which both Gongwangling and Chenjiawo belong remains open to question, but, as we have noted, some authorities assign both Gongwangling and Chenjiawo to the same interglacial period represented at Zhoukoudian (the Holstein, or Taku-Lushan interglacial).
Given this latter view, the presence of Ochotonoides at both Gongwangling and Chenjiawo might be taken to indicate that this genus survived to the time of the Zhoukoudian Homo erectus occupation in the middle Middle Pleistocene. Interestingly enough, the initial excavators of Zhoukoudian Locality 1 listed Ochotonoides among the forms found there, which would appear to confirm the idea that Beijing man is contemporaneous with Lantian man. But Aigner (1981, pp. 301, 329) informs us that “the Choukoutien 1 form is revised [by her] as Ochotona,” a related but more recent genus that survives today in Mongolia, Tibet, and elsewhere. One cannot help but feel a little suspicious about her motives for this reclassification.
Aigner also tried to use pollen studies to support her view that Gongwangling was earlier than Chenjiawo and Zhoukoudian. Aigner (1978, p. 26) stated: “The Choukoutien assemblage is interpreted as a Holstein interglacial temperate flora. . . . Both the limited assemblages from Lantian represent temperate