The Mystery Of The Two-Million-Year-Old Human Remains | The Mystery Of Our Ancestors | Odyssey

if you love ancient history then this is the channel for you history hit tv it's like netflix but dedicated just to ad-free history documentaries including a huge library of ancient history content from the ninth legion to boudicca to the first britain simply check out the details in the description below and make sure you use code odyssey on sign up [Music] it's 1921 prominent american paleontologist walter granger is braving the great yangtze river to visit a remote area of southern china [Music] his destination is wushan mountain in the three gorgeous region of sichuan province [Music] granger's expedition will mark the start of one of the most significant stories in world archaeology sixty years later in 1984 chinese archaeologists juan wangbo also comes to the three gorges to visit wushan mountain for the next 20 years he'll make an annual pilgrimage to the location and from 2003 french archaeologist erica boureta starts commuting from paris to wushan each autumn so just what is attracting these eminent scientists to this spot the answer is known as dragon bone not relics from a mythical beast but rather a quest to unravel the secrets of a very real mystery that has remained buried in the dust for two million years a mystery of our remote ancestors [Music] [Applause] [Music] so what is dragonbone and what is its connection to human beings tales about dragons are bound in chinese folklore and culture at locations where archaeologists discovered traces of ancient ancestors scholars started to name them with words related to dragons today [Music] whatever its origin and use it is dragonbone that leads to a major archaeological discovery at the end of the 19th century in 1899 wang yirong a government official of the qing dynasty visits chiang jin for treatment his hobby is collecting metal and stone he also has a habit of studying medicinal materials bought from local medicine shops one day he discovers some mysterious carved symbols on the so-called dragon bones and immediately sends someone to buy all the dragon bones he can find similar symbols which he names as carved writing of the yin dynasty are present on most of these bones later a chinese paleography expert re-describes the symbols a script from the shang dynasty called carapace bone script they are the earliest chinese characters discovered to date it is now in 1921 that the american paleontologist walter granger comes to the wushan mountain area in the three gorges to seek out dragon bone fossils he visits the local medicine shops and finds examples of exactly what he's looking for encouraged he establishes a permanent base and employs villagers to dig up more of the bones five years later he leaves with literally thousands of dragon bone fossils from the region so the foreigners surprising interest in old bones generates a gold rush-like excitement amongst the locals amongst them is mujifu a doctor from nearby longping village um [Music] foreign large quantities of dragon bone are sold to local medicine shops and other outlets what few realize is that they are actually destroying valuable ancient relics and remains meanwhile at another chinese location the 1930s see a dramatic find that becomes known as peaking man the discovery shocks the world as these skulls reveal that peking man lived at least five hundred thousand years ago [Music] the skulls disappear when the japanese army captured them during world war ii but are still considered authentic by domestic and foreign archaeologists since a number of experts are known to have examined them at the time prominent archaeologists believe that peking man is the earliest ancestor of the chinese and eastern asian peoples and the place where peaking man was discovered is named the dragonbone mountain across the world in the east africa rift valley another find stuns the archaeological world discovered in 1974 the skeleton known as lucy dates back a staggering 3.2 million years from the analysis of her fossils international archaeologists are unanimous that she is the earliest known ancestor of mankind ten years later in 1984 a new group arrives at long ping village in search of dragonbone it's an archaeological team consisting of experts in vertebrate paleontology and human paleo anthropology from the chinese academy of sciences and chongqing museum of natural history huang wanbo is the team leader [Music] by this time the dragon bones around long ping have been pillaged by local villagers for nearly 20 years so what remains for huang [Music] [Music] huang and his team find nothing in this deep and legendary cave villager mujifu however provides a clue [Music] [Music] the three gorges of today came into being about 500 000 years ago before that there were no high mountains nor big rivers or valleys but rather an environment of lakes and forests with a warm [Music] [Music] representatives from the one county museum and the wushan relics protection station joined the team in the autumn of 1985 and a major excavation gets underway [Music] this is the formal excavation site at long guppo first the team members clean up the work area then start to dig for fossils following a meticulous plan they judge and classify any fossils collected by the workers at break time [Music] but it is huang himself who makes the first breakthrough with a tooth a bit larger than a broad bean it looks like a pig's tooth but the shape of the top and the marks and growth line on the tooth's surface are quite different from that of a pig after thorough scrutiny they decide it's the tooth of a quadrumana or four-handed primate in fact it's the tooth of a giant ape for huang this opens up dramatic new possibilities if early human fossils are found the small slope at wushan may well rewrite the history of human evolution the very same day of the giant ape tooth discovery huang revisits the work site alone water [Music] foreign the team members can barely contain themselves from the abrasion degree of the tooth face and the shape