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Creative Pranks and Hoaxes in History

Khalid Elhassan February 2, 2020 33 min

3. Hoaxing 101: Tell People What They Want to Believe

In 1981, Shinichi Fujimura discovered stone age artifacts dating back 40,000 years. That established that humans were present in Japan for at least that long. It was a spectacular find which launched Fujimura’s career, gained him national and international fame, and quickly put him in the forefront of Japanese archaeology.

Fujimura’s discovery was particularly significant for the Japanese. Japan has a longstanding love-hate relationship with China, and is constantly uneasy with the fact that its civilization and culture are derived from China’s. Evidence of human presence in Japan for tens of thousands of years offered an out, and supported a counter-thesis that Japanese culture and civilization might have actually developed independently of China’s. A discovery that supports what people want to believe is a discovery that will be eagerly embraced by the public.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.