Embryogeny and Phylogeny of the Human Posture 2. Anne Dambricourt Malasse
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which account for the founding of prehistory and perhaps human paleontology in China. Andersson was hoping for a financial commitment from Sweden for the Zhoukoudian excavations. Teilhard was exhibiting Shui-Dong-Gou, he represented the chair of Paleontology of the Muséum and the IPH which had a dominant position in Europe. To everyone’s surprise, Andersson projected the photos of the two molars that had remained secret, giving Wiman’s descriptions of them. He showed the casts to Black, immediately convinced. In the absence of excavation, Teilhard, already having been burned by Marcellin Boule’s disbelief from Piltdown, remained cautious. The Muséum and the IPH validated neither Piltdown nor Java Man; the oldest recognized Hominidae was Homo heidelbergensis. Asked for an opinion on the basis of the photos alone, he answered imprudently that no one would find Man associated with a tertiary fauna, the tooth was that of a carnivore.
Since the fossils remained in China, Sweden disengaged. Black was convinced of the great paleoanthropological value of the Zhoukoudian karst, which he believed had been occupied by Hominidae 1 million years ago. He convinced Wong, Deputy Director of the Geological Survey, to entrust the paleontological study to his Department of Anatomy, maintained by the Rockefeller Foundation. Black and Andersson informed Wiman of the agreement of the Chinese government. Thus, Black took up the torch. For his part, Teilhard informed Boule of the discovery of these two teeth and warned him, because he was far from being convinced (Teilhard de Chardin 2004).
Without delay, Black published a note in the journal Nature in November 1926, affirming the presence of Man in China since the end of the Tertiary era (Black 1926). He obtained funding from the Rockefeller Foundation for 1927 and 1928. Wiman remained a partner and sent a paleontologist, Birger Bohlin (1898–1990). Teilhard still had the support of Alfred Lacroix, who obtained the Loutreuil funds from the Academy of Sciences to maintain the French Mission in 1927. Davidson Black entrusted him with the study of fauna, which was no longer allowed to leave China.
Thus, thanks to the Academy of Sciences of the Institut de France, Teilhard ensured the first contribution of the French Mission to the study of Zhoukoudian and strengthened the links between the IPH and the Geological Survey of China via Davidson Black. The Shui-Dong-Gou collection was published in 1928 in the fourth issue of Archives de l’Institut de Paléontologie Humaine, entitled “La préhistoire de la Chine” (The Prehistory of China), signed by Marcellin Boule, Henri Breuil, Emile Licent and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
A new chapter of human paleontology and prehistory was being written in Northern China.
The site of Zhoukoudian was an ancient cave whose vault had collapsed, revealing a large sedimentary filling over a depth of 20 m; the site was monumental. The work was carried out under the direction of Bohlin and the stratigraphy had to be followed by the geologist Li C. Foreigners were not allowed to excavate, thus, only the Chinese were able to make discoveries. Three days before the end of the 1927 season, the diggers found a human molar in the location of the first two teeth, which were the only anthropological record. But the excavators had not yet reached the layers in place, i.e. the deposits not disturbed by erosion. Black published a detailed study and associated the name Zdansky with the new taxon, Sinanthropus pekinensis (Black and Zdansky) (Black 1927) by revising the stratigraphic age. Human teeth would date from the base of the Quaternary, 900,000 years at that time.
In 1928, about 30 villagers excavated 6,000 m3 of deposits by filling more than 1,000 fossil crates with numerous human teeth, an infantile mandible fragment, a large mandible fragment with three molars and an adult parietal, from different levels. This was Davidson Black’s consecration.
In 1929, the Geological Survey created the Cenozoic Research Laboratory, directed by Ding. Teilhard was trained in cave excavations, and Wong wanted to include him, negotiating his departure from Tien-Tsin with Licent. The new scientific team was composed of the paleontologist Young Chung-Chien (1897–1977), nicknamed “the father of Chinese paleontology”, a young Chinese geologist, Pei Wenzhong, who would become the “father of human paleontology” in China, Davidson Black, honorary director of the laboratory and in charge of the study of Hominids, and finally Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, appointed advisor and supervisor of the excavations, in charge of the study of all vertebrates, excluding Hominids.
