5. Japanese Archaeology Textbooks Were Based on Massive Fraud
Shinichi Fujimora worked on over a hundred archaeological projects around Japan after his first discovery. Amazingly, the spectacular good fortune with which he began his career continued without cease or letup, and Fujimora continued to find older and older artifact. As his lucky streak continued, Fujimora’s finds pushed Japan’s human pre-history further and further back. His fame and prestige, already high, reached stratospheric levels in 1993, when he discovered Stone Age evidence of humans near the village of Tsukidate, that dated back over half a million years. At a stroke, Japan became the equal of its rival, China, in the archaeological antiquity scale. That streak was remarkable. So fortunate did Fujimura seem in his ability to unearth objects that few if any other archaeologists could find, that awestruck admirers referred to the seemingly divinely guided Fujimora as “God’s Hands”.
The man’s archaeological skills seemed too good to be true. As is often the case, things that seem too good to be are usually just that. In 2000, Japan was rocked when a daily newspaper published three photographs that showed the respected and celebrated archaeologist planting supposedly ancient Stone Age tools at a dig site. Fujimora was forced to come clean after he was caught red handed on film. He admitted that he had planted evidence not only at that site, but in other locations across Japan, and throughout his entire career. When asked why he did that, a sobbing Fujimora tearfully responded: “the devil made me do it“.