The Taichung City Government’s decision to allow the construction of a building on the site where the earliest traces of human activity in central Taiwan dating back about 5,000 years were discovered was on Thursday questioned by a city councilor.
Speaking during a city council session, Taichung City Councilor Chiang Chao-kuo (江肇國) of the Democratic Progressive Party said that the city removed the 4,000-year-old artifacts and human remains so that the developer could resume construction.
The National Museum of Natural Science found 48 human remains, including a woman holding an infant, which were carbon dated to be between 4,000 and 4,800 years old, in an area measuring 400m2 at a construction site on Anhe Road.
The remains of the woman cradling an infant in her arms caught the world’s attention after the finding was reported late last month.
According to the museum, the finding proved the researchers’ theory that human activities existed in central Taiwan at least 5,000 years ago, in the early days of the Neolithic Age, since some of the artifacts are estimated to be 5,640 years old.
Chiang called the city government’s decision to remove the human remains and artifacts, which include more than 4,000 pottery pieces and stone tools, and preserve them in another location “a disgrace,” since it did not follow the law regarding the preservation of cultural assets.
The city’s designation of another plot near the site as the Anhe historical site last year was a trick to distract people from the resumption of construction, Chiang said.
Taichung City Bureau of Cultural Affairs Director Wang Chih-cheng (王志誠) said the human remains and artifacts found on the construction site had been salvaged before construction was allowed to resume.
The decision to use a nearby park as a historical site that will be used to preserve the findings was made by an expert committee, which believed a large number of artifacts from the same period can be found, Wang said.
Wang added that the city plans to apply to the Ministry of Culture for the park to be designated as a national historical site.
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