reference:
Yoon, Soon-bong. 2025. “Is Peking Man the Ancestor of Modern Chinese People?” Study of YoonSoonBong.

https://yoonsb.com/2025/08/11/892024/

Is Peking Man the Ancestor of Modern Chinese People?

Abstract

This report analyzes the question, “Is Peking Man the ancestor of modern Chinese people?” within a multi-layered context of science, politics, and culture. The scientific conclusion is unequivocal. Modern genetics and ancient genomics have demonstrated that modern humans originated in Africa (the Recent African Origin theory) and that contemporary East Asians are the product of complex migrations and admixtures, not a continuous, singular lineage. From this perspective, Peking Man is not a direct ancestor but a distant, extinct relative in the course of evolution.

In the political realm, however, Peking Man has functioned as an “invented ancestor,” manufactured to serve the national need to overcome the historical trauma of the “Century of Humiliation (百年國恥)” and restore national pride. He was a source of national self-esteem during the Republican era, an incarnation of labour ideology in the Mao Zedong (毛澤東) era, and a symbol of patriotic education after the Reform and Opening-Up. Instead of resolving this contradiction, modern China employs a sophisticated “dual-track” strategy, delivering different messages to different audiences: the “Recent African Origin” theory, which is the international standard, to the scientific elite, and the “Peking Man as ancestor” narrative, a national myth, to the general public.

Ultimately, the case of Peking Man serves as the most vivid evidence that the past is not simply “discovered” but is constantly “constructed” and “invented” according to the political and cultural needs of the present.

 

CONTENTS

Introduction: Between Scientific Fact and Political Symbol

Part I: The Biography of a Fossil: Discovery, Glory, and Mystery

Chapter 1. From ‘Dragon Bones’ to Human Ancestor: The Great Discovery at Zhoukoudian

1.1. Pursuing the Secret of ‘Dragon Bones’ Sold as Medicine
1.2. A Single Tooth Rewrites History
1.3. A Chinese Scientist Unearths the First Complete Skull
1.4. 770,000 Years Ago, Did They Control Fire?

Chapter 2. War and Disappearance: The Whereabouts of Two Lost Crates

2.1. The Secret Operation to Move the Fossils
2.2. Who Took Them?: Hypotheses Surrounding the Disappearance
2.3. Lost, and Therefore the ‘Perfect Ancestor’

Part II: The Verdict of Science: Genetics Says ‘No’

Chapter 3. The Scientific War Over Humanity’s Homeland

3.1. The Scientific Consensus: All Humanity Originated in Africa
3.2. China’s Strong Counterargument: “We Evolved Here”
3.3. Evidence from 100,000 Years Ago: Truth or Misinterpretation?
3.4. The First Verdict from Genetics: All Male Lineages Trace to Africa
3.5. The Neanderthal Within Us: Traces of Admixture

Chapter 4. How the Chinese Became One People: East Asians Through the Lens of Genetics

4.1. The First Farmers, Divided into North and South: Two East Asian Archetypes
4.2. The Roots of East Asia Created by Three Ancestral Groups: The Three-Axis Model
4.3. The Grand Drama of Millennia of Migration and Admixture
4.4. Special Inquiry: Where Did the Japanese Come From?

Part III: The Politics of a Symbol: How a Nation Creates Its Ancestors

Chapter 5. A Nation in Need of an ‘Ancestor’: Sinocentrism and the Century of Humiliation

5.1. The Belief in a ‘Center of Civilization’ Clashes with an External Origin Theory
5.2. Historical Trauma Summons an ‘Indigenous Ancestor’

Chapter 6. Icon of the Ages: The Endless Transformations of Peking Man

6.1. The Republican Era: A Source of National Pride (1920s-1940s)
6.2. The Mao Era: The Incarnation of Labor Ideology (1950s-1970s)
6.3. The Reform and Opening-Up Era: A Symbol of Patriotic Education (1980s-Present)

Chapter 7. The Government’s Delicate Balancing Act: Between Scientific Fact and National Myth

7.1. Track 1: The Truth in Textbooks – Teaching ‘African Origin’ to the Scientific Elite
7.2. Track 2: The Myth in Museums – Showing the ‘Ancestor of the Chinese’ to the Public
7.3. Two Narratives, One Nation: The Art of Managing Contradiction

Chapter 8. Scientists and the Public: Different Imaginations

8.1. In an Era of Tempests: The Conformity and Resistance of a Scientist
8.2. While the State Spoke of ‘Ancestors’, the Public Dreamt of the ‘Yeren’

Chapter 9. The Invisible War: Preempting the ‘History of Humankind’

9.1. “All Bones Belong to the State”: The Legalization of Data Sovereignty
9.2. The Struggle for ‘Huayuquan’ (話語權): The Ambition to Become the Author of History

Conclusion: An Invented Ancestor and the Chinese Present

Footnotes

Supplementary Materials

Table 1: Summary of Major Strata, Dates, and Findings at Zhoukoudian Locality
Table 2: Summary of Major Ancient Population Genetic Lineages in East Asia
Glossary of Key Terms

Bibliography

 

Introduction: Between Scientific Fact and Political Symbol

Is ‘Peking Man (北京原人)’ the ancestor of modern Chinese people? This seemingly simple question has, for the past century, transcended mere scientific curiosity to become a monumental topic that cuts through the most sensitive aspects of China’s national identity, political ideology, and ethnic pride. How one answers this question can fundamentally alter the way a nation understands its origins and history.

The story of Peking Man is like a grand epic. Dramatically discovered in the early 20th century among ‘dragon bones’ used for medicinal purposes at a small hill called Zhoukoudian (周口店) outside Beijing (北京), it electrified the global scientific community. However, it met a tragic fate when the entire collection of original fossils vanished like smoke into the fires of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Paradoxically, the physical ‘absence’ of the fossils propelled the hominin beyond the realm of scientific verification, endowing him with even greater symbolic power.

Before beginning our story, we must first address the ambiguity inherent in the term ‘modern Chinese people’. In political discourse and public perception, ‘Chinese people’ is often strongly associated with a nationalist identity centred on the Han (漢族), the core of the Zhonghua Minzu (中華民族, Chinese Nation). However, in scientific fields such as population genetics and paleoanthropology, this question is discussed within the much broader and more biological category of ‘Modern East Asians’. For scientists, what matters is not borders or ethnicities, but the genealogy of population groups connected by genes. This report will clearly distinguish between these two usages to more precisely trace the gap between the narrative created by politics and the facts uncovered by science.

Over the last 100 years, the role of Peking Man has been constantly reinterpreted and mobilized as China’s political landscape has shifted. During the Republican era, he was evidence of an ancient civilization that boosted national pride against Western powers. In the Mao Zedong (毛澤東) era, he was a living fossil proving the Marxist ideology that “labour created man himself.” And since the Reform and Opening-Up, he has been repurposed as a symbolic resource for national rejuvenation, uniting the scattered hearts of the nation. [1]

However, in the 21st century, this old narrative has faced a formidable challenge from the revolution in scientific technology known as ancient DNA analysis. This new scientific evidence strongly supports the Recent African Origin (RAO) theory, the established consensus in the global scientific community. According to this theory, all modern humans are descendants of a population that originated in Africa and spread throughout the world. This means that regional archaic hominins like Peking Man are not the direct ancestors of the Chinese people, but rather distant relatives who were replaced at some point. This directly conflicts with the Multiregional Evolution (MRE) model and its variant, the Continuity with Hybridization (CWH) model, which the Chinese academic community has long defended based on its rich fossil evidence. [2] More recently, the discovery of new fossils like the Denisovans and the Hualongdong (華龍洞人) hominin has revealed that human evolutionary history was a far more complex process (Wu et al., 2023).

In conclusion, this report argues through the case of Peking Man that the ‘past’ is not a fixed entity buried in the ground waiting to be simply ‘discovered’. The past is constantly ‘reconstructed’ and sometimes ‘invented’ by the needs and aspirations of people living in the present. In particular, the national aspiration to overcome the historical trauma of the “Century of Humiliation (百年國恥)” and restore national pride has provided a powerful motive for interpreting scientific facts in a specific direction. Furthermore, 21st-century China is implementing a strategy to secure ‘discourse power’ (話語權), aiming to take the lead in narrating key historical accounts like human origins, and this entire process is intricately entangled with the debate surrounding Peking Man.

