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Saturday, February 04, 2017

Missing Megaliths...

EastCoast081
At one of the megalith sites outside Dulan.

From a 1967 work...
On the lower slopes of the mountains behind the hamlet of Chung Yung, known also as Katsawan, behind the town of Ch'ang Pin, a megalithic site was investigated by Sung in 1963. No megaliths remained in their original position at that time; all have been rolled down the hill from their original plateau site to the village below and incorporated in walls and house foundations. Shouldered stones are the most abundant. An important feature of the site is the presence of large round stones, usually basalt, of doughnut shape with a hole in the center. They are reminiscent of the stone money of the island of Yap in Micronesia, but are somewhat smaller in scale. The only other site with stones of this shape thus far encountered is T'ai Yuan. Coarse, orange, gritty pottery is common, and a few sherds of cord-marked pottery were also found. A small coarse, orange effigy of a dog or pig was found by Sung, and a similar specimen was illustrated by Kanaseki and Kokubu from Peinan (Kanaseki and Kokubu 1957: 55). One wonders whether or not these animal effigies have any relationship to the famous ones from Lanyu.
One wonders how many of Taiwan's standing stones have become foundations, walls, tables... gravel.
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