In 2000, the magazine Guangming Ribao interviewed Zhou Guoxing, who worked at the Beijing Natural History Museum. He claimed that an American naval officer and Embassy guard had seen two people burying a crate in the grounds at the rear of the American Embassy on the evening before Pearl Harbor, and that he had suspected the contents to be the fossils of Peking Man. Zhou then discovered that a garage had been built on the burial site, and that neither the US nor Chinese governments would allow it to be dug up.
Zhou’s story seems to be a variation on something else that happened in 2000 – a Qing-era tomb was found on the grounds of the US Embassy. This, however, was excavated, recovering coins and ancient makeup. No fossils were included.
More interestingly, Zhou Guoxing found a Japanese trail. In 1992, he was visiting an exhibition of fossils in Osaka, and met up with Iketani Senshi, a professor at Shizuoka University. Iketani had been a student of Takai Tōji, who had visited the fossils at the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC). Iketani revealed that that Toji had reported the fossils missing not on his first visit, in 1941, but his third, in August 1942. He and his assistant (now Professor) Nagakai claimed that the fossils had definitely not been taken to Japan, but to America. How this could have happened in August 1942 from occupied China is something he didn’t try to explain. Zhou admitted it didn’t add up.
The story of the burial in embassy grounds is hearsay, and doesn’t fit the timeline. Nor does it make sense for the Japanese to have let the Americans ship stuff out of Qinhuangdao. The Japanese, however, were known to have shipped fossils of Solo Man and Java Man from the Dutch East Indies to Japan. Which brings us to a former Japanese soldier, Nakada Hironami. He claimed that he saw a fossil skull of Peking Man both in Changchun, which, during World War II, was the capital of the Japanese puppet territory of Manchukuo, and in Japan in 1948. In both cases, the skull was in a box owned by his father-in-law, Endo Takaji.
There is a problem with the story, in that the witness claimed to have seen a complete skull, and no such example of Peking Man has ever been found. Only partial bones were recorded and cast, but the inventory for the two crates lists several intact skulls, just to confuse everyone.
It has become a popular theory in recent decades (based on a newspaper story in the Guangming Daily) that the fossils went down with a ship named the Awa Maru, sunk in 1945. Despite the popularity of the theory, one has to wonder why the Japanese either waited so long to ship them out, or recorded them stolen in 1942.
In 2005, on the 60th Anniversary of VJ Day and the end of World War II, the Fangshan provincial government set up the Xunzhao Beijingren Tougaigu Huashi Gongzuo Weiyuanhui, or ‘Working Committee to Locate the Fossilized Skulls of Peking Man’.
This committee has been open about being certain the fossils are either in China or Japan.
The committee’s 63 stated leads have been paper-thin, however, generally consisting of half-remembered memories of relatives who claimed to have seen skulls or witnessed boxes being buried. One person claimed to have seen a transcript from a US report placing the skulls in Japan, while others claimed to have been shown them by doctors at the PUMC, or to have seen neighbours who worked at the PUMC bring home skulls and bury them.
Oh, and just for fun, China has its own share of creationists, who believe that the fossils are those of monkeys, and that it was an anti-religious hoax all along.
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE
As well as the Peking Man fossils, the excavations turned up skeletal fragments of other early hominids and, in the highest cave at the site, ancient Homo Sapiens. These pieces may have helped confuse the issue as to which bones seen by witnesses may have actually been Peking Man fossils.
Originally the fossils were dated at 300,000–500,000 years, but more recent studies have pushed their date back to 700,000 years or more. Clearly the site was occupied for a very long time, as the modern human skeletons there date from around 150,000 years ago.
By 1941, a man called Franz Weidenreich was in charge of the fossils, and he had plaster casts made of all the specimens. This is fortunate, as the casts survive, and so exact accurate replicas have been made of the fossils, which can still be studied today. Weidenreich is the one who arranged for the originals to be transported back to the US while he was returning there, approaching the US Ambassador and Marine Corps to help. They, at first, refused.
