An ancient tomb containing remarkable 1,500-year-old armor has been found on the island of Kyushu in Japan.
A rare "tanko" cuirass found in a tomb on the island of Kyushu, Japan.
It is an exceptional armor of the V e century CE which was accidentally discovered in late December 2017, in Shibushi, on the island of Kyushu in Japan. Road works have indeed led to the discovery of a prestigious 1500-year-old tomb, this iron armor called "tanko" being placed near a coffin of stones. "Its preservation is extremely rare , explains Laurent Nespoulous, archaeologist at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (Inalco), and specialist in the Japanese Iron Age, joined by Sciences et Avenir. The acidic earth usually soaks up these metal pieces, and complete armor from this era is almost never found."
A sword, its scabbard and other items such as iron arrowheads, a spear and an iron ax were also excavated from the sarcophagus. Intact, the armor was placed near the head of the deceased. "This cuirass was made for a powerful ruler of the region “, specifies Tatsuya Hashimoto, professor of archeology at the Kagoshima University Museum, to the Japanese daily Asahi Shimbum . Iron – the art of which was not truly mastered by the Japanese until the 8th th century – was then considered a mark of power.
At dusk of the IV e century, the princes of the Japanese archipelago ganged up on the rulers of the Korean peninsula, with whom they then went to war. “In the aftermath of these periods of conflict, equipment with a military connotation began to appear in tombs in Japan, which was not the case until then “says Laurent Nespoulous. And the burials most notably marked by the use of this military equipment took place south of Kyushu, the third largest island in Japan. It was most often stored inside underground burial chambers - masonry hypogea and not tumuli - like Shibushi. Some of these burials could contain several deceased and massive deposits of armament, up to fifteen swords.
At the time, all the elites of the Japanese archipelago were buried in such monuments. The newly revealed tomb, which dates back to the Kofun period (late 3rd th in the VII th century), is one of the largest tunnel-tombs identified to date. “Several of these tunnel-tombs are among the largest in the world, a fact often overlooked in the West », continues the young protohistorian.