*Ø* Blogmanac November 5, 2000 | Japanese archaeologist's fraud
Devil undermines Japan's Palaeolithic research
2000 Japanese archaeologist and Vice Chairman of the private Tohoku Palaeolithic Cultural Research Institute, Shin’ichi Fujimura, apologised for faking sensational archaeological discoveries. He had been caught on the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper’s video cameras as he buried planted eight stoneware pieces shortly after 6 a.m. on October 22.
Formerly known as ‘God’s hand’ or the ‘divine digger’ for his luck in finding important artefacts, Fujimura began making his earliest discoveries as an amateur archaeologist in the 1970s. The self-taught scientist had earned his reputation with a series of finds including a remarkable discovery in 1981 of stoneware dating back 40,000 years. He is said to have been involved in research centred around 186 sites. Although in a brief press interview on December 18, 2001 Fujimura would deny rumours that more dig finds he was involved in were also fakes, he later admitted to having falsely planted items at another 41 sites, including pieces he once labelled as the world's oldest connected stone tool. The two parts had been excavated separately at two different sites about 30 km apart. Fujimura had claimed that both were 100,000 years old.
“The devil made me do it”
Rumours of problems in Japan's Early and Middle Palaeolithic research had been circulating for a long time and Mainichi Shimbun put together an investigation team to look into all of these rumours. Confronted with the damning evidence the disgraced archaeologist admitted that he buried the items because he was “desperate [to find stone tools] ... voices in my head told me that I had to do something”. Asked why he had perpetrated such a deceit, Fujimura answered tearfully, “The devil made me do it”.
The fraudster, his grand career now in tatters, broke down in tears as he faced the media at a news conference at the Miyagi Prefectural Government headquarters in Sendai. “I personally planted them and no one else took part. Please don’t discredit the whole dig, because there were some authentic finds,” Fujimura said. “My actions were a disgrace ... I’m really sorry for my family and friends.”
The fraud had yielded unintended consequences. Since the unearthing of Fujimura’s so-called Stone Age tools was announced Tsukidate in 1993, the town had been in the epicentre of a Japanese archaeology boom. Flintstone-like characters became town mascots, and Tsukidate adopted as a motto: “Come and see the skies that were admired by the original man”. Soon tourists were flocking by the thousands to admire the region’s archaeological sites, and ‘original man’ noodle shops sprang up in town. A road was renamed The Original Man Way, and an Original Man Marathon quickly became a popular annual event drawing runners from all over Japan.
Fujimura publicly confessed that he had buried 61 out of 65 items that were unearthed from the Kami-Takamori dig at Tsukidate, Miyagi Prefecture. He had also fabricated caches at the Soshin-Fudozaka site in Hokkaido. On at least one occasion, he had even taken reporters straight from a news conference to a site and ‘discovered’ artefacts on cue. Despite this, and the fact that any trained archaeologist could have seen that the soil around the caches had been disturbed, the deception was well received in Japanese academic circles for two decades.
The dig at Kami-Takamori, thanks largely to Fujimura, had become famous worldwide as the oldest Early Palaeolithic site in Japan, with the ages of eight or more cultural layers ranging from 500,000 to 700,000 years. Even more significant amongst scientists was the fact that several finds of stone artefacts indicated levels of symbolic cognition in Homo erectus much earlier than anything suspected from African and European evidence.
Rewriting the textbooks
If it had been true, the Kami-Takamori ‘finds’ could have rewritten the textbooks on human evolution. However, some archaeologists, such as Oda Shizuo and Charles T Keally, had, since at least 1985, published skeptical papers on the direction in which Japanese Palaeolithic archaeology was travelling.
Most scholars today accept that human beings lived in northern China at least by 700,000 years ago. We know Japan was connected to the continent by land bridges at least twice during the past 700,000 years, and that large terrestrial mammals migrated into the islands over those land bridges. However, Fujimura’s fraud has raised questions of whether humans beings really were in Japan before 35,000 years ago.
Fujimura’s fraudulent discoveries perhaps had been accepted by the Japanese academic elites, as well as the public, because they confirmed a popular notion – the great antiquity of the Japanese people. Even the Mainichi English edition reportage, which used the word ‘fraud’ on November 7, had attenuated this to the more comfortable term ‘fabrication’ the next day. Many scholars have also begun to question not only the closed academic environment, but also the Japanese educational standards that allowed such a hoax to take root and thrive.
