QA_Vol 24_No 1_July 2007 - Australasian Quaternary Association

about Dr Ding [Ting]. He was the first director of theChinese Geological Survey; he established the firstChinese Geological College, and is considered one of thefounders of Chinese geology.Professor Ding Wenjiang returned to China soon after1910. In 1919, as Director of the Chinese GeologicalSurvey he published the first Chinese geologicalmagazine, the Bulletin of the Geological Survey. On thefirst page in the first issue of volume one of that journalhe printed a quote from Richthofen, who essentiallywrote that ‘Chinese intellectuals like to sit at their desk intheir very neat and clean rooms that are full of sunshineand write poems and make paintings’. They enjoy this kindof intellectual life; they don’t like to go out in the field. Somany years later other disciplines of science haddeveloped but not geology.Professor Ding Wenjiang printed Richthofen’s quotationat the front of the first Geological Bulletin to encourageyoung Chinese geologists to go into the field. This was avery good story, especially for people of my age. I alwaystell this story to young geologists, especially now becausesome of them don’t want to do field work. During the1930s and 40s geologists liked to go to places like theHimalayas; they were very ambitious. What DingWenjiang and Richthofen had said about the Chineseintellectuals back then is still relevant to some youngChinese geologists who don’t like fieldwork in thepresent time. However with this warning most youngChinese geologists now work hard in the field.Ding was proud of those he trained at Peking Universityduring the 1920s, who became the first generation ofChinese geologists. There were students like YangZhongjian [C.C. Young, Yang Chung-Chien in earlyspelling, frequently abbreviated to C.C.Young in Englishpublications. JMB] who graduated in 1923 and PeiWenzhong who graduated in 1927.EMERGING SCIENCE:BEIJING MAN DISCOVERYStory 3 This is the story of Pei Wenzhong and the discoveryof Peking Man. Pei graduated from the universityin 1927. At that time he couldn’t find a job in geology.Then came support from another founder of Chinesegeology, Professor Weng Wenhao [WH Wong], who wasthe first Chinese person with a doctorate degree from awestern country. Professor Weng supported Pei Wenzhongto work as a secretary for the excavation inZhoukoudian.Just before that, in the early 1920s, JG Andersson fromSweden had purchased some ‘dragon’s bones’ used inChinese traditional medicine. The ‘dragon’s bones’ wereactually fossil bones and teeth. Andersson sent themback to Sweden, where paleontologists found that someof the teeth may be from an arthropod, a primate, sometype of monkey. Andersson was sharp and a very goodobserver. That was the time of the Java Man discovery.Andersson thought that perhaps he could find fossil manin China. So he explored the surroundings of Beijing andfound in Zhoukoudian a place that local people called theChicken Bone Mountains, because fossils of birds werepresent in deposits.Andersson excavated in Zhoukoudian, and was followedby the Austrian palaeontologist, Otto Stansky and aSwedish palaeontologist, Birge Bohlin, in 1924 and 1925.Weng hired Pei in 1927 to take charge of the excavationmanagement. At that time Pei knew nothing about thework in palaeontology but he was very diligent at takingcare of the excavation. He first learned from the archaeologistsnew methods for excavation where they createda grid system and excavated from level to level. This wasthe first grid system Pei applied, then he made a sort ofpulley from the lower part of the mountain to facilitatethe work. At the end of 1929 he discovered the first skullof Peking Man.Others involved in the excavation such as Davidson Black,Teilhard de Chardin and Bohlin had all thought theywould find human fossils quickly. They were ready to stopthe excavation in late December of 1929 because it wasvery cold but Pei insisted they try another day. On thatvery last day they found something different, maybe akind of skull. Pei examined it himself and at last theythought it was a skull of fossil man. They wrapped it andcarefully transported it to the Department of Anatomy atthe Peking Union Medical School.Pei’s discovery was an important turning point forChinese geology and palaeontology. Before that we hadimportant works by Grabau and Teilhard de Chardin, butnone were conducted by Chinese palaeontologists nordiscovered by the Chinese themselves. So this finding ofthe fossil skull by Pei is a kind of declaration of independencefor Chinese geology! For many years I wondered ifthat’s why there is a kind of phenomenon about Pei,because if people were talking about the discovery ofPeking Man, everyone said that Pei was the discoverer. Icalled this ‘the Pei phenomenon’. The Chinese realisedwe made a discovery of worldwide importance.Story 4 At university between 1938 and 1942 we had aGerman professor, Peter Misch, who was a student ofHans Stille. Peter Misch taught us structural geology andthe ideas of Hans Stille on regional metamorphism.These were very distinguished people.At that time, the Chinese translation of Sven Hedin’sbook on the exploration of the Taklimakan Desert wastranslated and published. It was a very popular book foryoung students. It contains a very famous story aboutHedin’s rescue of his guide by finding some fresh waterand taking it to him in his boots. For me Sven Hedin and5 | Quaternary AUSTRALASIA 24 (2)