The Lost Peking Man Fossils
Region — where it (roughly) is
Land & claims · BLM · live
The story
They were among the most important human fossils ever found — the bones of Homo erectus pekinensis, evidence of who we used to be — and in the chaos of December 1941, they vanished and were never seen again.
There were about 200 of them: fossils of Peking Man, crated up at the Peking Union Medical College on 4 December 1941 for safekeeping. The plan was to move them out of harm's way as war closed in on China. Days later, that plan collapsed. Pearl Harbor changed everything overnight, and the American Marine evacuation meant to carry the fossils to safety was intercepted. Somewhere in the disorder — on the road from Peking toward the port of Qinhuangdao, near what was then Camp Holcomb — the crates disappeared. The bones did not arrive. They have not surfaced since.
What makes the loss so painful is what was lost. These were not gold or jewels but something arguably more valuable: irreplaceable evidence of human origins, fossils whose scientific worth is beyond price and has been put at a nominal figure of around $150 million. You cannot dig up replacements. The originals are gone, and with them a piece of the record of our own species.
The search has never really stopped. The fossils have been investigated by the IVPP — the institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences — and pursued in modern times by the paleoanthropologist Lee Berger, while over the decades the FBI and CIA found themselves chasing leads that turned out to be scams, the fame of the missing bones drawing frauds the way treasure always does. Through all of it, the trail has gone cold. The crates left Peking. Somewhere short of the port, in the wreckage of December 1941, they slipped out of history — lost, and still lost.
Fact vs. legend: The crating of about 200 Homo erectus pekinensis fossils at Peking Union Medical College on 4 December 1941, and their loss after Pearl Harbor when the US Marine evacuation was intercepted, are documented, as is the later investigation by the IVPP and Lee Berger and the history of scam leads chased by the FBI and CIA. Where the fossils ended up is unknown.
Search area: The point marks the route from Peking toward Qinhuangdao port, near the former Camp Holcomb, where the fossils were lost in December 1941 — the last known stretch, not a confirmed resting place.