features of the gum a preliminary conclusion is drawn that the owner was an old female the team named it the wushan old lady [Music] spurred on by the great significance of the discovery the following october the combined archaeological team returns to long guppo once more including archaeologists and workers the team now consists of 30 members [Music] for archaeologists patience and meticulous excavation are essential but good luck is also very important [Music] huang wan bo is a lucky dog that's why he enjoys so many archaeological discoveries a team member jokes the question is will huang's luck hold the answer comes almost immediately when one of the workers unearths a small fossil in the seventh layer [Music] he looks at it for a while and then passes it to a researcher foreign [Music] based on the degree of abrasion and the shape features this time the archaeologists judge it to be the tooth of a young female and name it the wushan maiden through deductive research on the length of mandible and tooth fossils discovered in the excavations they describe it as the wuxan pythaganthrope [Music] a number of early human being sites have already been discovered in different areas of china so the key question for the archaeologists now is how far back the wushan pithacanthrope is from our era how can they calculate its age and is it human or just ape [Music] the archaeologists can estimate the relative date of the fossils by the condition of the stratum in which a fossil is discovered [Music] so how will the archaeologists establish a conclusive date for the wushan pithacanthrope they'll start with electron spin resonance or esr tests yes good [Music] at a laboratory of the chinese academy of sciences researchers carry out a paleomagnetism test on the 100 soil samples taken from longupole the results reveal their age to be approximately two million and forty thousand years this conclusion however doesn't satisfy everyone including paleo anthropologist russell sierchon from iowa state university in the usa the american scholar casting doubt on the date of the wushan pithacanthrope comes to long guppo himself and collects mammal fossils from the fifth stratum including the micro species giant panda and the elephant-like cynomastodon then sierchon returns home with both his samples and the mystery [Music] in america with the help of an advanced dating method he estimates that the fossils from the fifth stratum are over one million years old because the wushan pithicanthrope fossil is from the eighth stratum he concludes it must be considerably older finally in 1995 russel sierchon and chinese archaeologists collaborate on a treatise entitled early homo and associated artifacts from asia which is published in the authoritative british archaeology magazine nature a new [Music] [Music] from the soil layer in this mysterious slope archaeologists discover 116 species and over 5 000 ancient mammal fossils if we could travel back in time and view the area as it was two million years ago we might spot species of elephant and rhinoceros maybe monkeys leaping around in the forest canopy or a sabre-toothed cat stalking its prey the dating results of the longupost stratum released by the chinese and foreign archaeologists eventually eliminate doubts about the wushan pithacanthrope's age the consensus is that the tooth owner lived approximately two million and forty thousand years ago but huang still faces another major question being raised in chinese and overseas archaeology circles from the mandible and three tooth fossils he can determine that they belong to a kind of high-level quadromana but can he prove that they were human beings not just apes if he can then the history of human origins may need to be rewritten academics are divided on the issue also to download [Applause] if a skull or even limb fossils of the same time period as the wushan pithacanthrope can be discovered in the wushan area then the human or ape debate can finally be resolved [Music] archaeologists discover plenty of homos fossils and a small quantity of skulls [Music] but there's one other thing that can really settle the issue foreign [Music] previous evidence shows that human ancestors were capable of making tools two million years ago if a stone artifact is discovered at the wushan excavation the old lady and the wushan maiden may be proven to be the chinese people's remote ancestors the team focuses on the limestone terrains at longgupo but from 1985 to 1988 apart from various species of animal fossils four years of hard work only yields up two examples of unidentified spotted stones the key question is are they artifacts specialists call this a smashing stone hammer made of quartz [Music] this one a protruding blade chopper made of andesite traces on them suggest that they were not formed naturally but by human force [Music] traditionally homo used mainly gravel quartz and lava to make their stone artifacts as these stones could kill wild animals without being broken or losing their sharpness [Music] buoyed by their success the archaeologists now decide to change their excavation method concentrating on the search for stone artifacts and it pays off with a large number of exciting new finds they're sent to eminent professor gia lanpo for detailed analysis [Music] famous french archaeologist professor eve kopa who had helped with the excavation of lucy in africa is also surprised by the stone artifacts discovered at longupole [Music] a [Music] [Music] one day in october 1998 while the team members are still searching for stone artifacts a different kind of fine adds another key piece of evidence it's a relatively ordinary deer bone but what is interesting is that it's been broken into three pieces the fact that the bones joined together perfectly poses a question what broke them natural [Music] foreign [Music] foreign foreign [Music] five years on and 2003 sees a season with maple leaves dying much of the longupo region red new members joined the combined archaeological team prominent french archaeologist professor eric boeda of the university