 

Part I: The Biography of a Fossil: Discovery, Glory, and Mystery

Chapter 1. From ‘Dragon Bones’ to Human Ancestor: The Great Discovery at Zhoukoudian

1.1. Pursuing the Secret of ‘Dragon Bones’ Sold as Medicine

It is no exaggeration to say that the story of Peking Man begins in an ordinary Chinese apothecary in the early 20th century. At the time, ancient animal bone fossils were distributed as a precious medicinal ingredient called ‘dragon bones’ (龍骨), believed to be the bones of mythical dragons. People ground these dragon bones into a fine powder for use as antipyretics or hemostatics. A significant portion of these came from a limestone hill called Dragon Bone Hill (龍骨山) in Zhoukoudian (周口店), about 50 km southwest of Beijing (北京).

The first person to uncover a clue to the great secret hidden in this strange medicine was Johan Gunnar Andersson, a renowned Swedish geologist invited to be a mining advisor to the Chinese government. Around 1918, while investigating the deposits at Dragon Bone Hill, he noticed sharp quartz fragments mixed among the ordinary animal bone fossils. His keen eye discerned that the fractured surfaces of these stone fragments were not the result of natural forces, but bore the marks of intentional striking—the characteristics of primitive stone tools (石器) used by humans. In a report detailing his hypothesis, he was the first to inform the global academic community that Zhoukoudian might not be just a simple ancient animal graveyard, but a critically important site containing traces of humanity (Andersson, 1919).

His claim immediately drew explosive interest from Western academia. In particular, the American Rockefeller Foundation, which was investing heavily in China’s modernization at the time, instantly recognized the discovery’s potential. With the foundation’s decision to provide full financial support, the excavation at Zhoukoudian rapidly emerged as one of the most important international collaborative paleoanthropology projects of the early 20th century (Manias, 2012). The quiet quarry, where dragon bones had been dug for hundreds of years, was now poised to transform into a cutting-edge scientific field dedicated to uncovering the origins of humankind. [3]

1.2. A Single Tooth Rewrites History

If Andersson opened the door of possibility, the person who kicked it open and declared a new history was the Canadian anatomist Davidson Black. In 1927, a single lower molar fossil, found by the Zhoukoudian excavation team, was delivered to his laboratory. After analyzing the tooth from every angle, he became convinced that it was different from that of any known ape or modern human. He then made one of the boldest and most controversial gambles in scientific history: based on this single piece of evidence, he declared it a new species in human evolution. He even gave this unknown hominin an official scientific name: Sinanthropus pekinensis, meaning ‘the Chinese man of Peking’ (Black, 1927). This was the academic birth of ‘Peking Man’. While the reaction from the academic community at the time was sharply divided, Black’s audacious claim had the dramatic effect of focusing the world’s attention on Zhoukoudian (Schmalzer, 2008).

1.3. A Chinese Scientist Unearths the First Complete Skull

On December 2, 1929, two years after Black’s hypothesis captured the world’s attention, a historic moment arrived that finally put an end to the long-running debate. The hero of the day was not a Western scientist, but a young, 25-year-old Chinese geologist named Pei Wenzhong (裴文中). In the darkness, with only the light of a flickering candle, he was carefully excavating the sediment layer when he discovered a nearly perfectly preserved human skullcap, or calvarium (Pei, 1929; Jia and Huang, 1990).

This discovery was the ‘smoking gun’. It silenced the controversy that began with a single tooth and proved materially to the entire world that the ancient hominin known as Peking Man truly existed. Pei Wenzhong’s great discovery was a symbolic event that changed the landscape of paleoanthropological research, which had been led by the West, and marked the moment when a Chinese scientist became the agent of unearthing human history in his own land. Subsequent Chinese scientists who took up the mantle of the Zhoukoudian excavations, such as Jia Lanpo (賈蘭坡), elevated the Peking Man fossil collection to world-class status, unearthing three more skulls in 1936 alone (Jia and Huang, 1990; Olsen and Miller-Antonio, 2004). Their dedicated efforts made Zhoukoudian a symbolic site for the Chinese scientific community and a source of national pride (Jia, 1980). [4]

1.4. 770,000 Years Ago, Did They Control Fire?

With the discovery of hominin remains from an estimated 40 individuals, over 100,000 stone tools, and abundant traces of ancient cave life, scientists were able to reconstruct not only the biological characteristics of Peking Man but also their culture and way of life. Recognizing its unique value, the Zhoukoudian site was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987 (UNESCO, n.d.).

Among the numerous research topics, the most heated debate was over the use of fire. While early researchers were convinced that Peking Man used fire freely, based on thick ash layers and burnt bones found in the cave, this conviction began to waver in the late 1990s when some scientists presented strong counterarguments. [5]

This long-standing debate has recently taken a dramatic turn with the application of new forensic techniques. First, a research team led by Shen Guanjun (沈冠軍) re-dated the site using a state-of-the-art technique called 26Al/10Be burial dating. [6] The analysis yielded a weighted mean age for the lower cultural layers, where the Peking Man fossils were found, of 0.77 ± 0.08 million years (Ma) ago, significantly older than the previous estimate of about 500,000 years ago (Shen et al., 2009).

The fire-use debate also faced new ‘forensic’ evidence. A team led by Huang (Huang et al., 2021) used X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis to examine the internal crystal structure of bone fossils, proving that at least 15 bone specimens had been artificially heated to high temperatures of over 600°C. Furthermore, a research team led by Gao (Gao et al., 2017), in new excavations conducted since 2009, discovered the remains of a stone-enclosed hearth, strongly suggesting that these hominins went beyond merely using fire opportunistically and actually managed and maintained it. Considering that clear archaeological signals of the widespread use of fire by hominins appear globally around 400,000 years ago (Sørensen et al., 2021), the evidence from Zhoukoudian at 770,000 years ago is very likely one of the earliest instances of fire use in human history.

Chapter 2. War and Disappearance: The Whereabouts of Two Lost Crates

2.1. The Secret Operation to Move the Fossils

In the 1930s, the glory of Zhoukoudian and the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC), which had gained worldwide fame for the discovery of Peking Man, rested on a precarious peace. With the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and the intensification of the Japanese invasion, the safety of the fossils stored in the sturdy vault of the PUMC came under serious threat. At the time, the PUMC was an institution operated by the American Rockefeller Foundation and thus enjoyed extraterritorial rights, but as relations between the United States and Japan deteriorated in late 1941, safety could no longer be guaranteed (Jia and Huang, 1990).

Ultimately, a bold operation was planned to secretly transport these treasures of humanity to the safety of the American mainland. The core of the plan was for PUMC anatomist Hu Chengzhi (胡承志) to pack all the Peking Man fossils into two sturdy U.S. Marine Corps footlockers. Under the escort of the U.S. Marines, they were to be transported to the port city of Qinhuangdao (秦皇島) and loaded onto the waiting American merchant ship, the SS President Harrison, for the journey to the United States (Jia and Huang, 1990; Wayman, 2012). The entire process unfolded like a spy film. Hu Chengzhi handed over the fossils to the Marines, and the two crates, holding the oldest history of humankind, traveled by rail towards Qinhuangdao, through territory fraught with the danger of Japanese surveillance.

However, just after the train arrived in Qinhuangdao, history took a turn for the worst. On December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, igniting the Pacific War. Communication and transportation networks throughout China, including Beijing and Qinhuangdao, were instantly paralyzed, and the two wooden crates vanished completely into the chaos.

For a long time, it was widely believed that the Peking Man fossils were sunk by the Japanese while aboard the SS President Harrison. However, this is a myth born from the confusion of war. According to the official report by its captain, Orel A. Pierson, the Harrison encountered the Japanese navy in the waters near Shanghai on December 8, 1941, before it could even load the fossils. Facing the imminent capture of his ship, Captain Pierson made the decision to deliberately ‘ground/beach’ the vessel on the coast of the Sheshan Islands (佘山島) to prevent it from falling into enemy hands and being used against the Allies. [7]

This fact has a crucial implication: since the Harrison never reached Qinhuangdao, it is highly probable that the Peking Man fossils were never loaded onto the ship. Consequently, the fate of the fossils was likely decided not at sea, but somewhere on the overland route from Beijing to Qinhuangdao.

2.2. Who Took Them?: Hypotheses Surrounding the Disappearance

Despite decades of numerous investigations and searches, no clear answers have emerged, only a few plausible hypotheses that deepen the mystery (Wayman, 2012).

Hypothesis 1: Deliberate Seizure by the Japanese Military

This is the most widely accepted hypothesis. The Japanese academic community and military were well aware of the value of the Peking Man fossils. Therefore, it is highly likely that upon the outbreak of war, Japanese forces, having obtained intelligence, systematically seized the fossil crates from the train or at the port in Qinhuangdao (Jia and Huang, 1990). Rumors abound that they were then secretly transported to the Japanese mainland and became part of the imperial collection or are hidden somewhere at the University of Tokyo (Wayman, 2012).

