Aside from these baseless rumors, since the development of modern archaeology, there have indeed been many incidents of counterfeiting of cultural relics and antiques abroad.
Shinichi Fujimura: Using falsification to "advance" the study of Japanese history.
According to the British newspaper "The Scotsman", in the past few decades, Fujimura Shinichi has been the most amazing name in Japanese historiography, and he is known as Japan's "god of stone tools" and "hand of God".
As an amateur archaeologist, after 1974, Fujimura Shin began to conduct field investigations, and he almost always found artifacts, which were getting older.
In 1981, he discovered the remains of a 40,000-year-old block of scattered wood, and single-handedly pushed the history of human existence in Japan to 40,000 years ago.
In August 1992, he began excavating the Kamitakamori site, which has since become a cornucopia of paleolithic excavations in Japan. After excavating 500,000, 600,000, and even 700,000-year-old paleolithic tools one after another, Fujimura Shinichi was still not satisfied and threatened to excavate 1 million-year-old paleolithic tools.
For decades, many people have wondered if Shinichi Fujimura is a fake.
Finally, on November 4, 2000, the reporter of the "Mainichi Shimbun" ambushed the excavation site in advance and successfully filmed Fujimura Shinichi's forgery, he took out the so-called "paleolithic tools" from a plastic bag and buried them in the Kamitakamamori archaeological site.
Fujimura, who is on surveillance footage, is secretly burying rocks, ready to surprise everyone.
In 2003, the Japan Archaeological Association reported that 162 sites in which Fujimura Shinichi participated in the excavation were fabricated, and 159 of them were found to have no academic value, including the Kamitakamori site, the pride of Japanese civilization.
Over the past few decades, research on the early and middle Paleolithic period in Japan has almost completely lost its value, various site applications have been withdrawn, and even history textbooks have had to be rewritten.
Japan's Reflection on the "Paleolithic Fabrication Incident".
Crown of Sescia:
A million-dollar fake?
In the 1st century BCE, the first Scythian king, Mogao, established the Scythian regime in Gandhara (in present-day parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan) and gradually expanded into northwestern India.
Due to the long history of the Kingdom of Sescia, the relevant artifacts left behind are very rare, but they are quite precious.
In 1896, a British jeweler said that he had paid a lot of money to buy the solid gold crown worn by the former King of Sessia from India, so the Louvre in France announced that it would pay 200,000 gold francs for the crown.
Later, the staff re-evaluated the collection and confirmed that the crown had welding marks and was only a modern imitation, but fortunately the crown was made of pure gold, and it is not a loss in today's prices.
Papyrus: A twist and turn of chemical fraud.
In 2004, the non-profit ** of the Bank of São Paulo in Turin, Italy, spent 2.75 million euros to buy a batch of papyrus of the Greek "Xu Xiake" Artemidorus, and sent them to the laboratory of the National University of Milan for in-depth research and conservation.
They were intended to be donated to the Egyptian Museum in Turin, the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities outside of Egypt, but were strongly opposed by the museum's director, Eleni Vasilika.
Counterfeit papyrus.
Initially, the C14 test found that the papyrus dates back to between 15 and 85 AD, and the ink is thought to be the same type of ink as the 1st century AD, although it does not match the age of Artemedorus, but it is at least 2000 years old, even if it is a fake, it can be considered an artifact.
Fragment of the work of Artemedorus (Ephesus).
But the story doesn't end, and some experts test it again, and finally discover the forger of the document - Constantine Simonides, a notorious 19th-century counterfeiter of antiquities.
Papyrus from ancient Egypt.
This man was proficient in the forgery of ancient texts, he put some papyrus on zinc nets, treated them with acid, which could simulate the effect of 2,000 years of aging, and then used preserved ancient ink to forge the contents on the paper, and finally forged the work of "Artemidorus".
Persian princess mummy:
The youngest "ancient" princess in history.
In 2000, Pakistani authorities received information that an antiquity worth $11 million was accidentally seized.
According to the interrogation of the antiquities dealer, it was learned that this was a mummy in a coffin, which was found due to **.
The mummy is well preserved, covered with resin bandages, covered with **armor on his chest, wearing a **face mask, and wearing a **crown on his head, similar to the scene when Tutankhamun's coffin was opened.
The most exciting thing is that mysterious cuneiform writing was found on this coffin.
Language experts judged that these cuneiform scripts belonged to the ancient Persian language, and the mummy was a Persian princess named Luo Dujiong.
However, traces of a modern pencil lead were later found in the inscription on the coffin of the "Rodujiong", and carbon-14 dating showed that the straw mat lying in the coffin was made 50 years ago.
Only then did people realize that this so-called mummy was just a fake artifact forged by modern people. Subsequent investigations revealed that the owner of the mummy died in 1996, which means that the mummy was forged no more than 4 years ago.
Crystal Bones: The British Museum was also deceived.
The Aztecs, the original inhabitants of Mexico, carved human skulls out of stone, bone, wood and other materials, called "death heads".
Some of them are carved in crystal, with exaggerated, abstract shapes, a more consistent style, and generally very small.
