No matter how much he thought about it, Chen Ran couldn't imagine that the skulls of Beijingers, who were making a lot of noise, would be in such a small storage room.
He had read a lot of information about the Pekingese skull. Not only had he seen it, Yang Long and the others had also discussed its whereabouts when they were in school.
Of course, their discussion at that time was purely a matter of idleness. Naturally, he would not have thought that one day he would see this thing with his own eyes.
According to the data, the skull fossils of Peking Man originally excavated by Jia Lanpo and others in Fei Wen have been kept at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, which was affiliated with the Rockefeller Foundation of the United States at that time.
After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937, the Japanese army invaded and occupied Beijing. However, because Union Hospital was an institution controlled by the United States at that time, the fossils of Beijingers were considered "safe" in this "safe".
By 1941, the relationship between Japan and the United States became increasingly tense. In order to prevent the "Peking Man" fossils from being snatched away by the Japanese invaders, there were three options: one was to transport the fossils to Chongqing, the rear area during the Anti-Japanese War; the other was to keep the fossils
Find a suitable place in Beijing to store it secretly; the third is to find a way to send it to the United States for temporary safekeeping. Later, it was decided to adopt the third option.
In early December 1941, the "Peking Man" fossils packed in two large wooden boxes were handed over to the U.S. Marines who were about to leave Beijing and return to the United States.
However, unfortunately, the Pearl Harbor incident broke out at this time. Japanese troops quickly dispatched and occupied relevant U.S. institutions in Beijing, Tianjin, Qinhuangdao and other places. The whereabouts of the Beijinger's skull have been unknown since then.
Since then, the search for the whereabouts of the skull of the Peking Man has not stopped. After the end of World War II, the United States, China, and Japan all searched for it. After the founding of New China, the new government also began to search. In the 1970s, the topic of searching for the skull of the Peking Man became popular again.
Then in 1998, academicians of the Academy of Sciences headed by Jia Lanpo began to search again. In 2005, a working committee was set up to search for the skull of Peking Man. However, so far, no skull has been found.
After searching for so many years, nothing has been found. There are more and more theories about its whereabouts. Some simply say that it was destroyed in the war, while others believe that the "Peking Man" skull is so precious that it cannot be destroyed in the war.
In the flames of war, there are others who have become vague because they have not been found after searching for so many years. I can’t explain clearly. After all, in the flames of war, if it is gold, silver, jewelry, calligraphy and painting, it may still be preserved, but a few dead people’s bones...
…Not every Japanese soldier has such a high level of knowledge, and at that time, information was poor. Let alone ordinary Japanese soldiers, even senior officers might not be able to recognize it as a Pekingese skull. Even if they did,
An officer who is not a scholar does not necessarily take it seriously.
There are several theories that it still exists, and some say it is in Japan.
First of all, this statement is that the train transporting fossils was robbed by the Japanese army in Tianjin.
After the Japanese army occupied Beijing, they conducted a rigorous search on the Union Hospital where the "Peking Man" fossils were stored. The fossils were probably eventually brought to Japan or even among the Japanese people.
Others say that the "Peking Man Skull" should have been lost on the "President Harrison", a transport ship from Peking to Qinhuangdao, and that the "President Harrison" was sunk midway because it was chased by Japanese ships.
Others say that the Pekingese skull was not sent to the President Harrison, but was secretly transported to the United States through other channels, and then similarly lost to the public. Later, some people even claimed to have seen photos of it.
The last theory is that it was on the "Awa Maru".
This statement about the "Awa Maru" is the most widely circulated and the one believed by the most people. For this reason, the government even organized professionals to salvage the "Awa Maru" sunken ship. Although the salvage results did not find "
"Peking Man Skull". However, the salvage workers found the small official seal and round inkstone belonging to the puppet Manchukuo political leader Zheng Yu.
Because the "Awa Maru" took a detour from Singapore and did not pass through northern China, some people think that the "Peking Man Skull" cannot be on the "Awa Maru", and the official seal from Zheng Yu's home is found here.
However, it can be inferred from the Heyuan Inkstone that the ship carried a large amount of treasures from northern China, which also shows that the "Awa Maru" is very likely to carry the "Peking Man Skull".
But obviously this statement is a bit unreliable. Just because the ship carried a large number of northern treasures, the "Peking Man Skull" must be among them?
Besides, 70% of the "Awa Maru" has been salvaged, and no trace of the "Peking Man skull" has been found yet? Not to mention the Peking Man skull, not even a single other bone fossil has been found.
As a result, people have become more and more controversial about the "Peking Man" skull on the "Awa Maru". However, some experts insist that this is because the previous salvage work was not complete enough. For this reason, they
They are even actively promoting the re-salvage of the Awa Maru.
Obviously, even if they salvage the Awa Maru again, they will not be able to find the "Peking Man" skull, because the Peking Man skull is not on the Awa Maru at all.
Although Chen Ran was puzzled that the Pekingese skull would appear in such a storage room, he also imagined many possibilities.