Hypothesis 2: The Grand Conspiracy of the Awa Maru

This theory claims the fossils were aboard the luxurious Japanese passenger liner ‘Awa Maru’ (阿波丸), which was sunk by a U.S. submarine in 1945. Because the ship was known to be carrying a vast amount of Japanese war funds, including gold bullion, a conspiracy theory arose that the fossils were also sunk with it. However, the significant time gap between the fossils’ disappearance (1941) and the ship’s sinking (1945) makes this hypothesis less credible (Dingman, 1983; Jia and Huang, 1990).

Hypothesis 3: The Most Concrete Clue, a U.S. Marine Base

This is the most recent, intriguing, and specific hypothesis. In 2010, the son of a Marine who served at the U.S. Marine base (Camp Holcomb) in Qinhuangdao during the Chinese Civil War in 1947 came forward with a startling testimony. He claimed that on his deathbed, his father confessed to having “found a box full of strange bones while digging a trench at the base, and then reburied it” (Wayman, 2012). Based on this testimony, a research team investigated the area using ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and detected several ‘anomalies’ in a location that is now a parking lot. If this testimony is true, this treasure of humanity may be sleeping under the asphalt at the very place where the Chinese have been searching for decades.

2.3. Lost, and Therefore the ‘Perfect Ancestor’

The disappearance of the Peking Man fossils left an irreparable loss for the scientific community. Paradoxically, however, the physical ‘absence’ of the fossils resulted in an explosive increase in their symbolic power (Schmalzer, 2008; Cheng, 2017). The fossils were no longer objects of scientific analysis but entered the realm of national mythology.

The lost fossils became forever free from the cold judgment of future science. Had the fossils survived, it is highly probable that today’s advanced scientific technology would have unequivocally proven that Peking Man was not a direct ancestor of modern Chinese people but a ‘side branch’ that vanished in the course of evolution. But with the evidence that would have spoken this ‘inconvenient truth’ gone, the nationalist concept of the ‘first Chinese’ and the ‘symbol of national continuity’ could grow unhindered (Cheng, 2017; Wu, 2017). Ultimately, Peking Man became a pure symbol capable of meeting any ideological demand—a ‘perfect ancestor’ that could neither be proven nor refuted by science.

Part II: The Verdict of Science: Genetics Says ‘No’

Chapter 3. The Scientific War Over Humanity’s Homeland

To answer whether Peking Man is the direct ancestor of the Chinese people, we must first address a larger question: “Where did we, modern humans, first begin?” For the past several decades, the global scientific community has been engaged in a massive debate over this question. This chapter will examine in detail the process by which the claim that ‘all humanity began in Africa’ and the claim that ‘humanity evolved independently in various parts of the world’ clashed, based on their respective evidence, and what conclusion the scientific community ultimately reached.

3.1. The Scientific Consensus: All Humanity Originated in Africa

The consensus agreed upon by most scientists today is the ‘Recent African Origin (RAO)’ theory (Stringer, 2022). This theory, which began with advances in genetics in the 1980s, secured decisive evidence by analyzing a special type of genetic information in our cells: mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is passed down only from mother to child. In 1987, Cann, Stoneking, and Wilson published a study showing that the mtDNA of all modern humans worldwide traces back to a single woman, or a single group of women, who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago, proposing the concept of ‘Mitochondrial Eve’ (Cann, Stoneking, and Wilson, 1987).

Another powerful piece of evidence supporting this claim is genetic diversity. Human genetic diversity is overwhelmingly highest within the African continent and gradually decreases as one moves to continents farther away from Africa. This is explained by the ‘Serial Founder Effect’, where a small group leaving its homeland to settle in a new place carries only a subset of the original genetic diversity (Ramachandran et al., 2005). [8]

The story told by RAO, based on this combined evidence, is as follows:

• Birth: Modern humans (Homo sapiens), who looked just like us, first appeared in Africa about 300,000 years ago (Hublin et al., 2017).
• Exodus: Around 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, a small group among them left Africa and began a great journey to other continents.
• Replacement: Over tens of thousands of years, they spread across Europe, Asia, and other regions, gradually replacing the archaic hominins who had lived there before them, such as Neanderthals and Peking Man (Stringer and Andrews, 1988).

According to this narrative, Peking Man is not a direct ancestor on our family tree, but a distant relative who lived in Asia long before our ancestors arrived and then vanished in the course of evolution.

3.2. China’s Strong Counterargument: “We Evolved Here”

Even as geneticists worldwide were accumulating evidence for RAO, Chinese paleoanthropologists were telling a completely different story based on the numerous fossils they had unearthed from their own land. This narrative, rooted in the classic Western ‘Multiregional Evolution (MRE)’ model (Thorne & Wolpoff, 1992), was adapted to emphasize China’s uniqueness and termed ‘Continuity with Hybridization (CWH)’ (Wu, 2004).

The proponent of this theory, the doyen of Chinese paleoanthropology, Wu Xinzhi (吳新智), argued that the main stream of the great river of East Asian evolution has flowed continuously on this land since the time of Peking Man hundreds of thousands of years ago. He claimed that admixture with outsiders from Africa or other regions was merely a few small tributaries joining the main river (Wu, 2006). The most important evidence they put forward is morphological features of the fossils. They argue that certain unique physical traits, such as shovel-shaped incisors, have been consistently passed down from ancient Chinese hominin fossils of hundreds of thousands of years ago to modern East Asians. If immigrants from Africa had completely replaced the existing population, they ask, how could these regional characteristics have persisted? This is the core basis for their argument for ‘continuity’ rather than ‘replacement’.

3.3. Evidence from 100,000 Years Ago: Truth or Misinterpretation?

Scholars supporting the ‘Continuity’ model sought to find modern human fossils in China that were much older than the arrival time of Africans in Asia (60,000-70,000 years ago). In the 2010s, they thought they had finally found the evidence in fossils from the Zhirendong and Fuyan Cave in southern China. In Fuyan Cave, in particular, 47 morphologically modern human teeth were discovered, and dating yielded a startling result of at least 80,000 to as much as 120,000 years old (Liu et al., 2015). This appeared to be powerful evidence that completely overturned the RAO timeline.

However, this discovery soon faced strong criticism regarding its methodology. [9] Finally, in 2021, a research team led by Sun Xuefeng (孫雪峯) directly dated the controversial tooth fossils themselves. The team conducted radiocarbon dating (¹⁴C) on trace amounts of protein remaining in the teeth, and the results were shocking. The teeth, once thought to be over 80,000 years old, were revealed to be very ‘young’ teeth from within the last 9,000 years, after the end of the last Ice Age (Sun et al., 2021). The evidence that was considered a ‘smoking gun’ turned out to be a ‘misunderstanding’ created by the mixing of geological layers.

3.4. The First Verdict from Genetics: All Male Lineages Trace to Africa

Separate from the debate over fossil evidence, a much more direct test of the ‘Continuity’ model was being conducted in genetics labs. In 2001, an international research team, including Professor Jin Li (金力) from Fudan University (復旦大學) in China, published the results of an analysis of the Y-chromosomes of over 12,000 East Asian men (Ke et al., 2001). The Y-chromosome, passed down only from father to son, is like a ‘genetic surname’ for tracing paternal lineage. If the ‘Continuity’ model were correct, a significant number of Chinese men should carry a unique ‘Chinese surname’ inherited from Peking Man.

However, the research results were unequivocal. Across the entire sample, the ‘M168’ mutation, a genetic marker common to all male lineages that originated outside of Africa, was universally found. The unique ‘surname’ that should have appeared in the descendants of Peking Man was nowhere to be found. The genetic family tree clearly recorded that all paternal lineages of modern East Asians began in Africa. [10]

3.5. The Neanderthal Within Us: Traces of Admixture

Just as the ‘Recent African Origin’ theory seemed to have won almost every debate, in the 2010s, genetics delivered one last surprising twist: evidence of ‘admixture’. Thanks to technological advancements, scientists finally succeeded in extracting DNA from the bones of Neanderthals and a newly discovered archaic hominin from Siberia, the ‘Denisovans’, and sequencing their entire genomes (Green et al., 2010; Meyer et al., 2012; Prüfer et al., 2014). When this ancient genetic information was compared with that of modern humans, a startling fact was revealed. The DNA of all modern humans living outside the African continent contains about 1-2% Neanderthal genes (Sankararaman et al., 2014). This was direct evidence that our ancestors, in their migration out of Africa, met and had children with the Neanderthals who were already living there.

