Taiwan's Ancient Copper Casters

TanainCowboy over at Forumosa forums had a pointer to this article about copper casting among Taiwan's aborigines....

Among Taiwan's prehistoric cultural relics and sites, there previously had not been a single place that provided a clear cultural connection between those who lived at those places in the past and the indigenous tribes of today that are spread around Taiwan. However, that situation is now changing. A dig has been going on for 14 months at the Chiuhsianglan site in the Taimali area of Taidong County. The dig has yielded a totem pole featuring snakes, and archaeologists believe that this indicates the site has a clear connection to cultures that existed 2,000 years ago and that are still present to this day. The unearthing of the artifacts has been extremely important to creating a history of aboriginal cultural in Taiwan.

In addition to the snake totems that show a possible connection to modern aboriginal practices, the site also yielded copper artifacts:

Lee said that the timeline of the Chiuhsianglan site is somewhat later than the Peinan site, which dates to the New Stone Age, and is in the time between the New Stone Age and the beginning of the Metal Age, which was about 2,000 years ago. He added that this was the first time that molds were found at an archaeological site in Taiwan. Lee noted that the molds, which were made out of sandstone, could be used to produce copper bells, knife handles, iron vessels, ear ornaments and glass beads. He said that the structure of the molds is quite intricate.

Lee said that based on these discoveries, he believes that Taiwan indigenous tribes at that time already had a fairly solid knowledge of and ability in industrial arts. He even went so far to say that the Chiuhsianglan area could have been an area where a factory was located.

Lee said that in the past, there have been sites in Taiwan that have yielded bronze artifacts. Previously, archaeologists believed that these bronze items had come from abroad. However, the discovery of the molds at Chiuhsianglan has overturned that theory. Judging from intricacy of the molds, the technology for the molds, however, may have come from overseas. On the other hand, people in Taiwan may have already developed such technology at an even earlier time, which would explain why the technology displayed in the molds found at the Chiuhsianglan site is so advanced.

[Taiwan]