Catching up with China's past.

Taoism has served as a spiritual guide in China for 2,500 years. It was formulated by Lao Tsu, who also wrote that the ancient beginning experienced throught Tao Cannot be seen, heard or touched because it is "indefinable and beyond imagination."

But there are ancient beginnings in China of a far moral concrete--or bony, to be more exact--nature. They are the fossil remains of the forerunners of modern humans and apes, collected by Chinese scientists whose research has only recently broken through the language barrier to the West.

Paleontologists in the United States and Europe often become aware of major Chinese archaeological discoveries during their travels in Asia, by happening upon press reports and journal summaries or through the scientific grapevine. There have even been a few collaborations between American and Chinese scientists. Only in the last year, however, have extensive English translations of important Chinese research papers become widely available.

A ground-breaking series of articles translated by Dennis Etler of the University of California at Berkeley appears in the 1984 Yearbook of Physical Anthropology. The papers, first published in Chinese journals in the early 1980s, are written by a number of Chinese archaeologists who describe and analyze fossil hominolds -- creatures ancestral to apes and humans -- unearthed at the 8-million-year-old Lufeng site. Remains from "tens if not hundreds of individuals" have been found at Lufeng, says Etler.

More ancient beginnings and transitions, from Hominoids to modern humans, are illuminated in a book written by China's top archaeologists, titled Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology in the People's Republic of China (Academic Press, Inc., 1985). Anthropoligst John W. Olsen of the University of Arizona in Tucson translated the work into English and edited it with Wu Rukang of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing. Wu is considered the dean of Chinese archaeologists.

"Literally less than a tenth of 1 percent of the phenomenal amount of archaeology done since the end of the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s has been published in English even in summary," says Olsen. "The number and quality of Chinese fossils is very exciting."

The remains uncovered at Lufeng are a good example, he notes. Over the past decade, Lufeng has yielded the largest known collection of Ramapithecus and Sivapithecus bones, including several skulls, jaws and more than 1,000 teeth. Ramapithecus, which lived from about 8 million to 14 million years ago, is thought by some scientists to be an early human ancestor. Others say it is a smaller, female form of the ape genus Sivapithecus that lived at the same time and is often found in the same archaeological deposits.

Chinese scientists, and particularly Wu, appear to have flip-flopped on this argument over a relatively short period. In several early 1983 articles translated by Etler, Wu and colleagues contend that Ramapithecus and Sivapithecus are the female and male of one species, an ancestor of the orangutan. Later that year, in a NATURE article written with Charles Oxnard of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Wu says that an analysis of more than 1,000 teeth indicates that there were two distinct animals, with the smaller ramapiths evolving in a humanlike direction (SN: 1/21/84, p. 41). In Olsen's book, Wu and co-worker Xu Qinghua conclude that, until further analysis is completed, either of the two explanations is possible.

Oxnard, who stays in contact with Wu, says the Chinese scientist now supports the single-genus position, but interpretations of these fossils remain controversial. "Nearly everyone is in a state of flux on the nature of the Ramapithecus-Sivapithecus relationship," says Olsen.

Recent Chinese discoveries of Homo erectus fossils provoke less debate but are "extremely important," according to Olsen. Remains of his immediate ancestor of modern humans have been found at eight locations throughout North and South China, report Wu and Dong Xingren in Olsen's translation. The deposits range from 1 million to 200,000 years old.

H. Erectus fossils continue to be found at the famous Beijing Man, or Peking Man, site, which was first excavated in the 1920s, they add. The remains of more than 40 individuals from all age classes have been recovered from this one site. "This will allow us to study the evolution of Homo erectus in one area over several hundred thousand years," observes Olsen. There are important isolated H. erectus finds in the West, he points out -- notably the recent discovery of a 1.6-million-year-old adolescent in Africa (SN: 10/27/84, p. 260) -- but no population sample comparable to the Chinese collection has been unearthed.

Another important H. erectus find occurred late last year in northeastern China. Archaeologists from Beijing found the skull and partial skeleton of an individual who lived from 200,000 to 600,000 years ago. "China may well serve as a sort of laboratory for documenting the transition of Homo erectus to Homo sopiens," notes Etler. Late H. erectus and early H. sopiens deposits in China are often located in the same vicinity, he says.

For now, however, the Chinese literature suggests that H. erectus's jaw and tooth size varies much more than previously thought, explains Zhang Yinyun in Olsen's translation. He argues that four large primate molars found in central China may belong to an atypical population of H. erectus, not to the earlier ape-man Australopithecus, as some scientists have held.

If this is true, it provides further evidence that east Asia was not a separate "cradle of humanity," says Olsen. Instead, H. erectus may have migrated to China from Africa.

The data increasingly indicate, adds Yinyun, that in South China H. erectus shared the same environment and even came into contact with Gigantopithecus, an ancient primate that probably stood about 9 feet tall and weighed about 1,000 pounds. The most likely modern comparison to Gigantopithecus is the mountain gorilla, notes Olsen, which predominantly eats fruit.

Fossil evidence of Gigantopithecus is scanty, consisting of several hundred teeth and a few jaw fragments discovered in China, India and Pakistan. But in South China, and in a recently excavated deposit in North Vietnam, Gigantopithecus and H. erectus remains are found together in the same layers of earth. "It is possible, although unproven," writes Yinyun, "that intense competition between these two forms resulted in the demise of Gigantopithecus stemming from the superior abilities of H. erectus to exploit their shared environment through the manufacture and use of tools."

One advantage Chinese archaeologists have in locating the teeth of creatures such as Gigantopithecus is that these remains often turn up in the shops of apothecaries. The teeth are collected by peasants who quarry fossil-containing caves on what are called "dragon bone hills." They then trade them to druggists, who grind the paleontological treasures into a powder or paste long considered by Chinese folklore to have medicinal properties. This practice was recently banned by the Chinese government, says Olsen, but over the years scientists have had some success in recovering undamanged fossil teeth from druggists' shops and tracing the materials back to their original sites.

But even the an apothecary ace up their sleeves, Chinese archaeologists, like Western investigators, have spirited disagreements over the interpretation of the same sets of fossils, says Olsen. "Chinese science is not a monolithic entity, the product of a policy statement handed down from the Party," he explains. "It's characterized by a diversity of opinions and lively scientific debates."