Dirty digger comes clean on more faked sites
Meet a 'Stone Age' Man So Original, He's a Hoax
Undermined archaeologist kills himself
More scientific hoaxes
Strange Hoaxes That Endure
Akashi Man, Nipponantropus akashiensis, another Japanese fraud
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
Receive similar items free each day with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine. Send a blank email
Devil undermines Japan's Palaeolithic research
2000 Japanese archaeologist and Vice Chairman of the private Tohoku Palaeolithic Cultural Research Institute, Shin’ichi Fujimura, apologised for faking sensational archaeological discoveries. He had been caught on the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper’s video cameras as he buried planted eight stoneware pieces shortly after 6 a.m. on October 22.
Formerly known as ‘God’s hand’ or the ‘divine digger’ for his luck in finding important artefacts, Fujimura began making his earliest discoveries as an amateur archaeologist in the 1970s. The self-taught scientist had earned his reputation with a series of finds including a remarkable discovery in 1981 of stoneware dating back 40,000 years. He is said to have been involved in research centred around 186 sites. Although in a brief press interview on December 18, 2001 Fujimura would deny rumours that more dig finds he was involved in were also fakes, he later admitted to having falsely planted items at another 41 sites, including pieces he once labelled as the world's oldest connected stone tool. The two parts had been excavated separately at two different sites about 30 km apart. Fujimura had claimed that both were 100,000 years old.
“The devil made me do it”
Rumours of problems in Japan's Early and Middle Palaeolithic research had been circulating for a long time and Mainichi Shimbun put together an investigation team to look into all of these rumours. Confronted with the damning evidence the disgraced archaeologist admitted that he buried the items because he was “desperate [to find stone tools] ... voices in my head told me that I had to do something”. Asked why he had perpetrated such a deceit, Fujimura answered tearfully, “The devil made me do it”.
The fraudster, his grand career now in tatters, broke down in tears as he faced the media at a news conference at the Miyagi Prefectural Government headquarters in Sendai. “I personally planted them and no one else took part. Please don’t discredit the whole dig, because there were some authentic finds,” Fujimura said. “My actions were a disgrace ... I’m really sorry for my family and friends.”
The fraud had yielded unintended consequences. Since the unearthing of Fujimura’s so-called Stone Age tools was announced Tsukidate in 1993, the town had been in the epicentre of a Japanese archaeology boom. Flintstone-like characters became town mascots, and Tsukidate adopted as a motto: “Come and see the skies that were admired by the original man”. Soon tourists were flocking by the thousands to admire the region’s archaeological sites, and ‘original man’ noodle shops sprang up in town. A road was renamed The Original Man Way, and an Original Man Marathon quickly became a popular annual event drawing runners from all over Japan.
Fujimura publicly confessed that he had buried 61 out of 65 items that were unearthed from the Kami-Takamori dig at Tsukidate, Miyagi Prefecture. He had also fabricated caches at the Soshin-Fudozaka site in Hokkaido. On at least one occasion, he had even taken reporters straight from a news conference to a site and ‘discovered’ artefacts on cue. Despite this, and the fact that any trained archaeologist could have seen that the soil around the caches had been disturbed, the deception was well received in Japanese academic circles for two decades.
The dig at Kami-Takamori, thanks largely to Fujimura, had become famous worldwide as the oldest Early Palaeolithic site in Japan, with the ages of eight or more cultural layers ranging from 500,000 to 700,000 years. Even more significant amongst scientists was the fact that several finds of stone artefacts indicated levels of symbolic cognition in Homo erectus much earlier than anything suspected from African and European evidence.
Rewriting the textbooks
If it had been true, the Kami-Takamori ‘finds’ could have rewritten the textbooks on human evolution. However, some archaeologists, such as Oda Shizuo and Charles T Keally, had, since at least 1985, published skeptical papers on the direction in which Japanese Palaeolithic archaeology was travelling.
Most scholars today accept that human beings lived in northern China at least by 700,000 years ago. We know Japan was connected to the continent by land bridges at least twice during the past 700,000 years, and that large terrestrial mammals migrated into the islands over those land bridges. However, Fujimura’s fraud has raised questions of whether humans beings really were in Japan before 35,000 years ago.
Fujimura’s fraudulent discoveries perhaps had been accepted by the Japanese academic elites, as well as the public, because they confirmed a popular notion – the great antiquity of the Japanese people. Even the Mainichi English edition reportage, which used the word ‘fraud’ on November 7, had attenuated this to the more comfortable term ‘fabrication’ the next day. Many scholars have also begun to question not only the closed academic environment, but also the Japanese educational standards that allowed such a hoax to take root and thrive.
Dirty digger comes clean on more faked sites
Meet a 'Stone Age' Man So Original, He's a Hoax
Undermined archaeologist kills himself
More scientific hoaxes
Strange Hoaxes That Endure
Akashi Man, Nipponantropus akashiensis, another Japanese fraud
Pip Wilson's articles are available for your publication, on application. Further details
Receive similar items free each day with a free subscription to Wilson's Almanac ezine. Send a blank email
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