Wu Xinzhi (吴新智) was born in Hefei, Anhui Province, China on 2 June 1928, the son of Wu Dingxiang and Cai Xianzhen (she later changed her name to Cai Xian). Wu’s father worked as a cashier at the Shanghai Commercial Savings Bank, and over the course of his career he was employed in branches of the bank in various cities. He was eventually transferred to the Jinan Daguanyuan branch of the People’s Bank of China in 1949 where he worked until his death in 1955. Wu’s grandfather, Wu Daofu, was a scholar and teacher. A private tutor hired by his relatives taught Wu when he was a young child. He entered the Hepingqiao Elementary School in 1935 and was a pupil there until advancing Japanese forces approaching Hefei forced the family to leave the town in 1938. With the Japanese invasion of China, Wu’s family moved to Leshan, in Sichuan Province. The family was still not safe, however, and their house was destroyed during a Japanese bombing raid in August 1939. Fortunately, all the members of the family were safe.

Wu was admitted to Lejia High School in 1941, where his teachers included Zhang Yuanda (a lecturer in mathematics at Wuhan University), Yu Xianjue (who went on to become head of the Department of Biology at Wuhan University after the war), Yang Renjian (a professor of history at Wuhan University), and other lecturers and professors from Wuhan University. Wuhan University had been forced to move to Leshan after the Japanese invasion of China and university personnel had helped to establish primary and secondary schools in the city. Wu graduated from Lejia High School in 1946, but he had taken advantage of the opportunity to take some university classes prior to graduation. Wu’s father was transferred to Shanghai during the summer of 1946, and the move provided Wu with the opportunity to enter the School of Medicine at Tongji University, in Shanghai. He was motivated to study medicine because of his mother’s poor health throughout his childhood. Since some classes at the university were taught in German, Wu found himself needing to learn German; however, in 1947 he transferred to Shanghai Medical College, where all of the courses were taught in English.

This was a time of turmoil in China as the communist forces of Mao Zedong consolidated their power over the country. On 25 May 1949, while he was a student at Shanghai Medical College, the People’s Liberation Army arrived in Shanghai and Wu joined the People’s Security Team (人民保安队) (it was renamed the Shanghai Worker’s Patrol 上海工人纠察队 on 28 May 1949). Because of growing anti-USA sentiment, the courses at Shanghai Medical College, which previously had been taught in English, were now being taught only in Chinese beginning in 1950. For several months during 1950, Wu worked with soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army to try to resolve an outbreak of schistosomiasis in the city. Wu graduated from Shanghai Medical College in May 1953 and that same year he married Jiang Jingyi, who was a microbiology student. From 1952 to September 1953, Wu completed an advanced training program for teachers of human anatomy at Dalian Medical College. This program was sponsored by the Ministry of Public Health of the Chinese Central Government. Wu then worked as a teaching assistant in the Department of Anatomy at Dalian Medical College from 1953 to 1957.

During this period, Wu began to study the Russian language, and he assisted in the translation of a Russian book on how to reconstruct the facial features of human skulls. It was also during his time at Dalian Medical College that Wu met paleoanthropologist Wu Rukang, who encouraged him to study paleoanthropology. This began a long and fruitful relationship between the two men. Wu found the offer appealing, and from 1957 to 1961 he was engaged in graduate studies in paleoanthropology in the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences working under Wu Rukang. As part of these studies, he attended the geology class of Gao Ping at the Beijing Institute of Geology, but in the middle of the semester the course was suspended when Gao Ping was removed from his position because of his political opinions. Wu too was briefly caught up in the political upheavals of the time, but he was able to overcome concerns about his political views. However, as a result of this experience, he subsequently kept a low political profile. In 1957, Wu assisted Jia Lanpo with new excavations at Zhoukoudian, where excavations during the 1920s and 1930s had unearthed the “Peking Man” Homo erectus fossils along with fossils of early Homo sapiens. During this period, Wu also collaborated with Wu Rukang in reconstructing the facial physiognomy of one of the female Chinese Homo erectus specimens in the collection of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology and published several papers on the racial characteristics of the Homo sapiens fossils from Zhoukoudian.

