How old is Beijing?
If you head down to the Peking Man World Heritage Site at Zhoukoudian in the Fangshan District, you can meet the folks who lived in this area between 770,000 and 230,000 years ago. Most serious anthropologists generally agree that the remains found in 1921 at Zhoukoudian are not direct descendants of modern humans. Still, some local theorists will tell you that somewhere, somehow, someway, a little Peking Man DNA found its way into your local kuaidi driver. Modern human settlements -- with agriculture, pottery, and jade working, dating to the Neolithic era (about 7000 years ago) have been discovered in Huairou, Pinggu, Changping, and other outlying districts.
Did Beijing really begin with Peking Man?
Nevertheless, while the story of Peking Man and these early settlers is fascinating, neither group built anything like a city.