One of two images carved into rocks at an archeological site in Chino, Nagano Prefecture, where the nation's first remains of a Jomon period (ca 10,000 B.C.-ca 300 B.C.) settlement was confirmed--has been determined to be of considerably more recent origin, the city's board of education said Saturday. According to an interim report issued by the Chino City Board of Education, investigations by the Togariishi Jomon Archeological Museum, which owns the two drawings, found a carved image of a man shooting an arrow from a bow on a side of a volcanic rock, first said to have dated back to the middle Jomon period, was bogus. The education board is expected to compile an official investigation report by the end of fiscal 2004. When the carving on the rock--30 centimeters high, 19 centimeters wide and seven centimeters thick--was found in 1967, the director of the museum and others said it was characteristic of drawings of humans from the middle Jomon period. Through its investigation the museum judged the drawing was forged at an unknown time since the picture bears a close resemblance to the one found carved into a bronze bell-shaped vessel of the Yayoi period (ca 300 B.C.-ca A.D. 300), which was unearthed in Kagawa Prefecture.

After tests to recreate the drawing using nails, knives, pieces of obsidian--often used for carving stone implements during the Jomon period--and other materials on the same type of rock, the museum found the lines on the rock were like those carved with a knife. The person who found the rock is deceased. The Jomon museum suspended the exhibition of the image and started an investigation after Hideji Harunari, a professor of the National Museum of Japanese History, said in January that it might not have been as old as previously believed as the carved lines had no trace of weathering. "We had never investigated the drawing since it was considered as important historical object," said Yukio Ukai, the director of the Jomon museum.

View: Full Article | Source: The Daily Yomiuri