Japanese Paleolithic hoax

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The Japanese Paleolithic hoax (旧石器捏造事件, Kyū Sekki Netsuzō Jiken) consisted of a number of lower and middle paleolithic finds in Japan discovered by amateur archaeologist Shinichi Fujimura, which were later all discovered to have been faked. The incident became one of the biggest scandals in archaeological circles in Japan after the story was published by the Mainichi Shimbun on November 5, 2000.

For finds from the Jōmon period or later, structures were originally made by digging below the then-current surface, causing changes in soil composition that make it much easier to discern fakes from real finds. The Paleolithic hoax highlighted some of the shortcomings of Japanese archaeological research into paleolithic sites, such as an over-reliance on the dating of volcanic ash layers while ignoring other soil layers.