Event: China

Peking Man Site

When:	Daily
Where:	Peking Man Site
Costs:	20 RMB
Opening Hours:	8.30am-4.30pm

For a chance to see a bit further into our murky past, located at Zhoukoudian at Dragon Bones Hill, 50km (31 miles) southwest of Beijing, is the Peking Man Site, where a 600,000-year-old homo erectus (Sinanthrope) was discovered in a cave in 1929. Zhoukoudian has since been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The discovery of the Peking Man fossils, by Chinese archaeologist Pei Wenzhong, shook the scientific world and established a greater understanding of an important stage in the human evolutionary history. The theories were re-enforced by subsequent discoveries, in the same caves, of animal bones, tools and traces of fire use.

It is thought that Peking Man lived in a big cave on the northern slope of the Dragon Bones Hill for about 300,000 years intermittently, 500,000-600,000 years ago.

While the site is fascinating, and the setting - rolling mountains and the rushing Zhoukou River - stunning, it is worth mentioning that the skull of Peking Man was lost during the Anti-Japanese War and has never been recovered so you will only be able to see the plaster casts made in 1958.