Even more dramatically, in 2018, the bone of a teenage girl, nicknamed ‘Denny’, was discovered, whose father was a Denisovan and mother was a Neanderthal (Slon et al., 2018), proving beyond doubt that interbreeding between different archaic hominin species actually occurred. This admixture has left us a tangible ‘legacy’ today. The most dramatic example is the high-altitude adaptation of Tibetans. The special gene (EPAS1) that allows Tibetans to live healthily in the thin oxygen environment above 4,000 meters was, surprisingly, inherited from the Denisovans who lived in Asia tens of thousands of years ago (Huerta-Sánchez et al., 2014; Huerta-Sánchez et al., 2021). This shows that through admixture, our ancestors inherited the ‘survival know-how’ of archaic hominins, who had adapted to the harsh Asian environment for hundreds of thousands of years, in the form of genes—a process known as ‘adaptive introgression’. [11]

These discoveries refined the existing RAO model from one of ‘complete replacement’ to a model of ‘RAO with hybridization’.

Chapter 4. How the Chinese Became One People: East Asians Through the Lens of Genetics

In Chapter 3, we confirmed that the main trunk of modern humanity began in Africa. So, how did this great flow specifically unfold in the particular region of East Asia? If Peking Man is not the direct ancestor of the Chinese people, who are the real ancestors of the Chinese, and how did they settle and spread across this land to form the Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese of today? Now, through the revolutionary technology of ancient genomics, we will directly read the genetic information from the bones of people who lived thousands of years ago and reconstruct the grand drama of the formation of the East Asian population. [12]

4.1. The First Farmers, Divided into North and South: Two East Asian Archetypes

The story goes back to the Neolithic period, about 9,500 years ago, when agriculture was just beginning. At that time, two genetically distinct major human groups existed on the East Asian continent, almost like two separate ‘genetic nations’. A landmark study published in 2020 analyzed the genomes of 26 ancient skeletons unearthed from southern and northern China, dating from 9,500 to 300 years ago, and clearly revealed the existence of these two groups to the world (Yang et al., 2020).

• Northern ‘Yellow River Farmers’: Living mainly in the Yellow River (黃河) basin, these were the world’s first farmers to cultivate ‘millet’. Their genes, known archaeologically from cultures like the Yangshao (仰韶), were found to be the closest to most modern East Asians, including the Han (漢族), making them the ‘mainstream’ ancestors of East Asians (Ning et al., 2020).
• Southern ‘Coastal Hunter-Gatherers’: Living on the coast of the southern province of Fujian (福建省) and the islands off its shore, these people relied on the sea for their livelihood. The genes of the ‘Liangdao Man’ (亮島人), discovered on Liangdao Island in Fujian, were much closer not to people on the Chinese mainland today, but to Austronesian-speaking peoples spread across the numerous islands of the Pacific, including the indigenous people of Taiwan. This was decisive genetic evidence that proved the long-standing linguistic hypothesis that ‘the origin of the Pacific islanders is the southern coast of China’.

Thus, while Neolithic East Asia maintained distinct genetic identities along the great geographical boundary of the Qinling-Huaihe Line (秦嶺-淮河線), populations in northern coastal areas like the Shandong Peninsula (山東半島) acted as a bridge connecting the genes of the north and south, facilitating long-term gene flow (Liu et al., 2025).

4.2. The Roots of East Asia Created by Three Ancestral Groups: The Three-Axis Model

To move beyond the north-south dichotomy and explain the origins of East Asians more precisely, scientists in 2021 proposed the most important analytical framework for explaining East Asian population history: the ‘three-axis model’ (Wang et al., 2021). This model explains that the complex genetic makeup of today’s East Asians is the result of three ancient ancestral groups with different origins and cultures merging and mixing over thousands of years. [13]

• Northern Axis (Siberian Hunter-Gatherers): A group of hunter-gatherers and early pastoralists centered around the Mongolian Plateau and the Amur River (黑龍江) basin. They are the genetic descendants of the Tianyuan Man (田園洞人), an ancient individual who lived near Beijing about 40,000 years ago, representing a very deep indigenous root in East Asia (Yang et al., 2017). They later became the core ancestors of Mongolic and Tungusic speakers.
• Southern Axis (Yangtze River Rice Farmers): A group centered in southern China and Southeast Asia, closely related to the early rice-farming populations of the Yangtze River (揚子江) basin. They are the ancestors of the Austronesian and Austroasiatic speakers who later spread throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The genome of the ‘Mengzi Ren’ (蒙自人), discovered in Yunnan Province (雲南省) and dating back about 14,000 years, is important evidence showing the deep ancient diversity of this southern axis (Wang et al., 2022).
• Yellow River Axis (Yellow River Millet Farmers): The millet-farming group from the Yellow River (黃河) basin, who are the most central ancestors of today’s Han (漢族) and Tibetan peoples. The language they spoke became the origin of the Sino-Tibetan language family, which is spoken by hundreds of millions of people today.

The core of this model is that the Yellow River farming group expanded explosively after the Neolithic period, spreading south and west, and extensively mixed with the pre-existing northern hunter-gatherers and southern rice farmers. The genetic landscape of East Asia today is the result of this massive expansion and the complex mixing that occurred in the process.

4.3. The Grand Drama of Millennia of Migration and Admixture

Based on the framework of the ‘three-axis model’, let’s trace the specific history of population movements and admixture that occurred along each axis.

The history of the Northern Axis unfolded against the vast stage of the Eurasian steppe. Ancient genome studies show that admixture between East Asian and Western Eurasian (European) lineages was already actively occurring by the Bronze Age, around 2000 BCE (de Barros Damgaard et al., 2018). The Xiongnu (匈奴) Empire, in particular, has been revealed to be a multicultural, multi-ethnic empire formed by a confederation of groups with diverse genetic backgrounds, including Iranian and Han (漢) peoples (Jeong et al., 2020).

Meanwhile, the history of the Southern Axis can be understood through the great waves of migration from southern China to Southeast Asia. Ancient genome analysis shows that the prehistory of Southeast Asia can be explained by at least two major waves of migration (McColl et al., 2018; Lipson et al., 2018). The first was the migration of farmers originating from southern China during the Neolithic, who mixed with the indigenous hunter-gatherers already living there; later, during the Bronze Age, another group with different genetic characteristics entered in a second wave, creating the complex population structure of Southeast Asia today. [14]

And the most decisive event that changed all these flows was the great expansion of the Yellow River Axis. After the Neolithic period, the millet-farming group of the Yellow River (黃河) basin expanded powerfully southward, based on their population and technology. This process was a ‘demic diffusion’ involving actual large-scale population movement (Yang et al., 2020; Wen et al., 2004), which gradually blurred the distinct north-south genetic boundary of the Neolithic. In particular, the finding that about 40% of modern Han (漢族) men are descendants of just three Neolithic ‘super-ancestors’ shows how explosively certain male lineages (Y-chromosomes) spread along with the expansion of agriculture (Yan et al., 2013).

4.4. Special Inquiry: Where Did the Japanese Come From?

What impact did the great waves of population movement and admixture that occurred on the East Asian mainland have on the Japanese archipelago, the islands at the easternmost edge? For a long time, the origin of the Japanese people was explained by the ‘dual-structure model’, a mixture of the indigenous hunter-gatherer Jōmon (縄文人) people and the Yayoi (弥生人) people who migrated via the Korean peninsula. However, in 2021, an ancient skeletal DNA analysis study fundamentally revised this model, proposing a ‘tripartite model’ of origin (Cooke et al., 2021).

According to this new model, the genetic makeup of modern Japanese people is the result of the sequential mixing of three different ancestral groups:

1. The First Ancestors (Substrate): The genes of the indigenous hunter-gatherer Jōmon (縄文人) people, who have lived in the Japanese archipelago for about 16,000 years.
2. The Second Ancestors (First Wave): The genes of the Northeast Asian-affiliated Yayoi (弥生人) people, who migrated via the Korean peninsula about 3,000 years ago, bringing with them rice-farming technology.
3. The Third Ancestors (Second Wave): The genes of another East Asian group (similar to the Han Chinese, 漢族), who entered during the Kofun (古墳) period about 1,700 years ago, when the state was being formed in Japan.

This tripartite model clearly shows that the expansion of Neolithic farmers on the East Asian mainland (the Yayoi ancestry) and subsequent population movements in the historical era (the Kofun ancestry) sequentially created waves that shaped the population structure of the Japanese archipelago, forming the Japanese people of today.

Part III: The Politics of a Symbol: How a Nation Creates Its Ancestors

Chapter 5. A Nation in Need of an ‘Ancestor’: Sinocentrism and the Century of Humiliation

When scientific facts meet the ideological needs of a nation, science transcends the realm of pure knowledge and is reborn as a powerful political symbol. To understand why Peking Man remains a potent national progenitor in China today, despite the scientific conclusion that he is not a direct ancestor of modern Chinese people, one must first analyze the deep ideological and psychological foundations in China that desperately need such a narrative. These foundations are the millennia-old worldview of ‘Sinocentrism (中華思想)’ and the painful historical trauma of the ‘Century of Humiliation (百年國恥)’ experienced in the modern era.

