Peking Man - Relation To Modern Chinese People

Relation To Modern Chinese People

Franz Weidenreich considered Peking Man as a human ancestor and specifically an ancestor of the Chinese people, as seen in his original multiregional model of human evolution in 1946. Chinese writings on human evolution in 1950 generally considered evidence insufficient to determine whether Peking Man was ancestral to modern humans. One view was that Peking Man in some ways resembled modern Europeans more than modern Asians. However, this debate of the origin has sometimes become complicated by issues of Chinese nationalism. By 1952, however, Peking Man had been considered by some to be a direct ancestor of modern humans. Some paleontologists have noted a perceived continuity in skeletal remains.

A 1999 study undertaken by Chinese geneticist Jin Li showed that the genetic diversity of modern Chinese people is well within that of the whole world population, which suggests there was no inter-breeding between modern human immigrants to East Asia and Homo erectus, such as Peking Man, and that the Chinese are descended from Africa, like all other modern humans, in accordance with the recent single-origin hypothesis. However, the RRM2P4 gene data suggests that the Chinese, while largely descending from Africa like others, nevertheless have some genetic legacy from hybridization with older Eurasian populations, consistent with limited multiregional evolution.

Read more about this topic:  Peking Man

Famous quotes containing the words relation to, relation, modern, chinese and/or people:

    “A theory of the middle class: that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather by its relation to government. That is, one could shade down from an actual ruling or governing class to a class hopelessly out of relation to government, thinking of gov’t as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by gov’t. Somewhere in between and in gradations is the group that has the sense that gov’t exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly.”
    —Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)

    “Every word was once a poem. Every new relation is a new word.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “Let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples of the earth—they are the focus of evil in the modern world.”
    —Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)

    “Elsa Bannister: The Chinese say “It is difficult for love to last long; therefore one who loves passionately is cured of love, in the end.”
    Michael O’Hara: That’s a hard way of thinking.
    Elsa: There’s more to the proverb: “Human nature is eternal; therefore one who follows his nature keeps his original nature, in the end.””
    —Orson Welles (1915–1985)

    “The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.”
    —E.M. (Edward Morgan)