The largest ape to have ever existed was the Gigantopithecus blacki. Its name combines the Greek words that mean precisely that: gigantos = giant and pithekos = ape.
To be more precise, it was the largest hominoid, a superfamily (Hominoidea) that comprises three families; the: Hylobatidae (gibbons), Pongidae (orangutans), and our closest relatives, the Hominidae (gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees, and humans); as well as our extinct ancestors, the erectus, Neanderthals, Denisovans, etc.).
Gigantopithecus lived in Asia, and was closely related to the Pongo group (which includes the orangutan), it was a gigantic variety of orangutan. It was definitely Asian, as it descended from a line of Asian apes that included the 12 million year old Sivapitheucs and the 6.5 million year old Indopithecus, both from India.
The image above depicts a band of Gigantopithecus being watched by hominins (Source).
Gigantopithecus lived in the subtropical forests of Central China, close to what is now Chongqing on the Yangtze River, and fromt there southwards into to Vietnam and as far as Java, in Indonesia. It thrived between 2 million and 300,000 years ago. Like gorillas and orangutans, it munched fruit, leaves, and juicy stems, and maybe, tubers and roots.
It was discovered by a German paleontologist Ralph von Koenigswald (1902-1982), whose sharp eye noted a large primate tooth being sold as "dragon bones" in a traditional Chinese medicine shop in Hong Kong, in 1935. He named it after Canadian anthropologist Davidson Black (1884-1934), who had passed recently. Black had identified the remains of Homo erectus in Beijing, China, naming it Sinanthropus Pekinensis (China Man of Beijing).
Gigantopithecus lived up to its name, it was very big, probably weighing 200 to 300 kg (440 to 660 lbs). It was tall, measuring 2.7 to 3.7 m (9 to 12 feet). Twice the size of a modern gorilla.
Extinction
It was well adapted to its environment, yet, vanished suddenly around 300 kya. Orangutans managed to survive in the same habitat, which makes us ask why did the Gigantopithecus become extinct.
Zhang et al., 2024 attribute its demise to environmental changes that took place between 215 and 295 kya. Climate swings altered the vegetation coverage of that region, which switched from a blend of forests and grasslands to an open forest. Gigantopithecus didn't manage to adapt, and died out. Orangutans did, and survived until now.
Tool maker?
Han et al., 2024 reported the discovery of gigantopithecus teeth associated with teeth of "an undetermined hominid" between 1 and 1.5 million years ago at the Jianshi Longgudong site in China.
These hominid teeth were studied by different scholars over the course of the past 50 years, and have been attributed to a wide variety of hominids: Australopiths, Australopithecus robustuss, early Homo, Homo erectus, and even the Meganthropus. This suggests an overlap of archaic hominids with the Gigantopithecus. Could these hominids have hunted the Gigantopithecus and caused its extinction?
There is another site in China, Longgupo Cave, where Gigantopithecus co-existed with an archaic hominin believed to be either Homo erectus, or to "have the affinities with African Homo habilis and Homo ergaster (Huang et al., 1995). Since 2009, this specimen has been considered to belong to a “mystery ape” instead of Homo (Ciochon, 2009)."
This is really interesting, hearing about typically African hominids like Australopiths and Homo habilis, whose remains have not been found (yet) in Asia.
Others, however, believe it is an Asian variety of ape, like Wu, 2000.
Surprisingly, a primitive paleolithic stone tool "culture" that has been unearthed at the Longgupo site. Over 1,000 stone artifacts have been discovered there, dated between 2.5 and 1.8 million years old. These are old dates, and would more or less overlap with the most ancient remains found to date in Asia (mostly attributed to Homo erectus, and the H. georgicus from the Dmanisi site in Georgia), and even older than those as 2.5 million years corresponds to a very early date, for which no fossils have yet been discovered outside of Africa.
Wei et al., 2014 wrote that they are of an "evident human agency such as bipolar hammer, cores, flakes, choppers, points, scrapers, proto-cleavers, drilling tools, proto-picks and proto-hand-axes... Who the creators of Longgupo culture were is still a mystery. Three types of highly-evolved primate fossils have been unearthed from Longgupo Site. They are represented by a mandibular fragment with p4-m1, an upper incisor, and 14 isolated teeth of Gigantopithecus blacki respectively. All these three types could be the possible creators of Longgupo culture. On the other hand, we cannot exclude a possibility that an ancient human still unknown but similar to Homo habilis could be revealed with the forthcoming excavations." The image above is from Wei, 2014 and shows these remarkable stone tools.
Again, a paper suggesting the presencce of Homo habilis in Asia! Even more surprising is the suggestion that these stone tools could have been made by a non-hominin ape, the Gigantopithecus. This would be a unique situation as these tools are more sophisticated than the stone tools used by monkeys.
Han, et al., 2017, in an article, review the discussion on who made the tools as an ongoing controversy, and add that "the evidence of Gigantopithecus teeth and stone artifacts on the site is still interesting, as it could provide the first indication of non-hominin tool-using apes in East Asia..."
There is a third site showing an overlap of hominids and Gigantopithecus. And, once again the Chinese authors of the paper mention Australopiths! Wei et al., 2005 also report Gigantopithecus teeth in a cave at Mohui, in Guangxi, Southern China. They were found with teeth that have a strong resemblance to Australopith teeth, but "as there is no evidence supporting the existence of Aus-tralopithecus outside Africa to date, it is difficult to attribute [it] to this genus", instead, and despite the fact that they are larger than Chinese erectus teeth, they ".temporarily assign these teeth to Homo erectus." The stone tools at the site are crude, and date back to between 1.6 and 0.8 million years.
Closing Comments
There have been suggestions (see Stringer) of an ancient, first migration of prehuman hominins out of Africa (or originating in Eurasia) or one close to Australopithecines and Homo habilis that could have been the hominid mentioned in all of these Chinese-authored papers.
Regarding Gigantopithecus, I seriously doubt it managed to survive until the present, and although some publications have proposed it as an explanation for the North American bigfoot, I don't think it could have handled the cold, icy conditions of Siberia and Beringia. Others have proposed the Gigantopithecus as the answer for the myserious Yeti. This may be based on very ancient oral traditions, but it seems unlikely.
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