Compare this story at Nature:
Keen to get to the bottom of its people’s ancestry, China has in the past decade stepped up its efforts to uncover evidence of early humans across the country. It is reanalysing old fossil finds and pouring tens of millions of dollars a year into excavations. And the government is setting up a US$1.1-million laboratory at the IVPP to extract and sequence ancient DNA.
The investment comes at a time when palaeoanthropologists across the globe are starting to pay more attention to Asian fossils and how they relate to other early hominins — creatures that are more closely related to humans than to chimps. Finds in China and other parts of Asia have made it clear that a dazzling variety of Homo species once roamed the continent. And they are challenging conventional ideas about the evolutionary history of humanity.
“Many Western scientists tend to see Asian fossils and artefacts through the prism of what was happening in Africa and Europe,†says Wu. Those other continents have historically drawn more attention in studies of human evolution because of the antiquity of fossil finds there, and because they are closer to major palaeoanthropology research institutions, he says. “But it’s increasingly clear that many Asian materials cannot fit into the traditional narrative of human evolution.â€
with my observations in an earlier post. I believe you’ll find a connecting thread.
Some additional points:
- The Peking Man fossils, claimed to be the oldest discovered in China to date, were lost during World War II. Without their being available for study using modern techniques, we can’t honestly say what they were.
- The Chinese history that has been taught both in China and the West for most of the last millennium is known to have been fabricated by Song dynasty scholars. I’ve written on this subject before.
Searching for a glorious and very ancient past is a time-hallowed pursuit, particularly on the part of upstarts. It’s why the Greeks tried to find a relationship between their own society and ancient Egyptian society, the Romans tried to link their civilization to Greek mythology, and why Americans look to Greek and Roman antecedents rather than to the more obvious Italian humanists who were (horrors!) Papists.
I find China’s national socialist government’s interest in demonstrating how ancient and distinct (and superior!) the Chinese people are concerning, particularly in light of our experience in the last century with a certain European fascist government.
