A Tribute to Jia Lanpo (1908-2001)

Abstract

Born during the twilight years of China’s last imperial dynasty, Jia Lanpo was known nearly universally to his Chinese-speaking colleagues and students as Jia Lao, a referent of supreme respect that may be translated roughly as Elder Jia. In the traditional Chinese worldview—still very much central to the ways in which ethnic Chinese reckon social relationships, irrespective of their national origins—one accumulates wisdom and, consequently, reverence with advancing years. In middle age, Jia Lanpo had become as cholar and mentor of such universal respect that the more common age-based honorific, Lao Jia (Older Jia), and the equally formal, though less adulatory, forms of address—Jia Jiaoshou (Professor Jia) and Jia Laoshi (Teacher Jia)—were no longer often used in reference to this truly extraordinary man. By the beginning of his tenth decade, Jia Lanpo was lauded for his scholarly accomplishments and leadership qualities by scores of Chinese and foreign scientists alike (e.g., Clark 2002 : 261–263; Wei 1999; Wen 1999). Assessing the significance of Jia Lanpo’s scientific research in China and its impact on global paleoanthropology is no simple task. As Dennis Etler has so correctly observed in his definitive obituary, Jia Lanpo ‘‘. . . was an indefatigable worker and meticulous scholar, the author of hundreds of scientific and popular articles, treatises, and books detailing archaeological discoveries in China spanning over six decades’’ (Etler 2002 : 297). Understanding Jia and his contributions requires contextualization on several historical and social levels. Many Western scholars assume that Chinese academics of Jia’s generation labored solely under restrictive intellectual paradigms ranging from virtual foreign domination in the years prior to 1949 to hard-line MarxismLeninism–Mao Zedong Thought during and immediately after the repressive decade known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). In spite of the fact that the bulk of Jia’s scholarly career played out during an isolationist period, when China had very little o‰cially sanctioned scientific interchange with the Western world, the earliest and latest phases of his life were conspicuously influenced by regular and fruitful collaboration with a wide range of non-Chinese and non–Communist Bloc colleagues. Like scholars everywhere, Jia Lanpo was in measure a product of his intellectual milieu, especially that of his formative years. The Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), the smallest of the many diverse