The phenomenon of archaeology and anthropology combining with nationalism is a universal one that transcends region and time. [15] The scholar Barry Sautman keenly pointed out that Chinese paleoanthropology and archaeology “provide the conceptual warp and weft” for weaving the great fabric of modern Chinese nationalism (Sautman, 2001). In other words, the narrative about Peking Man is not merely a scientific theory but a key ingredient in the grand project of constructing national identity (Sautman, 2001; Schmalzer, 2008).

5.1. The Belief in a ‘Center of Civilization’ Clashes with an External Origin Theory

For thousands of years, China believed itself to be the world’s sole center of civilization, the ‘Middle Kingdom (中國)’. This ethnocentric ideology is called Sinocentrism (中華思想) (Callahan, 2012). This worldview, systemized during the Spring and Autumn (春秋戰國時代) and Qin-Han (秦·漢) periods, clearly divided the world in two. The Sino-barbarian order (華夷秩序) distinguished between the civilized world ‘Hua’ (華), under the rule of the Chinese emperor, and the surrounding ‘uncivilized’ lands ‘Yi’ (夷) that needed instruction (Fairbank, 1968).

For a people who had believed themselves to be the sole origin and center of human civilization, the ‘Recent African Origin’ theory was not just a scientific theory but a psychological shock that negated their very worldview. The fact that the starting point of human history was not the ‘Middle Kingdom’ but the distant African continent, which they had long regarded as a periphery, was an inconvenient truth that deeply wounded their civilizational pride.

5.2. Historical Trauma Summons an ‘Indigenous Ancestor’

On top of the ancient soil of Sinocentrism, the painful wounds of the modern era were added, turning the longing for an ‘indigenous ancestor’ into a national desire. That wound is the ‘Century of Humiliation (百年國恥)’, a great historical trauma that runs through modern Chinese history (Cohen, 2002). Starting from the Opium War (1839-1842) in the mid-19th century until the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, China experienced unprecedented humiliation at the hands of Western powers and Japan for about 110 years. The empire that believed itself to be the center of the world collapsed helplessly, and Westerners mocked China as the ‘Sick Man of East Asia (東亞病夫)’. The memory of all this humiliation has become the core founding narrative that shapes the identity of modern China today (Kaufman, 2011).

The Chinese Communist Party, in particular, secures the legitimacy of its rule by emphasizing that it is the sole political force that ended this ‘Century of Humiliation’ and restored the nation’s lost sovereignty and dignity (Chen, 2005). It is precisely at this point that the question of ‘ancestors’ becomes crucial. For the narrative of ‘overcoming humiliation and rejuvenating the great nation’ to exert its maximum emotional and political power, the subject that suffers the humiliation and rises again—the Zhonghua Minzu (中華民族)—must be an ancient and pure entity rooted in this very land for tens of thousands of years, not an immigrant from outside.

Within this narrative structure, the ‘Recent African Origin’ theory, which posits that the ancestors of the Chinese people are descendants of migrants who came from Africa only a few tens of thousands of years ago, becomes an ideologically very uncomfortable and dangerous story (Cheng, 2017). On the other hand, the story of an indigenous ancestor who evolved independently on Chinese soil for hundreds of thousands of years—namely, Peking Man—perfectly fulfills all these ideological needs. Peking Man becomes the ‘scientific’ evidence to wash away the stigma of the ‘Sick Man of East Asia’ and the most powerful symbol to prove the historical legitimacy and depth of the Chinese nation that has risen from the ‘Century of Humiliation’. He is no longer just a fossil hominin but is summoned as an ideological ‘founding ancestor’ (始祖) necessary to complete the national narrative. [16]

Chapter 6. Icon of the Ages: The Endless Transformations of Peking Man

A single scientific discovery wears different clothes depending on the needs of the era that interprets it. Few cases illustrate this truth as dramatically as Peking Man. From the moment of his discovery, he did not remain a mere hominin fossil but was constantly given new roles and meanings in response to the demands of different political systems throughout China’s turbulent modern history. He was the pride of the nation, a textbook for class struggle, and finally, a sacred symbol of national integration.

6.1. The Republican Era: A Source of National Pride (1920s-1940s)

In the late 1920s, when news of the discovery of Peking Man spread, the Republic of China (中華民國) government, which then ruled mainland China, was in deep crisis. Internally, the country was divided by the feuding of warlords (軍閥), and externally, it was suffering from the aggressive encroachment of Western powers and Japan. At this desperate time, the discovery of Peking Man was used as the most definitive evidence to scientifically prove the uniqueness and antiquity of Chinese civilization against the Eurocentric narrative of evolution (Curran, 2010). This was a highly political project aimed at uniting a divided populace and establishing a modern national identity (Cheng, 2017).

This governmental intention was also reflected in actual education policy. Official documents like the “Guidelines for Science Education (科學敎育指導綱要)” issued by the Ministry of Education of the National Government (國民政府 敎育部) in 1934 show the government’s clear goal of building a new national identity upon such an ancient and scientific past through science education (Ministry of Education of the National Government, 1934). Thus, Peking Man became the first icon of ‘scientific patriotism’.

6.2. The Mao Era: The Incarnation of Labor Ideology (1950s-1970s)

In 1949, when the Communist Party led by Mao Zedong (毛澤東) took control of mainland China, Peking Man underwent another dramatic transformation. The Communist Party assigned him the role of the most effective propaganda tool for disseminating Marxist ideology to the masses (Schmalzer, 2008). What they focused on was Friedrich Engels’ famous proposition: “labor created man himself.” The idea that apes evolved into thinking ‘humans’ through ‘labor’—standing on two feet and breaking stones to make tools—was the core of the communist ideology that emphasized the sanctity of manual labor and the historical superiority of the proletariat class.

And the most perfect real-life teaching aid to show this abstract theory to the masses was Peking Man. In museums and textbooks, he was reborn as a primitive worker, holding a stone hammer and making fire—the ‘first proletarian hero’. This politicization of science reached its zenith with the case of ‘Yuanmou Man (元謀人)’. Although the age of this fossil, discovered in Yunnan Province (雲南省) in 1965, was uncertain with the technology of the time, the Chinese government announced with great fanfare in February 1972, immediately after U.S. President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China, that Yuanmou Man was a staggering 1.7 million years old (Cheng, 2019). This was clearly based on political calculation to show off China’s independent history and stature in the midst of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, rather than on scientific verification procedures (Liu, 2006).

6.3. The Reform and Opening-Up Era: A Symbol of Patriotic Education (1980s-Present)

After the death of Mao Zedong and the end of the Cultural Revolution, China embarked on the path of reform and opening-up. As the old slogans of class struggle lost their power, the Chinese Communist Party chose ‘nationalism’ and ‘patriotism’ as the new adhesive to bind the dispersing people together (Zhao, 1998). In this new era, Peking Man was once again summoned by the state and resurrected as a sacred symbol to promote national unity and cultural pride.

First, the Zhoukoudian site, once a scene of scientific discovery, was transformed into a sacred ground for political education. On June 11, 1997, the Central Propaganda Department of the CPC (中共中央宣傳部) officially designated the Zhoukoudian site as one of the ‘First Batch of 100 National Model Bases for Patriotic Education’ (Central Propaganda Department of the CPC, 1997). Now, students from all over the country would visit this place to learn national pride and loyalty to the state before the great progenitor of the Chinese nation. This role was further legally strengthened by the “Patriotic Education Law of the People’s Republic of China,” which came into effect in 2024 (National People’s Congress of the PRC, 2023).

However, the pinnacle of this symbol manipulation was the creation of ‘state rituals’. At the 7th National Games in 1993, a ceremony to collect the ‘flame of civilization’ was actually held at Zhoukoudian, and in 2008, the final day’s relay of the Beijing Olympic torch in the Beijing section started from this very place. This was a conscious imitation of Olympia in ancient Greece, the origin of the Olympics, intended to send a message to the world that the origin of Chinese civilization is as ancient and sacred as that of the West. In January 2000, at the China Millennium Monument (中華世紀壇) in Beijing, a state ceremony was held where a ‘sacred flame’ collected from Zhoukoudian was lit, visually embodying the unbroken succession of civilization from Peking Man to the modern Chinese state (Cheng, 2017; Peng, 2024).