He kept trying, however, and after several months, the US authorities agreed, because the Natural History Museum in New York was so interested. In November 1941, Hu Zhengzhi’s team had packed everything into two crates, and dropped them off at the Peking Union Medical College’s Controller’s Office, where they were supposed to have been stored in the No. 4 strong room in Building F. The crates should have then been sent to the US Embassy, and from there transferred to Camp Holcomb and shipped out of Qinhuangdao.
However, the whole area was controlled at the time by the Japanese army, and as of 8 December, the US and Japan were at war. The Japanese immediately took over control of the Peking Union Medical College and started interrogating the American staff. The Japanese were also interested in the fossils, among other loot, and sent two archaeology professors—Hasebe Kotondo and Takai Tōji – to check them out. When Kotondo arrived, however, and went to open up Strongroom No. 4, the fossils were gone.
Now the Chinese and Americans blamed the Japanese army for looting them, and the Japanese blamed the Chinese and Americans for smuggling them out. But which of them were right? Actually, both. Evidence provided by Chinese anthropologist Pei Wenzhong suggests that the two crates were sent to Camp Holcomb via the US Embassy at the end of November 1941. The Marines transporting the crates, however, were interned in Qinhuangdao on 8 December, before being forwarded on to a prison camp in Tianjin.
Two of the Marines, Herman Davis and a Dr Foley, have described how they hid the crates in the Swiss Warehouse, the Pasteur Institute and with various Chinese contacts, all in Tianjin. This adds up to more than two crates – but they also admit to not having looked in the crates, and so may have simply not known which crates in their truck were the ones with the fossils. Unfortunately the bigger problem is that the nearest Pasteur Institute – even in 1942 – was in Bangkok, Thailand. There wasn’t one in China.
There was a Swiss consulate, and lots of warehouses owned by many different nationalities, but no building by the name of ‘Swiss Warehouse’. It’s possible that it was a local nickname for a particular warehouse, or a Marine Corps codename for a location, but the two ex-Marines’ stories are on shaky ground.
What of the skulls seen by witnesses in 1948? Endō Takaji was an archaeologist, but was studying the remains of Zhalainur Man, found in Manchuria, and it’s far more likely that his son-in-law saw a skull of this hominid, not Peking Man.
Which brings up another interesting element. There have been a lot more fossil discoveries in China over the years than just Peking Man, and so many of the leads could be accurate to stolen fossils without being Peking Man. The committee to find them did issue the most complete inventory of the cargo, which reveals that the two crates contained a total of seven boxes, and are filled with hundreds of teeth and skeletal fragments, including four (partial) skulls of Peking Man, as well as intact skulls, teeth and fossilized bones of a different hominid – the 18,000-year-old Upper Cave Man (Shandingdongren), examples of which had also been excavated at Zhoukoudian.
WHERE IS IT NOW?
There are a couple of partial answers to this. You can see very good replicas of the fossils, and reconstructions of the hominids as they may have looked in their lifetimes, at Zhoukoudian Museum. Copies can be seen in various museums around the world, such as at London’s Natural History Museum. In fact, you can even buy your own accurate resin castings from commercial suppliers to museums, who trade online.
Several of the original fossil teeth survive at the Palaeontological Museum of the University of Uppsala, in Sweden. That doesn’t count, as far as finding a lost treasure is concerned, t
hough.
Looking at the different stories that the witnesses and people involved have given over the years, it seems most probable that somewhere along the line the fossils got mixed in among other hominid fossils from China, and that this probably happened at the Peking Union Medical College in or before August 1942.
That means that some of the fossils could well be in private collections or museums, mislabelled as similar relics, such as Upper Cave Man, or other general subtypes of Homo Erectus. In that sense, they’re probably as lost as it’s possible to be, without being buried in a hoard somewhere. Of course, the converse is also true – if there is a hoard stashed somewhere, it’s as likely to have those other types of fossils – for which we have other extant specimens – mixed in to complicate things.
