III On Second Visit to China He Stayed Twenty Years (1926-46), Discovered Peking Man"

From 1926 to 1946 Teilhard spent twenty years in China. Living in the China of the old days the conditions were very difficult; doing scientific work in the wilds was extremely trying…With extreme dedication and side-by-side with Chinese scientists who were then young and in order to awaken from their slumber the palaeo-vertebrates sleeping in the soil of China, so that they would voice the truth about the evolution of life and the history of the Earth, he zealously probed the mysteries of natures" (ibid.)

During these twenty years, the feet of Fr. Teilhard traversed both sides of the Great River, inside and outside the Great Wall. He not only went to the North-West plateau but also to the North-East, such an important place for fossils. But his greatest and most important merit was to excavate Peking Man together with Yang Zhongjian and Pei Wenzhong. He also made appeals abroad so as to collect funds for the large-scale excavations at Zhoukoudian.

"Peking Man" was discovered in the district of Zhoukoudian to the south of Beijing, in all seventeen or eighteen male and female skeletons, a large number of stone tools and traces of the use of "fire", together with signs of religion. "Peking Man" was the earliest ancestor of the Chinese, separated from today by about 600,000 to 1,000,000 years. According to what Fr. Teilhard emphasized to me in Tianjin, Peking Man already had traces of religious belief.

The scholarly writings of Fr. Teilhard are today still indispensable reference books for the study of vertebrate palaeontology and palaeoanthropology. "These scholarly articles provide extremely reliable material for understanding the mammals of the Mid-Pleistocene Age and the living conditions of 'Peking Man's" (ibid.)

Fr. Teilhard for a lengthy period undertook the work of consultant in Beijing to the Cenozoic laboratory of the Chinese Geological Survey Institute. During that time, in collaboration with Yang Zhongjian and Pei Wenzhong, he wrote quite a few articles on the geology of the Cenozoic Era in Northern China and the Zhoukoudian site.

"In 1942 he wrote in collaboration with others the volume Chinese Fossil Mammals. Up to now this work is an indispensable handbook for anyone studying the mammals of our country. Nowadays whenever one consults the writings of Teilhard, he would be deeply conscious that he was an early ‘trail-blazer’ in China for the investigation of vertebrates." (ibid.)