Details about an undersea site reportedly containing ancient city walls more than 10,000 years old will soon be unveiled as the government announced its support for an exploratory project yesterday.
Huang Yung-chuan (黃永川), deputy director of the National Museum of History, announced the project in a press conference.
The site, located between Hsichi island (
"After numerous attempts, we finally discovered the stone walls at the northeast side of Tungchi island at the end of September," said Steve Shieh (謝新曦), chairman of the Chinese Dolphin Diving Club.
"These stone walls are on average 1m high and 50cm wide. They are about 100m long. Our water sonar date revealed there are about five such stone walls at the site," said Shieh.
The Public Television Service Foundation (PTSF) deployed a team to the archeological site to shoot film of the walls.
"When I was examining the stone walls, I found heaps of coral pieces and pebbles at the leeward sides of the walls. These could hardly be natural accumulations," said Ke Chin-yuan (
Huang said the accumulation of coral pieces and pebbles is only one piece of evidence proving the stone walls may have been built by humans.
"The walls are very straight and only 50cm wide. It is extremely rare for natural forces to form such straight and thin walls," Huang said.
Huang said these walls could even have been built about 10,000 years ago.
Tian Wen-miin (
"These sonar graphs show the seabed around the site is very even. However, at near the stone walls there are many regular protrusions that look like alleys, staircases, walls and stages," Tian said.
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Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supports peaceful unification with China, and President William Lai (賴清德) is “a bit naive” for being a “practical worker for Taiwanese independence,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an interview published yesterday. Asked about whether the KMT is on the same page as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on the issue of Taiwanese independence or unification with China, Ma told the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily that they are not. While the KMT supports peaceful unification and is against unification by force, the DPP opposes unification as such and
CASES SLOWING: Although weekly COVID-19 cases are rising, the growth rate has been falling, from 90 percent to 30 percent, 14 percent and 6 percent, the CDC said COVID-19 hospitalizations last week rose 6 percent to 987, while deaths soared 55 percent to 99, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that the recent wave of infections would likely peak this week. People aged 65 or older accounted for 79 percent of the hospitalizations and 90 percent of the deaths, the majority of whom have or had underlying health conditions, CDC data showed. The youngest hospitalized case last week was a six-month-old, who was born preterm and was unvaccinated, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. The infant had a fever, coughing and a runny nose early this month, but