Chapter 7. The Government’s Delicate Balancing Act: Between Scientific Fact and National Myth

We now arrive at a clear and immense contradiction. On one side, there is the established scientific consensus, now difficult to refute, that ‘all modern humans came from Africa’. On the other side, there is the powerful nationalist myth, carefully constructed over decades for the sake of national integration, that ‘Peking Man is the direct ancestor of the Chinese people’. Faced with this direct clash between scientific truth and political necessity, the modern Chinese government has not chosen the black-and-white approach of selecting one and discarding the other. Instead, they do not deny or attempt to resolve this contradiction, but rather ‘manage’ it with extreme sophistication, demonstrating a very modern and refined art of governance. This is the ‘dual-track’ strategy of delivering different messages to different audiences.

7.1. Track 1: The Truth in Textbooks – Teaching ‘African Origin’ to the Scientific Elite

The most noteworthy change has appeared in the national education system. The revised high school biology curriculum standards of 2020 emphasize the learning of core concepts of modern evolutionary theory, such as common ancestry and molecular evidence, and based on this, the ‘Recent African Origin’ theory is introduced and taught as the de facto standard in numerous state-approved textbooks and supplementary materials. This is a symbolic event showing that the narrative on human origins within the state-sanctioned body of knowledge is changing.

The future scientists, doctors, and engineers of China now learn about the African origin of humanity as a ‘scientific fact’ in their high school biology classes. The younger generation of Chinese scientists, with their increasing interaction with the international academic community, are also naturally accepting the ‘RAO with regional admixture’ model (Liu et al., 2025). Underlying this is a very sober and realistic national strategy. To win the 21st-century technological supremacy race, China must reach the world’s top level in genetic engineering, life sciences, and advanced medical technology. To do so, China’s top scientists must communicate and compete on the same linguistic and theoretical foundation as the international academic community. If the nation’s future elites were taught science that is not accepted in the international community, it would be an act of self-harm, eroding the nation’s scientific competitiveness. Ultimately, this is a highly pragmatic choice that prioritizes tangible benefits in the ‘technology war’.

7.2. Track 2: The Myth in Museums – Showing the ‘Ancestor of the Chinese’ to the Public

However, if you step out of China’s cutting-edge biology classroom and walk into the history museum across the street with your family for the weekend, you will be transported to a completely different time and space. In history textbooks for the general public, on the exhibition panels of national museums, in TV history documentaries, and at national commemorative events, Peking Man is still presented, without a hint of doubt, as the proud ‘ancestor of the Chinese people’ (Cheng, 2017). In the diorama at the Zhoukoudian Site Museum, a Peking Man family with distinctly East Asian features is emotionally depicted making fire, working, and forming a community. Words like ‘Africa’, ‘migration’, or ‘replacement’ are nowhere to be found in the exhibit descriptions. What visitors experience there is not a scientific debate, but a feeling of reverence for an ancestor who has protected this land for hundreds of thousands of years and a sense of national pride. This narrative is further reinforced by some scholars who continue to advocate for an ‘East Asian origin’ theory, lending academic authority to the nationalist narrative (Peng, 2024).

7.3. Two Narratives, One Nation: The Art of Managing Contradiction

How can the truth that ‘we came from Africa’ and the myth that ‘we have been here for hundreds of thousands of years’ officially coexist within a single nation? This is possible because the Chinese government operates these two narratives on perfectly separate tracks with different goals. This is not simple confusion or a policy mistake, but a highly intentional and calculated national strategy.

• Track 1 (Scientific Elite Track): The goal is ‘technological advancement and securing international competitiveness’. The target audience is future science and technology talent, and the content is ‘scientific truth’ that aligns with international standards.
• Track 2 (Public Education Track): The goal is ‘national integration and maintaining political stability’. The target audience is the general public and students, and the content is a ‘national myth’ that fosters ethnic pride.

The state is simultaneously reaping the benefits that scientific truth brings (technological progress, international prestige) while effectively controlling the ideological instability that this truth could cause (the weakening of the national narrative), demonstrating a remarkable balancing act. This sophisticated dual-track strategy is a vivid example of how a state in the 21st-century information age can simultaneously utilize science and myth to achieve its national goals.

Chapter 8. Scientists and the Public: Different Imaginations

When a nation creates a grand narrative, what kind of lives do the people within it lead? How did scientists protect their research and beliefs amidst political storms? And did the public simply accept the official story of their ancestors presented by the state? This chapter delves into the specific lives and imaginations of scientists and the public who interacted with the state’s narrative and created their own stories under the shadow of the grand discourse.

8.1. In an Era of Tempests: The Conformity and Resistance of a Scientist

At the heart of the Peking Man story are two great scientists considered the fathers of Chinese paleoanthropology: Pei Wenzhong (裴文中), the discoverer of the first skull, and Jia Lanpo (賈蘭坡), who succeeded him and made the excavation of Zhoukoudian his life’s work. Jia’s tumultuous life vividly shows the anguish and choices a scholar had to face when the political tempest swept over the halls of science.

In 1966, the storm of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) swept across China. Under the pretext of destroying ‘all things old’, intellectuals associated with Western scholarship became targets of attack as ‘reactionaries’. Jia Lanpo, a paleoanthropologist of world renown, was no exception. Overnight, he was labeled a ‘bourgeois reactionary academic authority’ and dragged to ‘struggle sessions’ (批鬥大會), where he was publicly criticized and humiliated in the very research institute he had dedicated his life to leading (Olsen and Miller-Antonio, 2004).

It was in the midst of this despair and terror that the elderly scholar Jia Lanpo undertook a great act of resistance at the risk of his own life. He heard that the Red Guards (紅衛兵) were planning to incinerate the original excavation records and data accumulated over decades at Zhoukoudian. Braving immense personal danger, he secretly smuggled out these precious materials and hid them in his own home and the homes of his colleagues. Thanks to this, the scientific legacy of the Zhoukoudian research was miraculously preserved (Goodrum, 2016).

However, his life cannot be depicted solely as a narrative of resistance. After returning to academia following the end of the Cultural Revolution, he also became one of the most powerful scholars to support and propagate the state-favored ‘multiregional origin’ theory—the narrative that Peking Man was the direct ancestor of the Chinese people (Jia, 1980). His dualistic character reveals the complex reality of intellectuals of that era, who had to struggle to maintain their scientific conscience while sometimes conforming to the system to survive the political turmoil.

8.2. While the State Spoke of ‘Ancestors’, the Public Dreamt of the ‘Yeren’

While the state was diligently teaching about Peking Man as an orderly, laboring, ‘civilized ancestor’, the imagination of the Chinese public was exploding in a completely different direction. It was towards a mysterious and untamed being that escaped state control, the Chinese Bigfoot known as the ‘Yeren’ (野人), or ‘Wildman’.

Sightings of the Yeren have existed since ancient times, but they sparked a nationwide syndrome particularly in the late 1970s and 1980s, as the strict social controls of the Mao era ended and society began to open up (Schmalzer, 2008). Centered in the deep mountain forests of the Shennongjia (神農架) region in Hubei Province (湖北省), testimonies poured in about sightings of a tall, hairy creature. This craze went beyond mere superstition, even leading the Chinese Academy of Sciences (中國科學院) to organize large-scale national expeditions to analyze what were presumed to be Yeren footprints and conduct extensive search operations (Meldrum and Zhou, 2012; Smith, 2021).

This ‘Yeren syndrome’ can be interpreted as a ‘counter-discourse’ to the official narrative presented by the state (Schmalzer, 2008). The Yeren was the antithesis of everything the state’s official ancestor, Peking Man, represented. If Peking Man was a progressive being moving towards civilization by using stone tools and making fire, the Yeren was a primitive and free being that rejected civilization. If Peking Man symbolized a controllable past, perfectly analyzed and defined by the state, the Yeren symbolized an unknown, mysterious being yet to be discovered. While the state presented a rational and progressive image of an ancestor as a ‘laboring man’, the public was enthralled by the uncontrollable and mysterious ‘Yeren’ (Smith, 2021). This is an important cultural phenomenon that shows the complexity of human experience that cannot be explained by official narratives alone, and the power of imagination that erupts from a repressed society.

Chapter 9. The Invisible War: Preempting the ‘History of Humankind’

In the 21st century, the story surrounding Peking Man has entered a new phase. Thanks to massive state investment and an explosion of fossil discoveries, 21st-century Chinese paleoanthropology and paleontology are experiencing a veritable ‘golden age’ (Zhou et al., 2021). Based on this confidence, if China previously waged an ideological competition over the ‘interpretation’ of fossils, it has now begun a much more fundamental and strategic competition to control the ‘resources’ themselves—the fossil and genetic data—and thereby secure the ‘right to speak’ on the entire history of humanity.

