Clues shed light on mystery of missing Peking Man
By Li Jing (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-09-06 06:17

Zhoukoudian, a mountainous area 50 kilometres southwest of Beijing, became world famous after a human skull was discovered on December 2, 1929. Chinese anthologists called it the Peking Man skull.

A student has a close look at a replica of the Peking Man at an exhibition in Fangshan, Beijing in this July 10, 2005 the Beijing News file photo.

Peking Men, who lived 500,000 years ago, were believed to be one of the earliest primitive human beings to use fire. Proof lies in the ashes and burnt animal bones found in the caves in which they lived. The discovery was regarded as a milestone in the history of the study of palaeoanthropology, as it provided materials for the study of the early biological evolution of human beings.

Yet in 1941, during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45), the skulls, together with other Peking Men fossils, mysteriously disappeared. Their whereabouts remain unknown to this day.

New clues gained from a fresh round of searches may shed some light on the whereabouts of the "lost civilization", according to a Beijing committee in charge of the search.

The committee, the first government-led search group, was officially set up yesterday in Beijing. It released a long list of missing fossils at the launch.

The list, by far the most complete ever compiled, includes the famous Peking Men skulls, and hundreds of teeth and bone fossils of Peking Men and 18,000-year-old Upper Cave Men, also unearthed in Zhou Koudian.

Liu Yajun, head of the Cultural Committee of Fangshan District, where Zhoukoudian is located, said that since July they had received 63 tips and clues about the whereabouts of the missing fossils.

These clues are from all over the country, said Liu, also deputy head of the committee. "Some of the clues sound interesting."

For instance, a man surnamed Ren said he knew a person whose father was a former doctor at the Peking Union Medical College, where two crates of Peking Men fossils were stored. Ren said the father took a piece of skull fossil back to his home and now the fossil is buried beneath a residential building.

Yang Haifeng, head of the search committee, said his team members would carefully examine the tips and clues.

He said experts from China, the United States and Japan had been searching for the precious fossils after the war, but in vain.

"However, as long as there is still a glimmer of hope, we will never give up our search," said Yang, who is also the curator of the Zhoukoudian Peking Men Site Museum.

During World War II, Chinese scientists planned to send the fossils to the United States to prevent them from being looted by Japanese invaders. However, at some point in the process of the transfer, the fossils went missing, said Gao Xing, deputy head of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Paleoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

(China Daily 09/06/2005 page1)

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