A leading archaeologist admitted Sunday he fabricated the discovery in Miyagi Prefecture of stoneware at first believed to be more than 600,000 years old by burying the objects himself.
Shinichi Fujimura, 50, deputy director at the Tohoku Paleolithic Cultural Research Institute, said he had made up the find as he wanted to go on record as excavating Japan's oldest stoneware.
A research team led by Fujimura announced on Oct. 27 that it had discovered eight stoneware pieces that experts believed were the oldest in Japan from a layer of earth more than 600,000 years old in the Kamitakamori ruins in Tsukidate, Miyagi Prefecture.
The archaeologists said the stoneware dated back to the Early Paleolithic period, as early humans such as Peking Man lived in caves.