9.1. “All Bones Belong to the State”: The Legalization of Data Sovereignty

In the 21st century, China began to build a new ‘Great Wall’ to protect its past heritage. This wall is not made of stone and earth, but of the invisible bricks of laws and regulations, designed to protect fossils and human genetic resources, now defined as key national strategic assets, and to establish ‘scientific sovereignty’.

The first brick was the “Paleontological Fossil Protection Ordinance” (State Council Order No. 580), promulgated in 2011. This law stipulates that the ownership of all fossils discovered within Chinese territory belongs to the state and establishes strict licensing procedures for the excavation and export of fossils (State Council of the PRC, 2011).

Even more powerful and comprehensive control was established in the realm of genetic information. The “Regulations on the Management of Human Genetic Resources,” which came into effect in 2019, is considered one of the world’s most robust ‘data nationalism’ laws (People’s Republic of China, 2019). The key provisions of this ordinance are as follows:

• Sample Control: Foreign individuals or institutions cannot independently collect or preserve any form of Chinese human genetic resources, such as DNA, blood, or tissue.
• Research Leadership: All international joint research projects must be substantively led by a Chinese institution.
• Data Borders: The export of all original data and records produced during research is prohibited in principle. In exceptional cases, a backup copy of all data must be kept on servers within China.

The message these legal provisions send to foreign scientists is chillingly clear: “Your advanced technology and research funding are welcome. But the core assets of the research, the samples and data, cannot go one step outside these borders. And all the glory and ownership that comes from them ultimately belongs to China.”

9.2. The Struggle for ‘Huayuquan’ (話語權): The Ambition to Become the Author of History

Why is China building such a formidable legal fortress? This goes beyond simply protecting a few fossils or DNA samples. The ultimate goal is to seize ‘huayuquan’ (話語權), or ‘discourse power’. ‘Huayuquan’ means more than just the ‘right to speak’; it signifies the power to set the agenda, define the rules of debate, and deliver the final interpretation. In other words, it is the ambition to occupy the ‘author’s seat’ in writing the great book of human evolutionary history.

For the past century, the history of human evolution has been written primarily in Western laboratories. But now, China is no longer satisfied with the role of a ‘raw material’ supplier. With its abundant fossil evidence and massive capital, it wants to become the new author of the human evolution story (Wu et al., 2019). By controlling access to data and fossils, China has gained powerful influence over the direction of research and the interpretation of results, turning this into a new front in a geopolitical competition that transcends the realm of science.

Conclusion: An Invented Ancestor and the Chinese Present

So, is Peking Man the ancestor of modern Chinese people?

Having completed the long journey of this report, we now know that this question belonged to two different worlds from the very beginning. One is the world of science, which seeks truth through evidence, data, and endless skepticism. The other is the world of the state and politics, which seeks to unite a nation through identity, memory, and a powerful narrative. These two worlds look at the same ‘past’ but see completely different things, and therefore, arrive at entirely different answers.

The answer provided by the world of science is clear and consistent. The genetics revolution, which began in the late 1980s with the discovery of ‘Mitochondrial Eve’, proved that the Y-chromosomes of modern East Asians all originated in Africa, showing no direct genetic continuity with Peking Man (Ke et al., 2001). In the 21st century, ancient genome sequencing technology went a step further, unequivocally revealing that the formation of East Asians was not a singular, pure lineage descending from Peking Man. Rather, it was a complex and dynamic ‘history of admixture’ created over thousands of years as groups from the northern, southern, and Yellow River (黃河) axes met and mixed (Wang et al., 2021). In the language of science, Peking Man is not a direct ancestor on the Chinese family tree, but a side branch that split off from the great river of evolution and disappeared.

On the other hand, the answer provided by the world of the state and politics is more resolute and desperate. That answer begins not with data, but with the deep historical trauma of the ‘Century of Humiliation (百年國恥)’ (Kaufman, 2011). The painful memory of having its civilizational pride trampled by Western powers and Japan demanded a powerful answer to the question, ‘Who are we?’. That answer was the narrative: ‘We are not outsiders, but a great and ancient people who have protected this very land for hundreds of thousands of years.’ A symbol was desperately needed to prove this narrative, and Peking Man was summoned from history for this role. He was a source of national pride during the Republican era, transformed into a proletarian hero in the Mao Zedong (毛澤東) era, and was reborn as a sacred symbol of patriotic education to unite a scattered populace after the Reform and Opening-Up (Zhao, 1998).

Today, modern China, aspiring to be a global superpower, employs a sophisticated ‘dual-track’ strategy, refusing to abandon either of these conflicting truths. On the one hand, for the sake of future technological hegemony, it teaches the international standard of ‘Recent African Origin’ in its advanced curricula. On the other hand, for national integration and regime maintenance, it continuously disseminates the ‘Peking Man myth’ through museums and mass media. Instead of resolving this contradiction, the state has perfected a high art of governance by separating and managing it, thereby reaping the benefits of both sides.

Ultimately, the story of Peking Man is the most perfect and modern example of what historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger called “The Invention of Tradition” (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983). It is a narrative that claims continuity with a distant past but is, in reality, created and constantly reconstructed by the political and cultural needs of the present.

What this report ultimately shows is that the past is not a fixed entity buried in the ground awaiting us (Schmalzer, 2008). The past is a living resource, constantly reinterpreted and mobilized by the needs and desires of people living in the present (Cheng, 2017). The Peking Man fossil itself may have been lost forever in the fires of war, but the symbol of Peking Man will continue to be reinvented in new forms as long as China asks itself the fundamental question, ‘Who are we, and where did we come from?’. His story will ultimately remain with us not as a window into the truth of the distant past, but as a mirror that most clearly reflects the desires and identity of the ‘China’ of the present.

Footnotes

[1] The phenomenon of archaeology and anthropology combining with nationalism is a universal one (Kohl and Fawcett, 1995; Díaz-Andreu and Champion, 2016). Barry Sautman noted that Chinese paleoanthropology and archaeology ‘provide the conceptual warp and weft’ for weaving the grand fabric of modern Chinese nationalism, analyzing how scientific discourse is used as a key material for the national identity project (Sautman, 2001; Schmalzer, 2008).

[2] The core assumptions of each model are as follows: The Recent African Origin (RAO) model posits that modern humans emerged in Africa and replaced other archaic hominins as they migrated across the globe (Cann, Stoneking, and Wilson, 1987). The Multiregional Evolution (MRE) model is a past hypothesis that Homo erectus evolved in parallel in various regions while maintaining a single species through gene flow (Thorne and Wolpoff, 1992). The Continuity with Hybridization (CWH) model is a claim from Chinese academia that the continuous evolution of Homo erectus into modern East Asians in China was the main trend, with admixture from outside being secondary (Wu, 2004; Wu and Cui, 2010).

[3] The discovery at Zhoukoudian became the cornerstone for all subsequent research on human evolution in East Asia, and scholars have consistently reaffirmed the importance of the Zhoukoudian data when discussing the Pleistocene fossil record (Etler, 1996; Bae, 2010).

[4] The academic legacy of these early Chinese pioneers is highly regarded by later scholars. The rich fossil data accumulated at Zhoukoudian became the core evidence for the hypothesis of regional continuity in East Asian human evolution, a hypothesis that is still actively debated today with the discovery of new fossils like the Hualongdong mandible (Wu et al., 2023).

[5] In 1998, Weiner et al. sparked a long-standing debate by proposing that the deposits known as ash layers at Zhoukoudian might actually be water-transported organic sediment and that the burnt bones could be the result of natural fires (Weiner et al., 1998). However, the recent XRD analysis by Huang et al. has provided strong counter-evidence to this skepticism.

[6] 26Al/10Be burial dating is a method that utilizes the principle that the ratio of cosmogenic isotopes 26Al and 10Be, produced when minerals like quartz are exposed to cosmic rays on the surface, changes at a constant rate due to radioactive decay after being buried deep in a location like a cave. It is highly effective for dating sedimentary layers where traditional potassium-argon dating is difficult to apply (Balco and Shuster, 2009).

[7] In his report, Captain Pierson testified to the urgency of the situation, stating, “This vessel could be used for troop transport against our forces within hours. I was firmly resolved to prevent this by all means at my command” (Pierson, n.d.). The ship was later salvaged and operated by the Japanese military before being finally sunk by a U.S. submarine in 1944.

[8] This pattern of genetic diversity is considered such strong evidence that the Out of Africa hypothesis is now used as an important explanatory variable in social science fields like comparative economic development (Ashraf & Galor, 2013).

[9] The core criticism lies in the questionable stratigraphic relationship between the fossils and the surrounding dating samples (e.g., calcite layers) in a complex subtropical cave environment. It is possible that younger fossils could have been mixed into older strata through erosion. Therefore, direct dating of the fossils themselves holds the highest evidentiary weight.

