WHAT THE PEKING CAVE-FINDS TELL US
The one early cave-dwelling we have found is that of Peking man, in China. Peking man had fire. He probably cooked his meat, or used the fire to keep dangerous animals away from his den. In the cave were bones of dangerous animals, members of the wolf, bear, and cat families. Some of the cat bones belonged to beasts larger than tigers. There were also bones of other wild animals: buffalo, camel, deer, elephants, horses, sheep, and even ostriches. Seventy per cent of the animals Peking man killed were fallow deer. It’s much too cold and dry in north China for all these animals to live there today. So this list helps us know that the weather was reasonably warm, and that there was enough rain to grow grass for the grazing animals. The list also helps the paleontologists to date the find.
Peking man also seems to have eaten plant food, for there are hackberry seeds in the debris of the cave. His tools were made of sandstone and quartz and sometimes of a rather bad flint. As we’ve already seen, they belong in the chopper-tool tradition. It seems fairly clear that some of the edges were chipped by right-handed people. There are also many split pieces of heavy bone. Peking man probably split them so he could eat the bone marrow, but he may have used some of them as tools.
Many of these split bones were the bones of Peking men. Each one of the skulls had already had the base broken out of it. In no case were any of the bones resting together in their natural relation to one another. There is nothing like a burial; all of the bones are scattered. Now it’s true that animals could have scattered bodies that were not cared for or buried. But splitting bones lengthwise and carefully removing the base of a skull call for both the tools and the people to use them. It’s pretty clear who the people were. Peking man was a cannibal.
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This rounds out about all we can say of the life and times of early prehistoric men. In those days life was rough. You evidently had to watch out not only for dangerous animals but also for your fellow men. You ate whatever you could catch or find growing. But you had sense enough to build fires, and you had already formed certain habits for making the kinds of stone tools you needed. That’s about all we know. But I think we’ll have to admit that cultural beginnings had been made, and that these early people were really men.
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