Wu conducted his dissertation research on human bones collected by Yin Da, the deputy director of the Institute of Archaeology (Chinese Academy of Sciences), from the Banpo Neolithic village. This site was located in the Yellow River Valley, near Xi’an, in Shaanxi Province. The bones were transferred to the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing and Wu Rukang assigned Wu to study them, working as the assistant to Yan Di, and they published a paper on the Banpo human skeletons in 1960. After completing work on the Banpo skeletons, Wu began to study the Homo sapiens fossils originally found in the Upper Cave at Zhoukoudian in 1933 for his thesis (Wu 1961a; 1961b). In 1960, Wu participated in excavations in Guangxi led by the renowned geologist Pei Wenzhong, who had led the original excavations at Zhoukoudian in the 1930s. Wu then joined the excavations of caves in Guangxi in 1961 where giant ape fossils had been found. From 1961 to 1963, Wu participated in several expeditions and excavations including one led by Jia Lanpo to several sites in Shanxi Province, including the Paleolithic site of Dingcun. He was part of the team that conducted excavations at Gongwangling, Lantian, in Shaanxi Province, during 1964 and 1965 where a partial Homo erectus cranium was found. At the request of the Chinese government, Wu Rukang and Wu Xinzhi led an expedition in 1962, under the auspices of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to investigate reports from local people about “savages” seen in the forest in Xishuangbanna, in Yunnan Province. Wang Song, of the Beijing Zoological Institute, and Pan Qinghua, director of the Kunming Institute of Zoology, were also members of this expedition. They soon discovered that the “savages” were actually a group of gibbons. The team was able to capture and dissect some of the gibbons at Xishuangbanna, which led to the discovery that the gibbons living in this region differed from gibbons living in Indonesia.

Wu completed his graduate degree in 1961 and immediately joined the staff of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. After the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Cenozoic Research Laboratory (which had been established in 1929 as part of the research at Zhoukoudian) was reorganized, and in 1953 it was renamed the Laboratory of Vertebrate Paleontology (古脊椎动物研究室) and was affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 1960, the Laboratory was renamed the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (古脊椎动物与古人类研究所), and it became one of the leading scientific institutions in China. Wu spent his entire career at the IVPP, first as an assistant research professor, then as associate research professor, senior professor, distinguished professor and finally as its deputy director from 1985 to 1989. During his early years at the IVPP, Wu worked closely with Wu Rukang and they coauthored a book on methods for making anthropological measurements of the human skeleton (Wu and Wu 1965). Wu also participated in many excavations over the course of his career. In 1966 he was part of a team that found a Late Pleistocene human tooth during excavations at Xintai, in Shandong Province.

Normal life in China began to be seriously disrupted with the advent of the Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966 and only ended in 1976. When Wu returned to Beijing from the field excavations in Shandong Province, he found a radically changed situation at the IVPP. During the Cultural Revolution, the IVPP was taken over by workers of the Number One National Cotton Factory. They marginalized, humiliated, and sometimes physically abused the scientists at the institute and work essentially ceased at the IVPP until the Cultural Revolution came to an end. Shortly after Wu returned to Beijing in 1966, he joined the “Xiaoyao faction” (逍遥派). These were people who did not belong to any mass organization, who did not engage in any factional struggle, and who stayed away from radical movements. In April 1969, Wu accompanied the first batch of cadres from the IVPP who went to the “May 7th Cadre School” in Shayang, Hubei Province, to grow cotton and wheat. The May 7th Cadre School derived from a directive given by Mao Zedong on 7 May 1966 to the effect that all industries across the country must be established as “a large school.” Members would engage in political, military, and cultural studies and would contribute to agricultural production and work in factories to produced needed products. Wu became ill in 1970, however, and he returned to Beijing. Wu has written that he did not face any criticism or difficulties during the Cultural Revolution, and when it came to an end in 1976, normal work gradually resumed at the IVPP.

