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Pei Wenzhong
Palaeoanthropologist and prehistorian who found the first Peking Man skullcap at Zhoukoudian in December 1929 and directed the excavation of the Upper Cave.
Mural of the event “Peking Man Discovered”, which this person took part in.
From 1927 the Geological Survey of China and Peking Union Medical College excavated Locality 1 on Dragon Bone Hill at Zhoukoudian, in Fangshan southwest of Beijing, systematically. On 2 December 1929 Pei Wenzhong, who was directing the dig, found the first complete Peking Man skullcap deep in the cave, and in November 1936 Jia Lanpo, then in charge of the dig, found three more skulls. By the time work stopped in 1937 Zhoukoudian had yielded many human fossils, stone tools and traces of fire.
Also known as W. C. Pei
Pei Wenzhong was born in 1904 at Fengnan in Zhili. He graduated in geology from Peking University in 1927 and in 1928 went to Zhoukoudian to join the fossil excavations, taking charge of the field work the following year. On 2 December 1929, deep in the cave fissure, he found the first Peking Man skullcap, and he went on to identify stone tools and traces of fire at the site. In 1933–34 he directed the excavation of the Upper Cave and wrote its report on the Upper Cave culture. He studied prehistoric archaeology at the University of Paris from 1935, taking his doctorate in 1937, and spent the rest of his career on human fossils and the Palaeolithic. He died in Beijing in 1982.
Life and times
Dates 1904 CE–1982 CE (birth by another account 1903)
- 1927Peking Man DiscoveredTook partage 23
- 1929Pei Wenzhong Finds Peking Man Skullcapage 25