Overview

This book presents posthumously four research papers by the pioneer Chinese paleontologist Pei Wenzhong (1904-1982), mostly from the 1930s. The first chapter introduces Paleolithic art from European sites. Subsequent chapters give detailed technical descriptions of the formation, cultural findings, and fossils of principal Paleolithic sites in China, especially the Lower Paleolithic Choukoutien Peking Man site discovered in 1929 and the millennia later Upper Paleolithic Hetao (Ordos) Man site of the Ordos Loop of the Yellow River and the Upper Choukoutien Cave site. Cultural findings from the Peking Man site consist mainly in the use of fire and roughly manufactured stone tools. Those from the Hetao site indicate advances in group production and social organization. Those from the Upper Cave site consist of fine bone tools, along with pebble, bone, and shell ornaments, some polished and some dyed with hematite. The Upper Cave ancestors of the Chinese people had a prosperous clan society, buried their dead, acquired shells from 200 km away.

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Pei Wenzhong (1904-1982), the founder of Chinese prehistoric archaeology, established its theoretical system and for over 50 years devoted himself to its research. He began in 1928 with the excavation of Choukoutien and the next year discovered the first skull fossil of  Peking Man. His assiduous research, extensive scientific knowledge, keen discernment, and concrete work methods yielded great gains that are now an established part of Chinese archaeological research.  

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