Pottery sherds and stone hammers that were recently unearthed in an area in Dalongdong, downtown Taipei were confirmed by an archaeologist Thursday to be prehistoric artifacts belonging to the Neolithic Xuntangpu culture. 

Judging from the texture and shape of the artifacts and using Carbon 14 dating, Liu Yi-chang, a researcher at Academia Sinicas Institute of History and Philology, said the sherds belong to the Xuntangpu culture, which dates back to the middle of the New Stone Age －－ roughly 4,500 years old. 

Liu, who led a team of archaeologists to carry out a dig under a contract with the Taipei Cultural Affairs Bureau at a construction site near the Lanzhou Police Station in Dalongdong, said the site is now identified as another Xuntangpu prehistoric cultural site. Similar sites of the Xungtangpu culture, which is also a "cord-marked pottery" culture （imprinted with hemp rope）, have been discovered in the Taipei Botanical Garden, Yuanshan and Zhishanyan in the northern suburbs of Taipei city, he said. 

According to Liu, team members excavated sherds of prehistoric artifacts two meters deep at the site next to the Lanzhou Police Station, where a parking tower is to be built next to the Dalong Elementary School. When they dug 3.6 meters deep, they also unearthed sedimentary layers dating back 6,000 years ago －－ when Taipei was a lake. 

Liu inferred that between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago, people in the Taipei area already had agriculture, a system of barter and engaged in trade activities using valuable stones such as jade as currency. 

These people, who were believed to be the earliest "Taiwanese, " used boats to ferry around －－ from Dalongdong to Mt. Datun, to Yuanshan or to Zhishanyan, for example, Liu posited. 

Liu said prehistoric sites of the Xuntangpu culture have also been discovered in Taiwans southern cities of Tainan and Kaohsiung and even in northern Philippines, where "Taiwanese" were believed to have ferried several thousands of years ago. 

Officials from Taipei Cultural Affairs Bureau have ordered a suspension of construction and development work at the Dalongdong site in accordance with the cultural and heritage protection law. 

The unearthing of the new Xuntangpu site in Dalongdong is expected to contribute significantly toward archaeological studies and research of Taiwans prehistoric culture, Liu said.