A team from Academia Sinica has recently discovered a neolithic stone hearth in a cave in Taitung County that has been confirmed as the earliest human relic to have been discovered in Taiwan, Taitung County Government said yesterday.
After a year of investigation and research, the prehistoric archeology research team discovered the hearth at the Basiandong (Eight Deities) Historical Site (八仙洞遺址), which carbon-dating reveals to be 20,000 years old, an official with the county’s Cultural and Tourism Bureau said.
“The sample proves that humans were living in Taiwan more than 20,000 years ago,” the official quoted Tsang Chen-hua (臧振華), deputy director of Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology, who led the research team, as saying.
In addition to the fire place, the research team also discovered seven new caves, bringing the number of caves discovered at the Basiandong Historical Site to 24, the Taitung official said.
Taitung Cultural and Tourism Bureau said the Basiandong site attracted the attention of Japanese archeologists during the colonial period and they explored the main cave, located in a coastal cliff area in the county’s Changbin Township (長濱).
Between 1968 and 1969, a National Taiwan University archeology team led by professor Sung Wen-hsun (宋文薰) worked on the Basiandong Historical Site again, discovering four samples that were later carbon dated as being between 5,000 and 15,000 years old.
To verify the dates of the relics, the Council for Cultural Planning and Development asked Academia Sinica to conduct a new round of research.
“The discoveries by Tsang and his team are tremendously important in terms of Taiwan’s neolithic archeological research,” the official said.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
Taiwanese singer Jay Chou (周杰倫) plans to take to the courts of the Australian Open for the first time as a competitor in the high-stakes 1 Point Slam. The Australian Open yesterday afternoon announced the news on its official Instagram account, welcoming Chou — who celebrates his 47th birthday on Sunday — to the star-studded lineup of the tournament’s signature warm-up event. “From being the King of Mandarin Pop filling stadiums with his music to being Kato from The Green Hornet and now shifting focus to being a dedicated tennis player — welcome @jaychou to the 1 Point Slam and #AusOpen,” the
RSS