Pei Wenzhong

Pei Wenzhong (Chinese裴 文 中, W.-G. Pei Wen-chung ), also Anglicized WC Pei ( born March 5, 1904 in Fengnan, Hebei Province; † 18 September 1982) was a Chinese paleontologist, archaeologist and anthropologist. He is famous especially for his discovery of Shandingdong people ( Upper Cave Man). He is considered the founding father of Chinese anthropology.

Life

Pei Wenzhong graduated in 1928 at Peking University and moved to China Geological Survey, where he took part in the excavations of the Peking Man at Zhoukoudian. In 1929 he was appointed director of the excavations.

The conditions at Zhoukoudian were rough, instead of vehicles, for example there were only mules available. The first skull fragments were afternoon " working in a 40 -meter-deep crevice in bad weather, with a hammer in one hand and a candle in the other hand " found on December 4, 1929 by 4 clock by Pei Wenzhong.

Between 1933 and 1934, Pei worked in the Upper Cave, a cave on the mountain top Lónggǔshān龙骨 山( " Dragon Bone Mountain" ) and was director of the Office of the China Geological Survey in Zhoukoudian. He left the excavations in 1935 and went to the Sorbonne in Paris. His successor at Zhoukoudian was Jia Lanpo.

In 1937 he returned shortly before her abrupt end back through the Japanese invasion to the excavations.

After Zhoukoudian Pei worked on many other excavations such as those in Djalainor or Gansu. In 1955 he was inducted into the Chinese Academy of Sciences and became the second head of the Natural History Museum in Beijing. By additionally a death he then worked at the Institute of Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

His ashes were interred in Zhoukoudian between the remains of his colleagues Yang Zhongjian and Jia Lanpo.

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