La Mano degli dei : la frode Fujimura e l’origine dei Giapponesi

In November 2000, the Mainichi published the photographs of archaeologist Fujimura Shin'ichi burying fake Lower Palaeolithic tools in the site of Zazaragi, as he had been doing for more than 25 years throughout Japan. Apparently, Fujimura had perpetrated his hoax in order to make a name of himself. But also, and perhaps unwillingly, he had provided Japanese archaeology with the material needed to build an improbable picture of Lower Palaeolithic Japan as the homeland of the cognitively and spiritually most advanced Homo erectus in the world. On the basis of the then dominating paradigma of hominization, the multiregional model, that Nippongenjin was considered to be the ancestor of the Japanese. The hoax thus validated the most basic tenet of nihonjinron ideology: the existence of a continuous lineage of Japanese people since 700 hundred thousand years ago.