The Site of Peking Man is located at Zhoukoudian Village, 48 kilometers southwest of Beijing. It is screened by mountains on the northwest with fertile land lying to its southeast. West of the Village stands the Dragon Bone Hill, noted for its large quantities of Chinese medicine dragon bone.
Formed by limestone in the Ordovician period, the Hill rises 70 meters above the river. It is there that the fossils of the Chinese ape-man and their caves were found.
The Chinese ape-man, also known as Peking Man, lived some 690,000 years ago, in mid-period of Pleistocene epoch. The first complete skull of Peking Man was discovered in December 1929 by Pei Wenzhong, a Chinese anthropologist. Later, large-scale excavations were done on several occasions, amounting to 25,000 cubic meters of earthwork. Fossils of men and vertebrates were found. Of men fossils alone, a total of 152 pieces were uncovered of skulls, fragments of skulls, facial bones, lower jawbones and teeth belonging to over 40 individuals of different ages and sexes.
The findings of 100,000 pieces of stone implements, charred bones and ashes have proved that Peking Man knew how to use fire and was capable of making production tools. The Site of Peking Man provides not only a valuable scientific basis for the study of the origin and development of mankind but also an important base for research in the origin of human species.
The site was listed by the United Nations' Education, Science, and Culture Organization (UNESCO) as one of the world's heritages in 1987.