Iron Age Taiwan

Tainan Cowboy was kind enough to pass me this link to another interesting archaeology story out of Taiwan this month...

A half-century ago, an Air Force colonel flying over Guanyin Mountain in Taiwan experienced a sudden disruption of his compass. He thought that there might be a large mass of magnetic ore in the ground below, and sought the opinion of a geologist, who went to the site to explore it. So it was that Taiwan's only Iron Age prehistoric site, the "Shihsanhang," was discovered.

....

Turn the clock back three millennia to Pinglin in Hualian. Here, a group of artisans are laboriously using jade axes to cut and shape jade, creating jade beads, jade rings and other jade objects. The jade itself and the items made from it were not only sold all over the island, but also exported. The story that, at the time, "three thousand years ago, Taiwan was the Jade Empire of Southeast Asia" has recently been gradually fleshed out through the work of archaeologists cooperating with scientists.

[Taiwan]