paris ex-nontair suggests new methods for the excavation he's convinced the stone artifacts were made by primitive humans fascinated french joint team arrives at the small slope that is attracting all the attention in world archaeological circles it's now 19 years since huang first came to long guppo and he's keen to redouble his efforts to resolve the mystery hoping for a breakthrough this time his team changes the former pit area from two meters by two meters into four one meter by one meter pits and carry out a more meticulous excavation following procedures suggested by the french archaeologists almost immediately they are stopped in their tracks by a new discovery it's an area with a number of animal limb bones arranged in an unnaturally ordered and overlapping fashion after careful analysis they discover the finds are falling and battling bone fossils of large herbivorous animals including elephants cattle and deer importantly the fossils have smooth bone surfaces without any bite traces from carnivorous animals this unusual collection astonishes the archaeologists [Music] so why are the bones concentrated and buried on such a large scale why are there only limb bones where are their vertebras ribs pelvis feet bones and skulls did they die naturally or drown in the river or were they killed by carnivores or human beings that could already make artifacts [Music] [Music] at the excavation site besides a large quantity of limb bones of herbivorous animals archaeologists also discover some stone artifacts and flakes mingled in with these bones significantly there are distinct smashing traces in some of the deer bones [Music] and the stone artifacts and limbs are from the same time and place [Music] collectively the fines enable the archaeologists to build up a picture of the environment that wushan homo could have inhabited [Music] it was a forested area less mountainous than today [Music] prehistoric human beings usually ambushed their prey using spears to stab the animals and then tracking them as they tried to escape [Music] when the prey was weak enough they'd finish it up [Music] the animals would have lived below the cave at longgupo with the prehistoric humans venturing out to hunt or collect carcasses to bring back to their shelter [Music] there's a woman and yes after over 20 years of excavation at the long post site fossils of homo giant ape and 120 kinds of ancient vertebrate have now been unearthed many of the fossils leave clues to the times they lived and died in [Music] the archaeologists research european discoveries and come up with the following scenario [Music] in traditional hunter-gatherer society the males were usually in charge of hunting large animals whilst the females concentrated on picking plants and hunting the smaller animals after obtaining quantities of food the females learned to store it back at their caves a system of divided labor gradually developed according to the fossils discovered in the cave at longgupo archaeologists judged that the area was not only a beautiful shangri-la-like location but also a life-and-death arena saber-toothed cats would have been patrolling the area and there were a large number of hyena packs these were natural enemies of human beings usually attacking the wushan pythacanthropus in their caves the hyena was a fierce animal that all ancient humans must have feared today hyena packs still live on the plains of the east african great rift valley wolf-sized animals they are one of the fiercest carnivores in the world feared even by lions at longupo the prehistoric human beings were only between one and one and a half meters in height survival would have been impossible if they hadn't developed stone artifacts and weapons although these stone artifacts may seem rudimentary in the right hands they became lethal weapons [Music] today it is hard to be certain of their hunting system but we do know that thinking and cooperation is very important for hunting and that is a stepping stone to the birth of ideology and culture the stone artifacts of longupo exhibit different features from those of the east african great rift valley representing a unique early stone artifact industry and culture as a result the owner of these three teeth can be described as wushan homo or man two million years ago the wushan pithacanthropes led a primitive life but their development easily surpassed that of animals so the existence and multiplication of the wushan homo proves that there were human beings in east asia more than two million years ago probably the ancestors of homo erectus in china which english foreign b [Music] however some doubts still remain about this great discovery because of the discontinuity of the archaeological process anthropologists are still to work out exactly why the wushan homo left this place did their caves collapse the highness break in or was there a sudden climate deterioration into an ice age and where did they go [Music] like the discovery of the human ancestor lucy in east africa the wushan old lady and the wushan maiden give us a chance to imagine their lives but questions remain unanswered how long did they live how many children did they have when and how did they die [Music] so can the chinese assume they originated in the three gorges of the yangtze river over two million years ago or are they descended from a more recent migration from africa today an international scientific debate continues to rage over the issue [Music] for now the dragon bones of longupo provide a tantalizing glimpse into an ancient past that is our collective heritage [Music] you

Channel: Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries

Views: 446,082

Keywords: ancient history, classical history, ancient civilisations, classical antiquity, history documentary, classical documentary, mystery of our ancestor, prehistoric documentary, neolithic documentary, ancient history documentary, ancient aliens, archaeological discoveries, history channel

Id: hP75JnDwZ-o

Length: 47min 14sec (2834 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 15 2021