Today’s People’s Daily reports Chinese paleoanthropologists have discovered a nearly complete 100,000-year old skull (albeit in 16 pieces) at an excavation site in Henan province:
“It is the greatest discovery in China after the Peking Man and Upper Cave Man skull fossils were found in Beijing early last century, and will shed light on a critical period of human evolution,” said Shan Jixiang, director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.“
The report in the Shanghai Daily leads off with this little twist:
“Chinese archaeologists have unearthed a 100,000-year-old human skull fossil that may help prove Chinese people originated locally rather than as descendants of Africans.”
Now, most paleoanthropologists accept the out-of-Africa theory as the best explanation currently available for the origins of homo sapiens, but in China it can still be a tough sell. Nationalism and cultural pride are part of it, but it’s also no secret that attitudes on race here, especially towards people of African descent are…interesting, to say the least. This can take the form of innocent, though ignorant, questions directed towards people of color, but can also lead to more offensive manifestations, including Chinese spectators at basketball games making Tarzan and monkey noises at Africans