A debate is raging over the origins of an elusive cousin to modern humans

Illustration: The Economist/Hebei GEO University

Dec 17th 2025|7 min read

During the Japanese invasion of northern China in 1933, a man was hired to build a bridge across the Songhua river near the city of Harbin. As he was digging, he found a large, ancient cranium embedded in the muddy riverbank, which he hid in a well. It was not until his deathbed that he told his grandchildren about the fossil. Whether apocryphal or not, that was the story the skull came with when it was donated to the Geoscience Museum of Hebei in China a few years ago.