- YOGYAKARTA -- Mystery continues
to shroud a number of apparently historical objects that were found after
a mudslide flushed out a trench of over a kilometer in length in the middle
of rice fields in the Yogyakarta village of Ngestihardjo.
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- Villagers and local officials remain in the dark over
the origin and dates of the baffling finding. A small boat, black balls
with fuses popping out in what could be bombs, ammunition, a keris, which
is a traditional Javanese dagger, and a dragon shaped stone were among
the objects uncovered. The trench also contained piles of bricks of an
as yet unknown construction.
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- Local police took away the bombs and the ammunition,
but villagers placed the other objects on public display, making it difficult
for the Yogyakarta archeological office to examine their origins.
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- Hundreds of onlookers from the city and surrounding areas
continue to flock to the site since its discovery on Thursday last week.
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- Heavy rainfall broke a 20-meter-wide hole of an embankment,
causing water and mud to flush out the around one and a half kilometer
long trench. About 20 to 25 meters wide, it cuts through a section of the
rice fields and a street before ending at the Bedog River. A small stream
of water runs inside the deep trench where locals found the objects.
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- Some of the objects, such as the boat, appear to be of
a more recent period, said Indra Dewa Kusuma, a staffer at the local archeological
office who was taking inventory of the finding.
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- The bricks, he said, could date back to the late 19th
century as there was once an artificial lake to irrigate the surrounding
rice fields and provide water for a nearby royal palace, a kraton that
has long been abandoned.
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- But Indra added that the bricks could come from an earlier
period, reasoning that the builders had used limestone as mortar commonly
found in much older construction.
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