[10] This conclusion is consistently supported by other studies, such as an early study analyzing 28 ethnic groups in China which showed that all East Asian populations share a common origin (Chu et al., 1998), and a genetic study demonstrating that the expansion of Han culture was due to actual population movement (demic diffusion) (Wen et al., 2004). The Y-chromosome is recognized as a very effective tool for tracing paternal lineage (Calafell, Larmuseau and van Oven, 2017; Jin, 2013).

[11] The functional adaptations provided by such admixture played a crucial role in enabling humans to settle in new environments and diversify their survival strategies, leading to its re-evaluation as a key element of human evolution (Buck, 2024).

[12] To enhance the accuracy of ancient genome analysis, vast, high-quality modern human genome data for comparison is essential (Bergström et al., 2020). Furthermore, even when DNA is too old and damaged, proteomics, a technique that analyzes the proteins made from the DNA ‘blueprint’, has emerged to trace ancestry (Fu et al., 2025a).

[13] Meanwhile, the recently discovered Harbin cranium, nicknamed ‘Dragon Man (龍人)’, suggests the existence of another ancient human group that cannot be explained by these three axes alone. This cranium has been proposed as a potential new lineage that is a sister group to modern humans (Ni et al., 2021; Bae & Wu, 2021), hinting at a complex relationship with the Denisovans. This hypothesis has gained further support with the recent detection of Denisovan mitochondrial DNA from the dental calculus of this cranium (Fu et al., 2025b). However, it is accompanied by critical review from the academic community, which notes that ancient DNA studies, especially from samples like dental calculus, must be interpreted with caution due to the potential for contamination by modern human DNA and other analytical limitations. Therefore, this link needs to be further substantiated through additional cross-validation.

[14] The deep time depth of the Southern Axis can also be glimpsed through the widespread distribution of Denisovans. With the discovery of a Denisovan mandible in subtropical Taiwan, in addition to Siberia (Tsutaya et al., 2025), the possibility is raised that our ancestors encountered various archaic hominins throughout Asia. Research into their survival strategies is also actively underway (Zhang, D., et al. 2024).

[15] The phenomenon of archaeology and anthropology combining with nationalism is not confined to a specific region but is a universal phenomenon observed worldwide, including in Europe (Díaz-Andreu and Champion, 2016) and the Caucasus (Shnirelman, 2013), among others (Kohl and Fawcett, 1995).

[16] This narrative of the ‘rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’ is a powerful tool for integration but also contains internal tensions. While officially promoting an integrated ‘Zhonghua Minzu’ that encompasses 56 ethnic groups, in reality, it often manifests as ‘Great Han chauvinism (大漢主義)’, a Han-centric nationalism (Carrico, 2017). In this process, the histories and identities of ethnic minorities tend to be absorbed into or marginalized by the grand Han-centric narrative, acting as a persistent source of tension in modern China’s ethnic relations (Leibold, 2013).

Supplementary Materials

Table 1: Summary of Major Strata, Dates, and Findings at Zhoukoudian Locality

Layer(s)	Key Findings	Dating Method	Calculated Age (Ma)	Correlated MIS	Key References
4	Burnt bones (>600°C), hearth features, sediments	Magnetic Susceptibility, XRD	–	–	Huang et al. (2021); Gao et al. (2017)
5	Flowstone	U-series dating	~0.5–0.6	MIS 13-15	Shen et al. (2009)
7-10	First Peking Man skull, stone tools	²⁶Al/¹⁰Be burial dating	0.77±0.08	MIS 17-19	Shen et al. (2009)
10	Burnt bones (disputed)	Stratigraphic analysis	–	MIS 19	Weiner et al. (1998)
Between 13-14	Brunhes-Matuyama reversal	Paleomagnetism	~0.78	MIS 19	Shen et al. (2009)

 

Table 2: Summary of Major Ancient Population Genetic Lineages in East Asia

Genetic Lineage	Representative Sample/Site	Estimated Age	Associated Archaeology/Subsistence	Key Contributing Population	Key Studies
Tianyuan / Ancient Northern Eurasian	Tianyuan Man (田園洞人)	~40,000 years ago	Late Paleolithic / Hunter-gatherer	Basal population of the Northern Axis	Yang et al. (2017)
Ancient Northeast Asian	Amur River Neolithic (AR_EN)	~7,500 years ago	Neolithic / Hunter-gatherer	Tungusic, Mongolic peoples	Ning et al. (2020); Mao et al. (2021)
Yellow River Neolithic Farmer	Wanggou (汪溝), Henan (河南省)	~5,000 years ago	Yangshao (仰韶) culture / Millet farming	Han (漢族), Tibetans	Wang et al. (2021); Yang et al. (2020)
Fujian Neolithic Coastal	Liangdao (亮島), Fujian (福建省)	~8,000 years ago	Neolithic / Coastal hunter-gatherer	Austronesian peoples	Yang et al. (2020)
Hoabinhian / Southern Hunter-Gatherer	Hoabinhian culture, Vietnam	~4,000-8,000 years ago	Mesolithic / Hunter-gatherer	Southeast Asians, Austroasiatic peoples	McColl et al. (2018)
Steppe Pastoralist	Yamnaya / Afanasievo	~5,000 years ago	Bronze Age / Pastoralism	Admixture on Northern Axis, Indo-Europeans	de Barros Damgaard et al. (2018); Jeong et al. (2020)

Glossary of Key Terms

Human Origin Models and Concepts

Recent African Origin (RAO)

The model that modern humans (Homo sapiens) emerged in Africa around 300,000 years ago, migrated across the world, and replaced other regional archaic hominins like Neanderthals and Homo erectus. It is the established consensus in the scientific community, overwhelmingly supported by modern genetics.

Multiregional Evolution (MRE)

A past major hypothesis that Homo erectus, after leaving Africa about 2 million years ago, evolved in parallel into modern humans in various regions like Europe and Asia, maintaining a single species through continuous gene flow.

Continuity with Hybridization (CWH)

A variant of the MRE model championed by Chinese paleoanthropologist Wu Xinzhi (吳新智). It argues that the continuous evolution of Homo erectus into modern East Asians in China was the primary trend, and admixture with external groups, such as migrants from Africa, was merely a secondary exchange of genes.

Introgression

The transfer of genetic material from one species or distinct population into the gene pool of another through interbreeding and repeated backcrossing of the hybrid offspring with one of the parent species. It is a key genetic mechanism explaining the admixture of modern humans with Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Epistemological Nationalism

The tendency of a particular nation to establish its own standards of truth regarding its history and origins, independent of the consensus of the international scientific community. It stands in opposition to the universalism of science and involves a struggle over the authority of knowledge production.

Key Scientific Terms

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)

Special DNA found inside the mitochondria, the ‘power plants’ of our cells. It is not mixed with paternal DNA and is passed down almost unchanged from mother to child. It is therefore used like a ‘maternal genealogy’ to trace human ancestry far back in time.

Y-chromosome

One of the sex-determining chromosomes, passed down only from father to son. In contrast to mtDNA, it serves as a ‘paternal genealogy’ and is crucial for tracing how specific male lineages have spread.

Genome

The complete set of all genetic information in an organism. It can be likened to a vast ‘blueprint’ or ‘encyclopedia’ for making everything in our bodies. Decoding the genome of an ancient hominin reveals their entire genetic characteristics and ancestry.

Haplogroup

A group of long stretches of genes on DNA that are inherited together. Found on the Y-chromosome or mtDNA, people who share the same haplogroup are understood to have diverged from a common ancestor in the very distant past. ‘M168’, mentioned in the report, is a haplogroup like a ‘genetic surname’ (姓氏) shared by men who originated in Africa.

Serial Founder Effect

The phenomenon where genetic diversity gradually decreases as small groups break off from a population to form a new group, and then some from that group break off to form the next, in a repeated process. It’s like repeatedly taking only a few marbles from a bag containing many different colored marbles to make a new bag; eventually, only a few colors will remain. This principle explains why human genetic diversity decreases with distance from Africa.

Adaptive Introgression

The phenomenon where a gene that entered through admixture with another species (e.g., Neanderthals) helps in adapting to a new environment, leading to the better survival of descendants carrying that gene. The high-altitude adaptation gene (EPAS1) that Tibetans inherited from Denisovans is the most famous example. It can be thought of as a genetic ‘shortcut’ or ‘transfer of survival know-how’.

Radiocarbon Dating (¹⁴C)

A method of determining age by using the principle that radioactive carbon (¹⁴C), present in all living organisms, decays at a constant rate after death. It is very accurate for determining the age of relatively young (within about 50,000 years) organic materials (bone, charcoal, etc.).

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