With the end of the Cultural Revolution, Wu engaged in a variety of research projects. He participated in new excavations undertaken by the IVPP at Dingcun, in Shanxi Province, in 1976 where the team found the right parietal bone of a child. During a visit to Tanzania in 1977, Wu examined a skull discovered along the shore of Lake Ndutu in 1973 that South African paleoanthropologist Ronald Clarke identified as resembling Homo erectus, but Wu thought the skull more closely resembled early Homo sapiens. And developing out of his previous experience studying the gibbons in Xishuangbanna, Wu collaborated on a book on the anatomy of gibbons titled 长臂猿解剖 [Gibbon Anatomy] (Wu, Ye, and Lin 1978). Chen Dezhen and Wu Xinzhi undertook a study of the human skeletons that had been unearthed at Shigu, in Henan Province, by a research team from the Institute of Culture Relics of Henan Province between October 1978 and December 1980. These skeletons consisted of 28 individuals excavated from Pre-Yangshao graves and an additional 16 individuals excavated from Yangshao graves. Chen and Wu observed that there was morphological continuity in the skeletons over these two periods (Chen and Wu 1985). But increasingly Wu was also undertaking broad surveys of the Chinese hominid fossil record. He had already investigated the “racial types” present in the human fossils found in the Upper Cave site at Zhoukoudian as a student in 1961, but now he extended this work to include morphological comparisons of hominid fossils from across China. Based on a conference paper they presented at the IVPP in 1976, Wu Xinzhi and Zhang Yinyun (1978) explored the common morphological features observed in Middle Pleistocene human fossils from Zhoukoudian, Maba, Tongzi, Dingcun, Changyang, and the late Pleistocene human fossils from Liujiang and Shandingdong. This research represents the first steps toward what would later be called the Multiregional Hypothesis.

A significant component of Wu’s career and an influential element contributing to his views about human evolution in Asia was the Dali Man specimen. This was a nearly complete cranium discovered in a loess terrace near Jiefang Village, Dali County, Shaanxi Province in 1978. A number of small stone artifacts, primarily scrapers, were also recovered at the site. Wu Xinzhi and You Yuzhu (1979) conducted preliminary study of the site and Wu (1981) produced a detailed description of the cranium. The cranium has been dated to about 250,000 years ago. In the course of his examination of the fossil and comparing it with other hominid fossils, Wu (1981, 1989) found that many of the morphological features and the measurements of the Dali cranium were intermediate between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. Its craniofacial anatomy and vault shape differed from the crania of European Neandertals and earlier European hominids such as the hominid fossils from Petralona, in Greece, and Atapeurca, in Spain. As a result, Wu argued that the Dali specimen represented either archaic Homo sapiens or Homo erectus. Wu and anthropologist Sheela Athreya, of Texas A&M University, later determined that the Dali cranium has a bigger braincase, a shorter face and a lower cheekbone than most Homo heidelbergensis specimens from Europe and Africa, suggesting that the Dali specimen was more advanced (Wu and Athreya 2013). Wu devoted much of his career to studying the Dali specimen, which culminated in the publication of a monograph-length article “Middle Pleistocene Human Skull from Dali, China” (Wu 2020). Wu conducted a comprehensive study comparing the Dali cranium with other hominid fossils from the Middle Pleistocene and later periods (Wu 2014; 2020; Athreya and Wu 2017). Wu concluded that the Dali fossil lies closer to early modern humans than it does to Homo erectus or the Middle Pleistocene humans of Europe and Africa. Wu argued that the Dali cranium displays a mosaic of primitive and progressive features with characteristics that suggest a close relationship of the Dali specimen with hominid populations of East Asia. Wu suggested that the Dali cranium probably represents a population different from Homo erectus, since it displays a mosaic of features combining aspects of Homo erectus specimens from China and Middle Pleistocene hominids found in Europe and Africa, as well as some modern human features. Thus, Wu concluded that the Dali cranium cannot be assigned to either Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis. Furthermore, Wu believed that the hominid population represented by the Dali cranium made a greater contribution to the formation of the early modern human population of China than did the Homo erectus population of China or the Middle Pleistocene hominids of Africa.

