Several ancient Roman and Ottoman coins have been found in the ruins of the 12th- to 15th-century Katsuren Castle in Okinawa, the first such discovery in Japan. The find suggests “a link between Okinawa and the Western world,” the local board of education said.
While most of Japan remained isolated from foreign influence until the 19th century, Okinawa—an island equidistant to China and Japan—served as an important trade route with the rest of Asia. But it is a mystery how the coins ended up at the castle, which was named a Unesco World Heritage site in 2000 as part of nine related properties of the Kingdom of Ryukyu. “I thought that they were replicas that had been dropped there by tourists,” Hiroki Miyagi, an archaeologist who has studied the objects, told CNN. “There is a possibility that Chinese traders got the coins from Muslim traders,” Miyagi added in the New York Times.
X-ray analysis shows that some of the Roman the coins, dating from 300 to 400 AD, appear to be stamped with an image of Constantine the Great and a soldier holding a spear. Engravings on the Ottoman coin date it to 1687. The coins are on display in Okinawa at Uruma City Yonagusuku Historical Museum until 25 November.
