7,000-Year-Old Fingerprints

Professor Zhao Chengwen of the Criminal Police Institute recently found 7,000-year-old human fingerprints at the Banpo Neolithic site near Xi'an, Shaanxi Province.

While conducting a survey of the Neolithic site, Zhao found the prints on four fragments of a pottery jar. The whorls of Neolithic prints proved denser than those on the contemporary fingertip, the former having 19 compared with the latter's 17.