Along with his investigation of the Dali cranium, Wu is best known for his contributions to the Multiregional Hypothesis. Beginning during the early years of his career, Wu was interested in the patterns of human evolution in China. The German paleoanthropologist Franz Weidenreich, who served as the director of the Cenozoic Research Laboratory in Beijing from 1935 until 1938, had already observed regional continuity in the fossil record and promoted a polycentric theory of human evolution during the 1940s (see Wolpoff and Caspari 1997, ch. 7). According to Weidenreich, populations of early Homo living throughout the Old World in relative geographical separation from one another evolved into modern humans, but because these populations were geographically separated racial variations had emerged. As a result, there was morphological continuity through time in any given geographical region, but Weidenreich was adamant that these populations did not evolve in complete isolation from one another because there was always interbreeding between these populations, which ensured that these geographical populations still belonged to the same species. In the course of his studies of hominid fossils from China, Wu had also observed a continuity over time in the morphological features of hominids in China. Using large quantities of morphological evidence from Chinese hominid fossils, Wu observed that the development of various characteristics of the human body in different regions and periods of evolution were unequal, indicating that there is a morphological mosaic between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, suggesting a continuity between the two species rather than clear boundaries. In other words, Homo erectus did not go extinct but instead evolved into Homo sapiens in China.

Milford Wolpoff, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Michigan, visited the collections of the IVPP in 1979. He was one of the first American paleoanthropologists to visit China since the establishment of the People’s Republic and during this visit he met Wu. During their conversations, Wu expressed his ideas about the regional continuity in hominid fossils from China. Wu visited the United States in 1980 and again in 1983 when he was a visiting scholar in New York and at the University of Michigan as part of a National Science Foundation Scholarly Exchange Program with China. It was during his visit in 1983 that Wu collaborated with Wolpoff and Alan Thorne, of Australian National University, to formulate the Multiregional Hypothesis. This resulted in the publication of their classic paper “Modern Homo sapiens Origins: A General Theory of Hominid Evolution Involving the Fossil Evidence from East Asia” (Wolpoff, Wu, and Thorne 1984). Their Multiregional Hypothesis pointed to observed morphological continuity in hominid fossils ranging from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens over much of the Old World. To explain this, they proposed that Homo erectus was the first hominid to leave Africa, about a million years ago, and these hominids dispersed to populate much of Asia and parts of Europe. Populations of Homo erectus then settled in regions with quite different environments, and they subsequently adapted to local conditions. As these populations became sedentary and somewhat geographically isolated from other populations, regional differences began to appear among them while limited contact between these different groups ensured that the populations continued to remain one species. Wolpoff, Wu, and Thorne argued that these regional populations of Homo erectus evolved over time into modern Homo sapiens while retaining regional ‘racial’ characteristics.

The Multiregional Hypothesis contrasted with the Out of Africa Hypothesis, which argued that modern Homo sapiens evolved from Homo erectus (Homo ergaster) only in Africa about 200,000 years ago and these early humans later migrated out of Africa and replaced the hominid species, such as Neanderthals, that had inhabited Europe and Asia. Important evidence for the Out of Africa Hypothesis came from molecular anthropology, especially the work of Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan Wilson at the University of California at Berkeley, which was published in their influential paper “Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution” (Cann, Stoneking, and Wilson 1987). The evidence for the Out of Africa Hypothesis increased throughout the 1990s, but in China there was continued support for the Multiregional Hypothesis, and Wu continued to pursue various lines of research related to this idea. In 1988, he published a paper comparing hominid fossils from China with fossils from Europe. In it, he argued that morphological features present in the eye sockets of the Maba cranium as well as the bun-shaped bulges observed in fossil crania found at Liujiang, Ziyang and Lijiang provided evidence of gene exchange between hominid populations in China and Europe (Wu 1988b). Wu also collaborated with German paleoanthropologist Günter Bräuer to compare Chinese hominids with African hominids (Wu and Bräuer 1993).

