In 1929, a nearly complete skull of 'Homo erectus pekinensis' was discovered in a cave in southwest Peking, as the Chinese capital was then known. Peking Man became a household name as the earliest human sub-species discovered in China. Origins Explained: The 500,000 year old skull was among the earliest human remains ever uncovered, and it helped to convince some researchers that humanity first evolved in Asia.

The Peking Man fossils are a set of 200 Homo erectus fossils excavated during the 1920s and 1930s. During World War II, Chinese authorities packed up the fossils to send them to the United States for safekeeping. The bones were supposed to be transported to a US Marine base and then shipped off. Instead, the fossils vanished, and no one really knows what happened to them. A new investigation suggests that the bones may be buried beneath a parking lot, but they have still not been located as of this date.

The importance of Peking Man has faded over the years. Although modern dating methods date the fossil even earlier — at up to 780,000 years old — the specimen has been eclipsed by discoveries in Africa, that have yielded much older remains of ancient human relatives. Such finds have cemented Africa's status as the cradle of humanity — the place from which modern humans and their predecessors spread around the globe — and relegated Asia to an evolutionary end.

But the tale of 'Peking Man' has haunted generations of researchers, who have struggled to understand its relationship to modern humans. They wonder whether the descendants of 'Peking Man', and fellow members of the species Homo erectus, died out or evolved into a more modern species.

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