Thankfully, there is actually another way to discover this treasure: Simply find new specimens in situ in the cave system at Dragon-Bone Hill, near Zhoukoudian.
In fact, this has sort of happened already – a piece of jawbone thought to belong to Peking Man was found there in 1959, and quickly hustled away to a secret archive just in case. Since then, the search for new specimens has continued, but everything that has been found has turned out to belong to other, later, hominids and proto-humans.
ARTEFACT OR ARTY FAKE
You’d think that fake artefacts aren’t something you have to worry about when searching for lost treasures. After all, if it’s been buried in a tomb for a thousand years, it can’t have been knocked off in a sweat-shop somewhere and be for sale on eBay. To some degree this is true, but just because something dates from the period of an old treasure, that doesn’t mean to say that it wasn’t faked back in the day.
People have been faking valuable objects and materials for as long as there have been valuable materials and objects. There have been a couple of forgeryheavy periods in history. In medieval times, religious iconography and artefacts were big business, and Christian dioceses all over Europe were churning out relics of Saints, pieces of the ‘True Cross’, lances, grails, shrouds and so on. Since most claimants to being Christian artefacts tend to date from around that era, the chances of them being fakes are high. The other big period of fakery is the 19th century, when people around the world began to take a really big interest in history and started making reproductions of older stuff – which is why a lot of purportedly antique and ancient arms and armour turn out to be Victorian reproductions.
The greatest chance of running into faked artefacts and treasures, of course, is when you think you’ve tracked down lost treasures that have been hoarded in private collections or have been gathering dust in museums. These may well turn out to actually be fakes created by some previous seller at some point in the past. Likewise, it is estimated that 90 per cent of antiquities put up for auction – especially online – are fakes. This is as good a reason as any to go out and find the things in situ where they were lost.
That said, you can still discover fakes. Some scientists believe that the Baghdad Battery may be an example of a primitive tool used to electroplate objects of less valuable metal with silver or gold. Gold and coinage from any period could be, and was, counterfeited, so even if you find a hoard of gold coins buried in a Southern vault since the Civil War, they could still be fake even if they’re the actual objects that were lost at the time. Genuine fakes, so to speak.
Most people have now heard of carbon dating and gas spectroscopy. The former can tell the age of an object, and the latter what materials it’s composed of; however, you should be aware that both of these techniques destroy a sample of the piece, and so must be carefully considered before use. A better thing to look for, whether with coins or more complex objects, is a thin raised line encircling it, or a change in texture where such a line has been sanded away. This is a sure sign of a mould seam, where the two halves of a mould have been pressed together, to produce multiple copies from a single original piece.
THE OPPOSITION IN YOUR WAY
Zhoukoudian is in the Fangshan district of Beijing, a suburb south-east of the city. The Chinese government’s and Fangshan government’s regulations and red tape are going to be your biggest problems if you want to dig stuff up, but there is a museum, and parts of the site are open to the public. Also, because excavations are still going on, if you’re a student it may be possible to apply to get in and join a dig, just like any other regular field archaeology site.
Accessing the caves is a different matter, both because more of them are closed to the public, and because the area is prone to mudslides – there is a danger of collapse. Poking around in cramped underground excavations are always a matter of some risk.
This is also an UNESCO World Heritage Site, so the UN would be annoyed with illicit digging. Not that there’d be much point in taking along geophysical equipment, as the soil is not suited to them, and the layers in which finds have been made are deep enough to be out of range. It’s old-fashioned naked-eye digging all the way.
If you are mad enough to try being Lara Croft, you should bear in mind that you’d be bringing down the ire of local police, the PSB (Public Security Bureau, essentially the Chinese KGB) and the world’s largest army and air force.
Zhoukoudian is heavily forested, but the most notable wildlife is avian – in particular a local form of black stork. These are not dangerous, but they are protected by law, so you’ll want to be careful around them.