As the debate between the supporters of the Multiregional Hypothesis and the Out of Africa Hypothesis expanded and new evidence was deployed by each side, Wu proposed a modified version of the Multiregional Hypothesis, called Continuity with Hybridization, to explain human evolution in China (Wu 1998). According to this theory, the human lineage arose in Africa sometime during the early Pleistocene, and since that time human evolution has occurred within a single, continuous species. Wu considers Homo erectus to represent the earliest fossil specimens of the species Homo sapiens and that the fossil evidence indicates a continuous evolution in China from Homo erectus to modern humans. Wu accepted the evidence that there were migrations of humans out of Africa within the last 100,000 years, but he rejected the idea that these people replaced the human population already settled in China. He argues that there is evidence of regional continuity in the hominid fossils found in China, which display a Mongoloid cranial morphology, but he proposed that there was also a continual gene flow between the hominids inhabiting China and humans migrating out of Africa. Wu observed that some Eurasian Neanderthal features can be observed in some Chinese hominid skulls, indicating gene flow between Middle Pleistocene hominids in China and Neanderthals, but this has been contested by many paleoanthropologists (Wu 1998; see also Wu 2004). This theory contrasts with the scenario presented by supporters of the Out of Africa Hypothesis, which argued that Homo sapiens that evolved in Africa migrated from there throughout Eurasia where they replaced the hominid populations inhabiting those regions.

In addition to the fossil evidence for the Continuity with Hybridization hypothesis, Wu also pointed to archaeological evidence that apparently supported this scenario. Wu (1990) drew upon the Paleolithic archaeological record to demonstrate the continuous evolution of artifacts and culture in China. He argued that Chinese Paleolithic cultural traditions are obviously different from those of Europe, Africa, and West Asia, and that there is no indication of Western culture replacing the original Chinese Paleolithic culture. Furthermore, given the increasing attention given to the genetic and molecular evidence relating to human evolution, Wu began to examine the data coming out of molecular anthropology research in order to better understand its implications and potentially critique its conclusions (Wu 2004; 2005). Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Wu published a series of papers on human evolution in China and East Asia. He also collaborated with American physical anthropologist Frank Poirier to publish Human Evolution in China (1995), which presented a comprehensive description of the Middle and Late Pleistocene hominid fossils from China, as well as geological and archaeological data on the sites where they were found. This was an important work because it provided information not previously available in English.

Wu Xinzhi was an active member of a variety of scientific institutions in China. He and his IVPP colleague Wu Rukang founded the journal Acta Anthropologica Sinica in 1982. Wu served first as the journal’s deputy chief-editor and from 2003 as its chief-editor. He was elected deputy director of the Chinese Society for Anatomical Sciences (中国解剖学会) in 1990 and was later made its honorary president, as well as serving as director of the Society’s “Vocational Committee for Anthropology.” He also presided over training programs at the Society where he taught anthropometry to its members. Wu was elected to the prestigious position of Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1999. He was one of the organizers of the Beijing International Symposium on Paleoanthropology, held in Beijing in 1999 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the discovery of the first Peking Man cranium. The symposium brought together paleoanthropologists from around the world.

Wu also received numerous awards for his scientific accomplishments. He was recognized as one of the best graduate advisors of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1990.

