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 and/or people:

    Much poetry seems to be aware of its situation in time and of its relation to the metronome, the clock, and the calendar. ... The season or month is there to be felt; the day is there to be seized. Poems beginning “When” are much more numerous than those beginning “Where” of “If.” As the meter is running, the recurrent message tapped out by the passing of measured time is mortality.
    William Harmon (b. 1938)

    There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist’s relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist’s concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know; in the high refinement of modern life, in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality, and a purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honor every truth by use.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Scarlett O’Hara: What shall we do? Ashley, what’s to become of us?
    Ashley Wilkes: What do you think becomes of people when their civilization breaks up? Those who have brains and courage come through all right. Those who aren’t are winnowed out.
    Sidney Howard (1891–1939)