Zuojhen Man
Zuojhen Man is a human fossil discovered in Tsai-Liao Creek in Zuojhen District, Tainan City. The fossil was once determined to be approximately 20,000 to 30,000 years old, earning it the title of being "Taiwan's most ancient man". In a reexamination in 2015, the fossil was determined to be from the late Neolithic period, 3,000 years ago.
Excavations and research
The first piece of Zuojhen Man's fossil was discovered in August 1970 by amateur fossil collectors Guo Deling and his son Guo Donghui from Tainan City. When the father and son were collecting fossils in Tsai-Liao Creek of the then Zuojhen Township, Tainan County, Guo Donghui found a piece of skull fossil on the riverbed southwest of the village Sanchong Creek. The two of them were unable to confirm whether it belonged to a man or an ape, so they kept it.On November 19, 1971, amateur fossil collector Pan Changwu and others discovered intact fossil pieces of the rhinoceros species Nesorhinus hayasakai, and Guo Deling discovered fossils of the deer Elaphurus formosanus. These discoveries brought attention from the Taiwan Provincial Museum and National Taiwan University. As a result, Professor Song Wenxun and Professor Lin Chaoqi, accompanied by Taiwan Provincial Museum's Curator Liu Yen, Director Jin Liangchen, He Xunyao and others, traveled south for prospecting in late December. They observed Guo Deling's fossil collection afterward, which included the skull fragment discovered in 1970. After Guo Deling showed the fragment to Song Wenxun and Lin Chaoqi, they brought it back to National Taiwan University for research.
In 1972, in order to dig up the fossil of a whole rhinoceros, Taiwan Provincial Museum hired Japanese scholars Shikama Tokio and Ootsuka Hiroyuki to come to Taiwan and help. Later in August 1973, Lin Chaoqi asked the Japanese scholars to take the skull fragment back to Japan for identification. In January 1974, Pan Changwu gave another piece of skull fossil he had discovered to Shikama Tokio for identification in Japan. Later the same year, Pan donated still another piece of skull fossil to Taiwan Provincial Museum.
The fossils were preliminarily judged by Japanese scholars as human. After undergoing fluorine and manganese measurements, it was determined that the fragments' absolute age was approximately 20,000 to 30,000 years. As the three human skull pieces were all discovered in Tsai-Liao Creek of Zuojhen Township, Tainan County, scholars named the species "Zuojhen Man". During the period, another amateur fossil collector, "Fossil Grandpa" Chen Chunmu, found another four pieces of skull fossil in Kong-a-nah. In 1976, a report on these pieces was formally published on the Journal of the Anthropological Society of Nippon. In 1977, Pan Changwu provided National Taiwan University with a human tooth fossil, and the next year Chen Chunmu mailed another human tooth fossil collected by Chen Jitang. Later, the university's Professor Lian Chaomei conducted research on them.
In 2014, the National Taiwan Museum initiated a "Re-research on Zuojhen Man" project, and the project team sent specimen samples of the Zuojhen skull fossils to a lab in the United States for examination. Results of carbon-14 dating showed one of the skull fossil specimens was approximately 3,000 years old, while another specimen was 250 years old. The project team took another sample from the same specimen and sent it to the Australian National University for examination in the same year without sharing their results. The new result obtained was similar to the initial examination, in that the age of specimen AH006672 was dated as approximately 3,000 years.