He won the first prize for Natural Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1991, as well as the second and third prizes of the Guomoruo Award for History Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences respectively in 1999 and 2007. He received the second prize of the State Scientific and Technological Progress Award in 2005. He received the first prize of the National Science Popular Science Book Award, as well as the sixth prize of the National Book Award. He also won the ninth “Five One Project Award” for the Construction of Spiritual Civilization, as well as the Best Award of the First Beijing Excellent Science Works Award. In 2013, Wu received the “Jin Cong Award” for Lifetime Achievement in Anthropology.

Wu Xinzhi died in Beijing on 4 December 2021.

Selected Bibliography

“On the Racial Types of the Upper Cave Man of Choukoutien.” Scientia Sinica 10 (1961a): 998-1005.

“Study on the Upper Cave Man of Choukoutien.” Vertebrata PalAsiatica 3 (1961b): 181-211.

Wu Rukang and Wu Xinzhi (eds.). 人體骨骼測量方法 [Methods for Measuring the Human Skeleton]. Beijing: Ke xue chu ban she, 1965.

Wu Xinzhi and Zhang Yinyun. “Chinese Paleoanthropological Multidisciplinary Studies.” Collected Papers of Paleoanthropology (IVPP) (1978) 28-42.

Wu Xinzhi, Ye Zhizhang, and Lin Yipu. 长臂猿解剖 [Anatomy of the Gibbon]. Beijing: Science Press, 1978.

Wu Xinzhi and You Yuzhu. “A Preliminary Observation of the Dali Man Site.” Vertebrata PalAsiatica 17 (1979): 294-303.

“A Well-preserved Cranium of an Archaic Type of Early Homo sapiens from Dali, China.” Scientia Sinica 24 (1981): 530-539.

Wu Rukang and Wu Xinzhi. “Comparison of Tautavel Man with Homo erectus and Homo sapiens in China.” In L’Homo erectus et la Place de l’homme de Tautavel parmi les Hominides Fossiles. (1er Congres International de Paleontologie Humaine). Vol. 2, pp. 605-616. Nice: Louis-Jean Scientific and Literary Publications, 1982.

Wu Rukang and Wu Xinzhi. “Hominid Fossils from China and Their Relation to Those of Neighbouring Regions.” In R. O. Whyte (ed.), The Evolution of the East Asian Environment, Volume II, Palaeobotany, Palaeozoology and Palaeoanthropology. Pp. 787-795. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, 1984.

M. H. Wolpoff, Wu Xinzhi, and A. G. Thorne. “Modern Homo sapiens Origins: A General Theory of Hominid Evolution involving the Fossil Evidence from East Asia.” In F. Smith and F. Spencer (eds.), The Origins of Modern Humans: A World Survey of the Fossil Evidence. New York: Liss, 1984.

Chen Dezhen and Wu Xinzhi. “Early Neolithic Human Skeletons from Shigu, Changge, Henan Province.” Acta Anthropologica Sinica 4 (1985): 205-214, 314-323.

Wu Xinzhi and Wang Linghong. “Chronology in Chinese Paleoanthropology.” In R. Wu and J. W. Olsen (eds.), Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology in the People’s Republic of China. Pp. 29–52. New York: Academic Press, 1985.

Wu Xinzhi and Wu Maolin. “Early Homo sapiens in China.” In R. Wu and J. W. Olsen (eds.). Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology in the People’s Republic of China. Pp. 91–106. New York: Academic Press, 1985.

“The Relationship between Upper Palaeolithic Human Fossils of China and Japan.” Acta Anthropologica Sinica 7 (1988a): 235-238.

“Comparative Study of Early Homo sapiens from China and Europe. Acta Anthropologica Sinica 7 (1988b): 292-299.

“Human Migration in East Asia and Australia during the Late Pleistocene.” In P. Whyte et al. (eds), The Palaeoenvironment of East Asia from the Mid-Tertiary. Proceedings of the Second Conference. Vol.2, pp. 1069-1075. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong.

“Early Homo sapiens in China.” In X. Wu and S. Shang (eds.), Early Humankind in China. Pp. 24-41. Beijing: Science Press, 1989.

