Destination: Sakitari Cave Ruins / Minatogawa Ruins

A trivial coincidence may just turn into a great discovery. The remains of the Minatogawa Man were discovered by businessman and fossil aficionado, Seiho Oyama. Oyama was buying limestone for his home garden, when he found a boar tusk fossilized within the stone. He then visited a quarry in Minatogawa to find the source of the limestone, thinking if he could find an animal fossil, it’d be possible to also find a human fossil. After three years of feverishly excavating the quarry with family and other employees in between work hours, he finally found a skeleton of a Minatogawan, complete with their skull. Oyama’s passion put many researchers to shame, as he’d achieved one of the great discoveries of the century by himself.

The Museum has displayed many different things found inside of ruins, but it does not exhibit the ruins themselves. That is precisely why we want you to make the trek to the source of these discoveries, to places like the Minatogawa Ruins and the Yaese Town Gushikami Museum of History and Folklore, which has a full exhibit dedicated to the Minatogawa Man. Or to the Sakitari Cave Ruins near Yaese, where the Museum carries out the bulk of its digging operations. Husks of Japanese mitten crabs have been excavated alongside Paleolithic Era human bones. Apparently, locals of the area around the Sakitari Caves gathered mitten crabs for sustenance, so it may also be said that the Minatogawa Man foraged them in the same way.

Nowadays the Sakitari Cave Ruins are open to the public through an official guided tour called “Valley of Gangala.” On this tour, you too can listen to this guide and walk through the same limestone valleys the Minatogawa Man surely walked. Take a moment to imagine just what kind of environment the Minatogawa Man lived in as you walk through the real thing.

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