Further scientific investigation is needed to determine the age of a skeleton recently found on Liang Island located some 200 miles west of Taiwan, according to the Council for Cultural Affairs April 2.
The CCA made the remarks after the remains, discovered by a local archaeological team, were believed to date back to as long as 7,900 years ago. The bones are thought to have belonged to a male, around 167 centimeters tall, who was between 30 and 35 years of age at the time of his death.
“We will send the remains to the U.S. and Germany for more professional accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating and DNA biochemistry analysis,” the CCA said, explaining that “to prevent damaging the remains, only the age of the specimens of shells nearby were identified using the carbon-14 dating method, hence, there is no direct evidence for which era the skeleton is from.
“If it turns out that the remains are from the Neolithic era 7,000 or 8,000 years ago, Matsu’s historical status will be rewritten,” the CCA said. Liang Island forms part of an archipelago known as the Matsu Islands, administered by Lienchiang County.
According to the CCA, plans for archaeology at Liang Island surfaced last July when Lienchiang County Magistrate Yang Sui-sheng came across cultural layers of shell mounds at the island. He then contacted an archaeological team with Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology.
Liang Island, which has an area of about 400 square meters, is occupied by the ROC armed forces. (HZW)
Write to Grace Kuo at morningk@mail.gio.gov.tw