Stone Guardians
Cases unlock in order, like levels. This is case 74 of 100.
Rano Raraku quarry, Easter Island, 8:40 pm. Chilean archaeologist Tomás Riquelme, 61, was found dead at the foot of an unfinished moai by a park ranger on the night patrol.
A heavy blow to the head. His watch stopped at 7:47 pm. It looked like a fall on the slope, but there was no loose rock anywhere near him.
Three people from the archaeological station in Hanga Roa had scores to settle with him. One of them climbed up to the quarry at nightfall.
The archaeological station's lab in Hanga Roa, stacked boxes of samples, an old fan turning.
Suspects
Liesel BrandtGerman archaeologist, Tomás's rival, 48
Hotu PakaratiRapa Nui guide and watchman at the quarry entrance, 35
Rowan PrescottAustralian documentary photographer, 39
The real case
Shinichi Fujimura's archaeological fraud
Japan, 2000
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
For two decades, amateur archaeologist Shinichi Fujimura was celebrated in Japan for discovering ever older stone tools, which pushed back the human presence on the archipelago by hundreds of thousands of years. He was called "God's hands".
In November 2000, the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper published photos of him burying artifacts at an excavation site before "discovering" them. He admitted the fraud; finds from more than 160 sites were discarded and school textbooks had to be rewritten.
The game borrows the archaeological discovery fabricated by its own author for fame and exposed by those who investigated. The murder, the characters and the outcome are fiction.
Sources
Case glossary
Words from this case you might not know.
- moai
- The giant stone statues of human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island.
- Rapa Nui
- The native Polynesian people of Easter Island, and their name for the island and their language.