5 Yuan Peking Man Site Zhoukoudian

The Zhoukoudian site, roughly 50 kilometers southwest of Beijing, yielded the first substantial Homo erectus skull cap recovered in China in 1929 — a find that shaped decades of paleoanthropological debate. During World War II, the original fossil collection was lost in transit while being evacuated from Beijing ahead of the Japanese occupation, almost certainly aboard the USS President Harrison. It has never been recovered. The site itself was designated a UNESCO World Heritage property in 1987, which drove a wave of Chinese commemorative issues highlighting prehistoric and archaeological heritage through the 1990s and 2000s.