Wushan Man

In the 18 June 2009 issue of Nature, Russell Ciochon who first reported the jaw fragment from Longgupo as human,[7] announced his retraction of the findings. He is convinced that the Longgupo fossil do not belong to a pre-erectus human, but rather to unknown apes that originated from primal forests in Pleistocene Southeast Asia. He mentioned that H. erectus arrived in Asia about 1.6 million years ago, but steered clear of the forest in pursuit of grassland game, which means that the pre-erectus species did not appear in southeast Asia.[8]

Russell Ciochon no longer beliefs that Gigantopithecus and H. erectus coexisted in the same environment[8]—an argument he had previously made in his book 1990 Other Origins: The Search for the Giant Ape in Human Prehistory.[9] He states:

Without the assumption that Gigantopithecus and H. erectus lived together, everything changed: if early humans were not part of the Stegodon–Ailuropoda fauna, I had to envision a chimpanzee-sized ape in its place — either a descendant of Lufengpithecus, or a previously unknown ape genus.[8]^{p. 911}

A key factor in changing his opinion about the fossil was a 2005 visit to the Guangxi Natural History Museum in Nanning, where he examined a large number of primate teeth from the Pleistocene.[8] He believes that early humans hunted mammals on grasslands and did not live in sub-tropic forests that existed at Longgupo in that period, making it impossible for the set of fossils to have belonged to a human. While Russell Ciochon no longer believes the jaw to belonged to a human, he still claims that the two stone tools found with fossils were created by humans. However, according to him, "They must have been more recent additions to the site."[8]^p. 911

Jeffrey Schwartz, one of the critics of the original claim, found Ciochon's retraction astonishing since it is not a common occurrence that a scientist announces a retraction after changing his mind, praising the openness as something positive. [10]

The discovery of the Wushan Man and its related materials such as stone various vertebrate fossils, and stone artifacts such as cores, points, scrapers, drilling tools, etc. show evidence of human agency. This is important because it suggests that the creators of these tools have made the change from tool-using to tool-making.[11]

According to Nature:

The new evidence suggests that hominids entered Asia before 2 Myr, coincident with the earliest diversification of genus Homo in Africa. Clearly, the first hominid to arrive in Asia was a species other than true H. erectus, and one that possessed a stone-based technology. A pre-erectus hominid in China as early as 1.9 Myr provides the most likely antecedents for the in situ evolution of Homo erectus in Asia.^{p. 278}

This makes its status as a Homo fossil critically important to the study of human origins as it suggests that H. erectus was not the first human species to leave Africa and supports the argument made by some that H. erectus evolved in Asia instead of Africa. The discovery of Homo floresiensis is significant to this theory of pre-erectus hominin evolving in Asia. Recent research finds that its wrist and foot bones are anatomically like those of H. habilis or Australopithecus. Evidence for pre-erectus Homo in Asia would be consistent with such a possible origin.

A middle school textbook, The Chinese History (published by People's Education Press), has plans to include the discovery of "Wushan Man" as a part of its content.[12]

• Lantian Man
• Peking Man
• Red Deer Cave people
• Tianyuan man
• Yuanmou Man
• Zhoukoudian