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.
Sources
In the game
Stone Guardians
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.
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.
