Tourist attraction
Lantian Yuanren Relic Site
Fossil site where a skull and jawbone pushed back the record of early humans in East Asia.
0:00≈ 2 min
Location
0:00≈ 2 min
About this audio guide
This guide to the Lantian Yuanren Relic Site in Xi'an follows paleoanthropologist Wu Rukang, who spent his career defending a fossil his own government turned into propaganda, then quietly undermined that propaganda too. It traces the 1963 and 1964 digs at Chenjiawo and Gongwangling that turned up a jawbone and part of a skull, and how state media cast Lantian Man as unbroken proof of Chinese human origins, no detour through anywhere else. Wu instead argued the deeper root of human evolution lay in Africa, a position that cost him among his peers.
This audio guide was created using AI.