Talk:Japanese Paleolithic hoax

Posting translation

Hello all --

Following from the discussion over at Talk:Japanese Paleolithic, I translated the ja: Wikipedia's article about the Japanese Paleolithic Hoax. I used the version current when I started, revision 464085 from Thursday 23 February 2006, 05:42 (UTC). There have been a few edits since then, which I'll check up on and amend the English here as necessary. For now, I've left the source text at the end of each section for easier critiquing, commented out so it won't get in the way of casual readers. If folks seem to like the translation, I'll get rid of the commented source text at a later date. Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 22:56, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Eirikr: I saw this in the Japanese paleolithic talk. Perhaps the 90% number is from this: "Charles Keally, an archaeologist at Sophia University, Tokyo, notes that these sites [the forged sites by hoaxer] account for virtually the entire archaeological record in Japan before the Upper Palaeolithic. "This leaves us with our oldest evidence for human occupation of Japan at 35,000 years ago" [1]. But I agree, it could be a misinterpretation of the facts and numbers. This is a good read too, if you have the time: [2].

I just found a 90 percent number: [3]. It says that, "90% or more of the Early Paleolithic sites and artifacts were found by one person Fujimura."

And here, "But reviewing all the publications on the Japanese Early and Middle Palaeolithic sites, note 7 and my own notes and memory and the new information being brought out in the media, I feel there is a good chance that all of the Early and Middle Palaeolithic sites that Fujimura has worked on are fabrications. The few sites of this early age that I know of that Fujimura has not worked on have their own problems of validity. We seem to be back to zero on this question of humans in Japan before 35,000 years ago. Which means, we either have to find and/or validate some concrete evidence of humans in Japan in the Middle or Early Palaeolithic, or we have to develop a very good hypothesis explaining why they were not here." [4].

So if 90 per cent of all Early Paelolithic evidence is from the hoaxer, and I believe that almost all of the 180 plus sites of his were deemed definite or probable forgeries, then a supermajority of Early Paelolithic evidence is probably not good evidence. (But I don't think that equals a 90 per cent number per se). Tortfeasor 06:51, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Hey Tortfeasor, thank you for the links. I don't have any problem at all with the statements that pretty much all Japanese early paleolithic archaeology is bumpkus, it's just the 90% figure that didn't seem to jive with what else I was finding, and with no citation, I wasn't sure how valid it was. But with these new links, particularly the athenapub one, this number starts to look a bit more certain. And yes, of the 186 sites Fujimura was involved with, all have apparently been found to be bogus.  :) I'll have a closer look at the links you gave over the course of the day, and if that athenapub quote looks solid enough, I'll add it as the citation for the 90% statement. Cheers! Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 15:56, 18 May 2006 (UTC)