The area is a hotbed of artefact smuggling, which is the most common crime in the district. Be careful what you pick up or carry for anyone. Beijing as a whole is actually one of the safest cities in the world for what we’d consider ‘proper’ crime, and foreigners are not targeted any more than locals. That said, pickpockets and clip-joint teahouses (where you’ll be lured in and then hit with massive fees) have been on the increase for some time. Otherwise, it’s always wise to take the same precautions as anywhere else – don’t flash valuables, make sure your bag is secure, and so on.
THE HOLY GRAIL
WHAT IS IT?
According to legend, myth, the beliefs of millions, and Indiana Jones, this is the Cup of Christ, the cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper, before his crucifixion, and also the cup in which Joseph of Arimathea subsequently caught some of Christ’s blood during the crucifixion.
It has supposedly become imbued with spiritual grace and is a direct connection to the Son of God, which is capable of sustaining the lives of men without food, of healing any sickness or wound, and of even granting eternal life – not just to those who drink from it, but even to those who are able to spend time in its radiant presence.
HOW MUCH IS IT WORTH TO YOU?
An artefact that could heal any illness or injury, let alone confer immortality, would be priceless beyond imagining. It would also probably be the object of a whole bunch of wars by governments wanting to get control of it for themselves and bury it in a secret vault.
As a historical artefact, however, it would surely be on a par with any crown jewel in the world, worth at least several hundred thousand pounds. Any finder could name their own price, and have both religious organizations and private collectors engaged in a bidding war the likes of which the world has never seen.
Of course it’d also be worth your life, as there are doubtless plenty of people who’d kill for it, at least if the movies are to be believed.
THE STORY
The most prevalent modern take on the Holy Grail is that Joseph of Arimathea picks up Christ’s cup from the Last Supper as a sort of souvenir, which he then uses to collect droplets of blood from the crucifixion. Joseph is then thrown in jail, but somehow manages to hang on to the cup. He is visited by a vision of Jesus, who tells him that the cup will have wondrous properties, that he must make sure the cup is guarded forever, and that a line of keepers of the Grail must be formed, so that only the most pious and spiritual person would be able to find it and enjoy its powers. When he gets out, Joseph puts together a group of friends and family – and the occasional spiritual follower
– and travels west.
Since it was heavily associated with King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, it was commonly believed that Joseph brought it by way of Italy and France to England. Supposedly he planted his staff in the ground at Glastonbury, and it took root and grew, proving that he had brought the Grail to the country. The Grail was then hidden in the castle of a wounded king, surrounded by waste lands and guarded against all comers, who must prove their worth to view it.
Sir Percival (and, in some versions, Bors and Galahad) is allowed to be in proximity to the Grail, during a feast in the castle of the Fisher King. There, the worthy watch a ceremony in which innocent youths carry the holiest relics of Christianity – including the Holy Lance, which supposedly pierced Christ’s side – around between courses. The final relic, carried by a beautiful girl, is the Grail. Although this is a massive feast, the Fisher King himself subsists on only one wafer, otherwise kept alive by the power of the Grail. Percival later finds out that if he’d said the right thing when he saw the Grail, it would have fully healed the injured king and probably made Percival immortal.
Aside from the myths of Arthur, the fate of the physical Grail is fragmentary. St Peter is said to have taken it to Rome in the 1st century AD, and St Lawrence followed that up by taking it with him to Spain, where, 1,000 years later, it had to be defended against the Islamic invasions from North Africa.
They may not have succeeded, as several tales from the time of the Crusades suggest that various groups of Crusaders claimed to have found it during their exploits. An emerald chalice taken at Caesarea Maritima on the coast of Israel was the subject of one claim, while the Knights Templar are said to have found it, along with the Ark of the Covenant, and umpteen other lost treasures, in the Temple Mount while they occupied Jerusalem.
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