25, were dug up from about 1 meter (yard) underground in a layer believed to be from the 14th to 15th century. The coins, which are on display at the Uruma City Yonagusuku Historical Museum through Nov. The remaining five are still being examined. "There is almost no mistake" about their authenticity, said Makiko Tsumura, a curator at the Ancient Orient Museum in Tokyo, though she allowed that they could also be counterfeit versions from about the same time.įour of the coins have are from the third to fourth-century Roman Empire, and a fifth one from the 17th-century Ottoman Empire. While the find has yet to be submitted for publication in an academic journal, an outside expert is convinced that the coins are real. The 10 copper coins were unearthed in December 2013 at the 12th-15th century Katsuren Castle, a UNESCO World Heritage site, during an annual excavation for study and tourism promotion by the board of education in Uruma, a city in central Okinawa. This 2013 photo released by Uruma City Board of Education shows an excavation site where 10 coins including a few likely dating to the Roman Empire were found at Katsuren Castle in Uruma on Japan's southernmost prefectural island of Okinawa. While the find has yet to be submitted for publication in an academic journal, an outside expert is convinced the coins are real. How did the coins, some dating to the third or fourth century, wind up half a world away in a medieval Japanese castle on the island of Okinawa? Experts suspect they may have arrived centuries later via China or Southeast Asia, not as currency but as decoration or treasure. The discovery, announced last month, is baffling. "I was so excited I almost forgot what I was there for, and the coins were all we talked about," said Toshio Tsukamoto of the Gangoji Institute for Research of Cultural Property in Nara, an ancient Japanese capital near Kyoto.
He had been to archaeological sites in Italy and Egypt, and recognized the "little round things" as old coins, including a few likely dating to the Roman Empire.
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