北京原人
The debate as to whether Peking Man was the first human species to manufacture tools fleshed out in the early 1960s in the period of relative stability between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The argument centered around whether the Zhoukoudian tools were the most primitive and therefore the earliest tools (i. e., Peking Man is the most ancient human) championed by Péi, or if there were even more primitive and as of yet undiscovered tools (i. e., Peking Man is not the most ancient human) championed by Jiǎ. In Western circles, Louis Leakey had already reported an apparent pebble industry in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, in 1931, the first hard (albeit, controversial) evidence of a culture more primitive than the Acheulean. Radiometric dating in the 1960s established the Oldowan as the oldest known culture at 1.8 million years old.