"I'll paint you a picture, and you keep it for a few hundred years, then claim it was given to you by a great Huaxia painter. It might be worth a lot of money." Chen Yiyang joked with Moy Hua.
So Moy Hua understood the significance of that piece by Li Bai just now.
Although it's likely from the Tang Dynasty, not all old items are valuable.
This stuff is only wanted by museums domestically for collection and exhibition, private collectors wouldn't bother taking a look.
Because private collectors aren't fools; they collect antiques believing that as long as the economy keeps growing, these antiques will definitely become more valuable.
Moreover, keeping physical items at home is much safer than investing money outside.
But a piece of art forged by a common person of the Tang Dynasty has no room for appreciation in value.
"It seems our Japanese archaeological field is quite keen on this kind of forgery, without knowing the reason."
Moy Hua didn't have any particular feelings about his Japanese friend showing him forged calligraphy and paintings.
"After all, we've had one of the rare archaeological forgery incidents on a global scale here."
If Chen Yiyang's guess wasn't wrong, the incident Moy Hua was referring to should be the infamous Fujimura Shinichi forgery case.
This event undoubtedly counts as a scandal in the global archaeological community.
However, secretly, some Western countries might be doing worse, but their forgery skills are high, so they aren't easily caught.
In the 1970s, Japan's economy started to soar, becoming the second in the world and first in Asia.
At that time, the entire nation of Japan began expanding rapidly.
Sony founder Akio Morita, deemed the "God of Management" by Japanese people, and a right-wing politician collaborated to write a book titled "Japan Can Say No," roughly predicting that Japan would soon become number one in the world.
Besides being economically dominant, Japan also began pursuing spiritual strength.
Thus, the Japanese academic community sparked a frenzy to trace Stone Age history, aiming to prove Japan leads other Asian countries, entering the Stone Age the earliest.
This demonstrates Japan's strength is ancient, not solely due to later learning from Huaxia and Western cultures that made it strong.
In this background, an amateur archaeologist named Fujimura Shinichi emerged.
Initially, he just participated as an archaeological assistant in excavations of civilization sites.
But soon, he realized it's hard to stand out this way; indeed, what's not there can't be found.
So, he simply secretly manufactured a stone tool and placed it in a stratum from forty thousand years ago.
The next day, in front of others, he unearthed this stone tool from that forty-thousand-year-old stratum.
Thus, Fujimura Shinichi pushed Japan's human activity history forward by ten thousand years, instantly becoming a hero in Japan.
By then, Japan began proclaiming that over forty thousand years ago, there was human civilization on this land entering the Stone Age.
Although this data is excellent, compared to Huaxia's stone tool finds from strata dating back a million years, it's still slightly inferior, unsatisfying for the Japanese.
Therefore, Fujimura Shinichi decided to act again.
In 1984, Fujimura Shinichi used the same method and placed a fabricated stone tool in a stratum from 170,000 years ago on an archaeological site, advancing Japan's stone tool history to 170,000 years ago.
Of course, this still couldn't fulfill Japan's desire to be Asia's earliest Stone Age civilization.
Thus, in 1993, Fujimura Shinichi used the same method again, finding a Paleolithic tool dated to 400,000 years ago.
This discovery drew international archaeological attention to Fujimura Shinichi's outcomes.
After all, this somewhat challenges common knowledge.
But by then, Fujimura Shinichi was in a difficult position.
If he stopped, focus would easily shift to his previous discoveries, leading to easy investigation and exposure.
Only by continuously forging, satisfying Japan's own fantasies, and tying his outcomes to Japanese national pride, could Fujimura Shinichi's forgery remain undetected.
Thus, in 1999, Fujimura Shinichi directly announced he discovered a stone tool over 700,000 years old.
This record approached the earliest Paleolithic sites found in Asia, directly making Fujimura Shinichi the deputy director of Japan's Paleolithic Cultural Research Institute.
International suspicion grew even more.
Even the passionate Japanese began feeling something was amiss.
So, a journalist installed a camera near the site where Fujimura Shinichi worked, recording 24 hours a day.
That night, Fujimura Shinichi came as usual to the site's stratum, preparing to place a stone tool for forgery.
The entire forgery process was completely filmed, and Fujimura Shinichi was caught red-handed.
After the video was released, Fujimura Shinichi stubbornly claimed this was the only forgery, saying all his previous discoveries were genuine.
But upon investigation, it was found that in the 20-plus years prior, at least 150 out of 180 ancient sites Fujimura Shinichi participated in were forgeries.
This led to global archaeologists losing trust in the Japanese archaeological community.
After all, Fujimura Shinichi's forgery history spanned a whole 20 years.
The entire Japanese archaeology community watched Fujimura Shinichi forge time and again.
Saying Japanese archaeologists knew nothing about this is absolutely impossible.
After all, archaeologists are more aware than anyone how lucky they must be to find a stone tool from strata tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Expert knowledge only helps analyze that this area might have ancient human activity.
But unearthing ancient human-used stone tools here solely relies on luck.
Fujimura Shinichi was akin to someone who can win the lottery jackpot every few years.
With such luck, probably all of Japan's lottery could be won by him alone.
And the Japanese archaeology community watched Fujimura Shinichi forge for two decades.
Moreover, Fujimura Shinichi's forgery history coincidentally began in Japan's economic boom era and ended in Japan's economic downturn.
Chen Yiyang speculated that the Japanese archaeological community's elites probably knew about Fujimura Shinichi's forgery from the start.
However, due to political needs, they condoned his forgery.
If Japan's economy hadn't declined and smoothly became world number one, they'd likely never allow Fujimura Shinichi to be exposed for forgery but would fully support Fujimura Shinichi in pushing Japan's Stone Age history to lead globally, claiming humanity originated from the Japanese Archipelago.