First of all, it is certain that the skull of the Peking Man did fall into the hands of the Japanese.
It is obviously difficult to say what happened after it fell into the hands of the Japanese. It is possible that the other party did not know what it was from the beginning to the end. It is possible that the other party knew it but was not interested and just took apart a skeleton fossil on it to see it.
Once I saw the "bones" look, I stopped looking at it.
This is not impossible. After all, it was only after the end of World War II that the Pekingese skulls were taken seriously. It is hard to say whether Japan knew about them at that time. Even if they knew about them, they might just regard them as a piece of art in the Forbidden City.
It is just an antique. After the occupation of Beijing, the rigorous search of the Union Hospital was not necessarily to find the skull of the Peking Man. It cannot be ruled out that it was the reason imposed by some experts in order to make people believe their guesses.
As for why it finally fell into the hands of the owner of this storage room, it is obviously related to the hobby of the owner of this storage room. Judging from the fossils collected by the other party in the room, even if the other party is not an expert in this field, he still has this hobby.
who.
Maybe it was because of this that someone saw that it contained fossils and gave it to him. Of course, it could also be that he found it in a warehouse and saw that it contained fossils and took it for himself.
.
The only thing that made Chen Ran a little confused was why the owner of the storage room didn't take it apart to take a look. Only the two bones on top of the two boxes of fossils had been taken apart, and the others were completely preserved. It is said that the other person was interested in this area.
If you know that the skull of Peking Man is in the box, then he will open it and take a look at it anyway.
From this point, it undoubtedly shows that the other party probably did not know that the skull of Peking Man was inside, and just regarded it as an ordinary fossil, and then forgot about it, or that something unexpected happened before the other party could even look at it.
.
There may be too much that happened in the meantime. If there are no written records, obviously no one can tell what happened, but the general main line can undoubtedly be imagined.
…
"What is this?"
Seeing that Chen Ran was so interested in a skull, Officer Yuan who was standing aside couldn't help but ask. Fortunately, there were many fossils of animals placed in the storage room that let her know that this skull should be the same.
Fossils, otherwise seeing how precious Chen Ran is to a skull, she would probably have to wonder if Chen Ran had a special hobby even if she didn't think about it.
Chen Ran was stunned by her question, and then he smiled and said: "Of course it's a good thing. Do you know the skull of Peking Man? This is, maybe it is our ancestor who lived thousands of years ago."
Officer Yuan was surprised, but not too surprised. Obviously, she did not know the meaning of the Pekingese skull.
Chen Ran was not too entangled in the reason why the Pekingese skull was placed in such a storage room. These issues should be left to the experts and scholars to study. I believe they will be happy to study this issue and can also provide
You gave a lot of arguments and evidence.
Chen Ran didn't look at the other skulls anymore. He opened this skull because he really couldn't believe it and wanted to see it with his own eyes. In fact, there was no difference at all between using his own powers to look at it and seeing it with his own eyes. Even
Just look more carefully.
After wrapping the skull with several layers of cotton cloth and putting it in the box, Chen Ran was thinking about how to deal with it.
It's not that he wants to keep it for himself. If it were other treasures, he might have this idea, but he has no such idea at all for this kind of thing. After all, this thing is mainly used for research, so he can keep it by himself.
It's too exposed to the sun.
What Chen Ran was thinking about was how to bring the things back. Ordinarily, he was the only one who knew about this underground fortress. He could just leave the things here while he contacted someone and waited for someone to be sent to receive them, but in this way
, he obviously can't rest assured, who knows whether the news will be leaked and someone will take it away in advance. He doesn't believe it if there is no foreign spy in the country, and once the other party learns the news, he will definitely rob it at all costs.
, so he didn’t even think about leaving things here.
The other fossils in the storage room can be left here for now, but he must take away the box containing the skull. In short, since it was discovered by him, it cannot be lost from his hands.
"Turn out the lights."
After discovering the skull of Peking Man, Chen Ran was no longer interested in other fossils. He picked up the two boxes and planned to leave. When he left, he saw that the lamps he had turned on were still on, so he reported them to Officer Yuan.
After turning it off, he greeted the giant snake waiting at the door and returned to the cave entrance from the original path, and then emerged from the cave entrance and out of the mountain crevice.
When he drilled out of the cave, Chen Ran temporarily blocked the cave entrance, and he also re-covered the entrance to the mountain crevice to prevent anyone from accidentally entering the fortress before it was sealed.
After looking at it, he felt that there was no problem, so he didn't say much, and let the giant snake lead the way, with the two of them following behind. What Chen Ran didn't expect was that they met several people not far after they walked out.
Chen Ran checked and found that the other party was the soldiers practicing in the wild that he and Officer Yuan accidentally bumped into when they entered the mountain before.
At that time, the other party knew that someone had broken in and set up a dragnet to search. However, they did not expect that they would find this place.
There were seven or eight people on the other side. They were boiling water and joking around the fire. He spotted them and after thinking about it, Chen Ran stopped hiding. Not only did he not hide, he walked directly towards them.
