Jia Lanpo

Jia Lanpo (Chinese贾兰坡/贾兰坡; born November 25, 1908 in Yutian, Hebei Province, † July 8, 2001 in Beijing ) was an important Chinese paleoanthropologist who in the 1930s as directors of the excavations of the Peking Man was involved.

Jia was still a student at the excavation campaign ( 1929-1937 ) participated in Zhoukoudian near Beijing, where skeletal remains were found about 45 copies of after the site as " Peking Man " called Homo erectus, including calvaria. He was at the beginning of 1929 between temporal overseer, 1931 technical assistant of the Geological Survey of China (中国 地质 调查 局, Zhōngguó dizhi Diàochájú ), under whose leadership was the excavation and in 1935 director of excavations. The findings come after latest dating from the period 300000-780000 years ago. Jia was to make as a director of excavations successor of Pei Wenzhong, another well-known Chinese anthropologists, who then went to Paris for an academic degree. At the excavation known foreign anthropologists like Davidson Black, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Franz Weidenreich and Henri Breuil were involved, also the doyen of vertebrate paleontology in China, Yang Zhongjian.

The fossils were evacuated in 1941 before the Japanese invasion and should be placed on a ship to the U.S., but disappeared on the way, her whereabouts are unknown; Jia sought his life in vain educate their fate. Jia had but the excavation accurately documented, among others, with 2,000 photos and casts of fossils. A few pieces have also survived the war.

Jia was later a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He oversaw further excavations of the Pleistocene of China, among others, in 1990 in Nihewan Basin in North China with the American archaeologist John Desmond Clark.

In 1994 he became a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Jia Lanpo authored over 180 scientific articles and 23 books.

He is buried in Zhoukoudian next to Yang Pei Wenzhong and Zhongjian.

Writings

• Huang Weiwen with: The story of Peking man: from archeology to mystery, Oxford University Press 1990
• Chinese Homo erectus, 1950
• Early Man in China, 1980