PRIMITIVE MAN IN CHINA SMITH 539 



my purpose here is only to make it clear that my discovery of these teeth 

 (which are of Quatermiry age) should be regarded as decidedly interesting 

 but not of epoch-making importance. 



Dr. Davidson Black, however, took a different view of the signifi- 

 cance of the teeth. To him they were definitely of epoch-making 

 importance. Moreover, he had the courage to act upon his convic- 

 tion. He had been jDrofoundly influenced by the memoir published 

 in 1915 by the late Prof. W. D. Matthew, F. R. S., " Climate and 

 Evolution." (Ann. New York Acad. Sc, vol. 24, 171.) In fact, 

 the possibility (suggested by Doctor Matthew's argument) of the 

 discovery of primitive man in China decided Dr. Davidson Black 

 to accept the invitation, which he received after the war, to join 

 the staff of the Anatomy Department in the Peking Union Medical 

 College. The reality of Doctor Black's conviction was Imown to me, 

 not only by statements in his private letters, but also in the memoir 

 which he published in 1925 entitled "Asia and the Dispersal of Pri- 

 mates," (Bull. Geol. Soc. China, vol. 4, no. 2, p. 133.) Hence when, 

 a year later. Doctor Zdansky found human teeth in the early Pleis- 

 tocene or, as was then thought, late Pliocene, beds, Dr. Davidson 

 Black regarded this as a definite realization of the aim which he had 

 set before him several years before, and naturally regarded the 

 discovery as truly epoch-making. 



In a communication which, at the request of Doctor Andersson, he 

 made at the scientific meeting held in Peking on October 22, 1926, 

 he emphasized these considerations, and was able to interest Dr. 

 Henry Houghton, then director of the Peking Union Medical Col- 

 lege, and Edwin Embree, then secretary of the Rockefeller founda- 

 tion, to support an appeal for financial help to carry on the search at 

 Chou Kou Tien. The late Dr. Richard Pearce, at that time director 

 of the medical division of the Rockefeller Foundation, so far appre- 

 ciated the significance of the possibilities that he induced the Founda- 

 tion to make an appropriation for two years' work on the site. 



This project met with immediate success, for on October 16, 1927, 

 Dr. Birger Bohlin found a human lower molar tooth in the deposit 

 at Chou Kou Tien, where Doctor Zdansky found the teeth reported 

 on October 22, 1926. On December 2, 1927, Dr. Davidson Black an- 

 nounced to the Geological Society of China this important discov- 

 ery and his courageous decision to use it as evidence for the creation 

 of a new genus and species of the human family. 



On the suggestion of Dr. A. W. Grabau, professor of paleontology 

 in the National University of Peking, he called it Sinanthro'pus 

 pekinensis. The age of the deposits in which the fossils were found 

 was thought at this time to be Upper Pliocene; but a more careful 