“The Evolution of Humankind in China.” Acta Anthropologica Sinica 9 (1990): 312-321.

“The Origin and Dispersal of Anatomically Modern Humans in East and Southeast Asia.” In T. Akazawa, K. Aoki and T. Kimura (eds.), The Evolution and Dispersal of Modern Humans in Asia. Pp. 373-378. Tokyo: Hokusen-sha, 1992.

Xinzhi Wu and Günter Bräuer. “Morphological Comparison of Archaic Homo sapiens Crania from China and Africa.” Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie 79 (1993): 241-259.

Wu Rukang and Wu Xinzhi. China (Hominid Remains 7). Brussels: Université Libre, 1994.

Wu Xinzhi and Frank E. Poirier. Human Evolution in China: A Metric Description of the Fossils and a Review of the Sites. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

“The Continuity of Human Evolution in East Asia.” In S. Brenner and K. Hanihara (eds.), The Origin and Past of Modern Humans as Viewed from DNA. Pp. 267-282. London: World Scientific Publishing Co., 1995.

“On the Descent of Modern Humans in East Asia.” In G.A. Clarke and C. M Willermet (eds), Conceptual Issues in Modern Human Origin Research. Pp. 283-293. New York: Aldine de Gruyter 1997.

“Origin of Modern Humans of China Viewed from Cranio-dental Characteristics of Late Homo sapiens.” Acta Anthropologica Sinica 17 (1998): 276-282.

“Contributions of the Study on Chinese Human Fossils to Paleoanthropology.” Quaternary Sciences 19 (1999): 97-105.

Wu Xinzhi, Huang Weiwen, and Qi Guoqi. 中国古人类遗址 (Paleolithic Sites in China). Shanghai: Shanghai ke ji jiao yu chu ban she, 1999.

Wu Xinzhi and Shang H. “Preliminary Study on the Variations of Homo erectus in China.” Quaternary Sciences 1 (2002): 20-28.

“Fossil Humankind and Other Anthropoid Primates of China.” International Journal of Primatology 25 (2004): 1093-1103.

“On the Origin of Modern Humans in China.” Quaternary International 117 (2004): 131-140.

“Discussion on the Results of Some Molecular Studies Concerning the Origin of Modern Chinese.” Acta Anthropologica Sinica 24 (2004): 259-269.

“Palaeoanthropological and Molecular Studies on the Origin of Modern Humans in China.” Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 60 (2005): 115-119.

“Evidence of Multiregional Human Evolution Hypothesis from China.” Quaternary Sciences 26 (2006): 702-709.

Karen Rosenberg and Wu Xinzhi, “A River Runs through It: Modern Human Origins in East Asia.” In F. Smith and J. Ahern (eds.), Origins of Modern Humans: Biology Reconsidered. 2nd ed. Pp. 89–121. New York: Wiley, 2013.

Wu Xinzhi and Sheela Athreya. “A Description of the Geological Context, Discrete Traits, and Linear Morphometrics of the Middle Pleistocene Hominin from Dali, Shaanxi Province, China.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 150 (2013):141-157.

“The Place of Dali Cranium in Human Evolution.” Acta Anthropologica Sinica (2014): 405-426.

Sheela Athreya and Wu Xinzhi. “A Multivariate Assessment of the Dali Hominin Cranium from China: Morphological Affinities and Implications for Pleistocene Evolution in East Asia.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 164 (2017): 679-701.

“Middle Pleistocene Human Skull from Dali, China.” Palaeontologia Sinica 201 (2020): 1-205.

OTHER Sources CITED:

Wolpoff, Milford and Rachel Caspari. Race and Human Evolution. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Secondary Sources

Wu Xinzhi. “Career of Academician Wu Xinzhi, Laureate of the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award in Anthropology.” Communication on Contemporary Anthropology 7 (2013): 47-60.

* I would like to thank Chang Kuo-hui and Tsou Tsung-yen for their assistance with Chinese translations.