Our knowledge of the eastern distribution of Upper Palaeolithic man during the height of glaciation has been enormously extended by recent discoveries made by Dr. Pei, by the late Dr. Davidson Black, by Père Dr. Teilhard de Chardin, and by Dr. Franz Weidenreich, who have established the presence of several varieties of Late Pleistocene sapiens man, including the European type, in China and Mongolia.⁶⁹

At Chou Kou Tien, close to Peiping, the discoverers of Sinanthropus have also found three well-preserved skulls, with one mandible and most of the accompanying long bones, in limestone pockets of late glacial debris, which includes Upper Palaeolithic implements analogous to European types. The preliminary descriptions of the cultural remains would suggest late rather than early Upper Pleistocene age. One of these skulls, the one with the mandible, seems, upon preliminary examination, to resemble the European Upper Palaeolithic group very closely, and especially the male of Obercassel; it has also been compared to Ainu crania. A second skull greatly resembles that of a modern Eskimo, while a third may be compared to the racial type which invaded Japan during Neolithic times.⁷⁰

The importance of these skulls cannot be overemphasized. They indicate that in eastern Asia as well as in Europe, the Late Palaeolithic group was already racially complex; that peoples of European type stretched across the entire width of the northern half of the Eurasiatic continent; and that the mongoloid family of races had already begun its characteristic development. By means of this knowledge we may explain, at least in part, the enigma of the Ainu, a large-headed, broad-faced white group living on the outer periphery of eastern Asia. At the same time fresh light is thrown upon the human materials which may have taken part in the early peopling of America.

 

Notes:

69 The first discovery of this nature was of a sapiens tooth from the Sjara-osso-gol Deposits in Mongolia. Black, D., BGSC, vol.5, 1927, p. 285.

Also, Keith, Sir A., New Discoveries, pp. 250—251.

70 I am indebted for this information to Dr. Franz Weidenreich, who has given me permission to publish this preliminary notice. These comparisons are tentative and the reader must await Dr. Weidenreich's definitive publication for more detailed and more exact information.