In January 2005, a crystal skull fraud shocked the archaeological community.
The crystal skulls of the ancient Aztecs in the British Museum's collection are said to be relics of the ancient Aztecs, but researchers have experimented with crystal skulls at the British Museum that the saw line used to distinguish teeth is a jewelry carving technique that was invented only in the 9th century.
Scientists have compared crystal skulls to real human skulls and found that they are not much different from real human skulls.
We know that modern optics was born in the 17th century, and that the accurate understanding of the structure of human bones was only after the rise of anatomy in the 18th century.
The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Forgery That Fooled the Museum?
In 1947, Bedouin shepherds discovered in caves around the settlement of Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea a number of clay jars containing parchment and papyrus scrolls.
Discover the caves of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
These parchment scrolls are confirmed to be some of the early Judaism, **religion**, written in Hebrew script.
These 2,000-year-old scrolls found in caves near the Dead Sea are collectively known as the "Dead Sea Scrolls", which are documents for the study of the history of Judaism, Islam, and ** religion.
At the beginning of the century, a new batch of fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, unidentified and inscribed with the Bible, flowed into the antiquities market.
The fragments were snapped up by private collectors and institutions for millions of dollars. Norwegian scholar Justness told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that since 2002, numerous publications have confirmed that the fragments were fake.
Forged Dead Sea Scrolls.
In October 2018, the Museum of the Bible in Washington admitted that five Dead Sea scrolls in its collection were fake.
In 2017, 16 Dead Sea scrolls from the Museum of the Bible were sent to the German Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, where Professor Rebin conducted a series of tests that resulted in "five fragments showing features inconsistent with their ancient origins" and were judged to be modern forgeries, according to the museum.
The Pirdanes: Almost changed history?
The "Pildans" is a well-known ** in the history of anthropology. In 1913, an ape skull was discovered in the gravel of the Piltdown region of England.
Scientists feel they have found a missing link in evolution between humans and apes, and have published several articles in the quarterly journal of the Royal Geographical Society.
Model of a Pildain skull reconstruction.
This key skull, which haunts scientists, was restored by the British Museum.
The skull is partly human-like, while the other part is very ape-like. But scientists have long believed that this is an intermediate product of evolution.
It wasn't until 1953 that scientists finally revealed that it was just a science**, the masterpiece of Charles Dawson.
Dawson (left) and Woodward (right) during site investigation
1915 John Cook's depiction of a painting Scholars are taking a closer look at the Pildain human skull.
The skull part of the skull belongs to a medieval deceased, the mandible is from an orangutan, and the teeth are from a chimpanzee. This ape skull, known as "Pildan", is just a forgery of a medieval human skull and orangutan teeth.
King Solomon's Stele:
An artifact of a miswritten sentence?
In 2001, a stele dating back to 1000 BC was sent to leading experts in the field of Israeli archaeology.
The inscription on the surface of the stele records the restoration of Solomon's Temple, the first archaeological evidence found for this fabled building.
A still from the BBC Horizon King Solomon's Stele .
But in the end, geoarchaeologist Yuvor. Dr. Goren discovered that the ** of the stele was just a brick taken from the Crusader castle, and the stele even put "I'Repairs'The temple was misspelled as "I."'Damage'Temple", the BBC did a documentary exposing the fake.
Fiji mermaid fossils:
A "kraken" spliced with monkeys
Mermaids have been a hot topic since ancient times. As early as the 3rd century B.C., the Babylonian historian Barossos wrote about mermaids in his book "Ancient History".
In modern times, mermaids have become frequent guests on people's lips after tea and dinner.
Fiji Mermaid (Fiji Mermaid, or Feejee Mermaid), was pThe Barnum Museum advertises as a fake of a siren, but it is actually made from part of the torso and head of a monkey, sewn together with the back half of the fish, and covered with concrete pulp.
However, it was such a shoddy and fake specimen that attracted great attention after being exhibited in the museum, and for nearly 20 years after that, people have been believing that this mermaid specimen is real.
Unfortunately, the Fijian mermaid composite specimen was destroyed in a fire in the 1960s.
After taking stock of so many fraud incidents, it can be found that the reasons for the fraud are traceable.
In the West, for example, most of their archaeological activities are personal acts, and archaeologists are nominally businessmen.
Seeing the fame and fortune of the first wave of people who excavated antiquities, naturally more and more people joined, and the number of cultural relics was limited, so it seemed logical to counterfeit.
Unlike China, where there have been complete written records since the Shang Dynasty, there are actually a lot of gaps in the ancient history of Western countries, and even the Homeric Epics and the Bible are used as the basis for authentic historical references, which leaves a huge space for falsification.
Interestingly, in addition to money, there are also people who falsify artifacts for some more "noble" purpose.
Sanderson Miller, a pioneer of the Gothic Revival in England, was fond of falsifying castle ruins. This is not only to satisfy the special interests of those noble customers, but also to highlight their family heritage and pedigree.
After all, what better way to prove one's noble origins than by pointing out that a castle once belonged to an ancestor?
Author: Yi Xiao.
Editor-in-charge: Shufeng.