Pei Wenzhong took part in the excavations: he went down the well to a depth of more than 30 m and himself dug with the villagers in the coldest weather. On December 2, 1929, he extracted the first almost complete neurocranium from its mud gangue. Then, a second incomplete skull was discovered on December 28. Davidson Black estimated the number of Hominids to be 10 individuals, including an adolescent skull and a reconstructed adult skull, mandibles, numerous teeth, fragments of ribs and the skull of a child in a very hard breach. Teilhard expected the skeleton to be complete. In any case, this was the oldest known infantile stage of a hominid. These fossils came from different layers: the sub-adult skull, or Sinanthropus III of Locus E, was the oldest. Recent dating gives an age of 770 ± 0.08 ka (Shen et al. 2009). Homo heidelbergensis was dethroned. In 1929, this skull became the oldest hominid in continental Eurasia.
Davidson Black carried out an exhaustive study of the skull. This one was exceptional because the sutures were not synostosed, he was thus able to disarticulate the bones and give a detailed description of their internal face. He took X-rays and made casts of each of the bones, as well as a plaster cast of the impressions of the brain (Black 1931). The monograph was remarkably illustrated by photographs of excellent quality with a tracing drawing the contours and with the names of the different anatomical structures made for each plate. The central part of the base was missing, so it was not possible to measure the sphenoidal angle, but the high position of the cerebellar fossa and the inclination of the cerebellar face of the petrous pyramids gave solid indications. The skull was at an advanced stage of growth because the supraorbital torus was already well formed. The cranial capacity was 964 ml; Black attributed this to an adolescent (Black 1933). This skull may well have been that of a young female in the late stages of growth. The IPH acquired these casts in 1932. Only three original series existed in the world, the other two being kept at the Museum of Natural History in New York and at University College, London. However, these casts are unique because all of the fossils disappeared in 1941 when it was decided to protect them from Japanese looting during Second World War.
Black and Teilhard discussed the cognitive abilities of the Sinanthropus on the basis of brain imprints and meningeal vascularization. The French paleontologist was doubtful, due to the lack of lithic tools. Intrigued, he questioned Pei. The latter had indeed put aside a quartz stone which turned out to be cut. Teilhard decided to excavate another cavity (Kötzetang or Gezitang). The results were immediate: from 1931 to 1932, the excavators collected many quartz tools, coal and new fossils of Sinanthropus, including mandible, teeth and clavicle. As early as 1931, Black invited Henri Breuil to come and study the operation. In return, Pei Wen Zhong went to Paris to register for a thesis in order to learn the study of lithic industries at the IPH, which he defended at the Sorbonne in 1937. These were the oldest prehistoric lithic tools. For the first time, the organization of cerebral hemispheres more complex than a great ape, likely to illustrate cerebral hominization, could be confronted with the materialization of gestures following abstract reasoning. At first, Teilhard and Boule disagreed, because the latter did not conceive that a 1,050 ml brain could be capable of such a manual and conceptual feat.
A tragedy occurred on March 15, 1934: Davidson Black died in his laboratory, struck down by a heart attack. Teilhard now had to take over the direction of the programs. The chair of Anatomy at the Peking Union Medical College was vacant, and it was the German physician and paleoanthropologist Franz Weidenreich (1873–1948) who took over in 1935. He became well known in 1928 through the study of a Neanderthal neurocranium discovered in the paleoanthropological site of Weimar-Ehringsdorf, known since 1914 (Weidenreich 1928). He was interested in Sinanthropus and was willing to leave the chair of Anthropology at the University of Frankfurt. Excavations continued and nine incomplete human skulls were collected between 1936 and 1937.
2.7. The first study of the internal basis of a Hominidae fossil
In Java, the skulls of Pithecanthropus