10 Incredible Things Mankind Has Managed To Lose

2. Peking Man

Michelangelo Merisi Da Caravaggio Nativity With St Francis And St Lawrence WGA04193
By Cicero Moraes (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

'Peking Man' is the collective term for a whole mess of fossilised bones dug up in China during the 1920s. They're up to half a million years old and provide an important source for studying the evolution of good ol' homo sapiens since they have all sorts of exciting features like kind of almost walking upright and showing evidence of using tools.

Paleontologists still get their jollies today arguing over what Peking Man means for studies of human evolution.

In 1941, while Beijing was under Japanese occupation, the Peking Man fossils were loaded into crates and taken away by a US Marine vehicle for transport by ship to America. If you've been following the pattern, you'll probably guess what happened next.

Peking Man probably never got to America. The fossils were either lost when the ship carrying them sank, sold on the quiet for Chinese medicine, or swiped by a light-fingered GI. They never showed up after being taken away in 1941, and they almost certainly never will.

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Ben Counter is a fantasy and science fiction writer, gaming enthusiast, wrestling fan and miniature painting guru. He was raised on Warhammer, Star Wars and 1980s cartoons that, in retrospect, were't that good. Whoever you are, he is nerdier than you.