The site, about a mile below the Lake Murray dams, apparently was a longtime meeting and trading spot for migrant tribes, many of whose names and culture are unknown, local archaeologists say.

The finds — tools, eating implements and weapons, among other things — should provide multiple clues about ancient life, archaeologists say.

The site was discovered in 2006 as part of a federally required search of parcels with possible historic significance. That search was among the things required of South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. as part of a review of its lake operations.

But the notion that the end of the old German Democratic Republic, as East Germany was properly known, was an accident triggered by a journalist's spontaneous question has now been challenged. In an interview with the German regional public broadcaster MDR Riccardo Ehrmann, 79, who last year was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit by the German government, revealed that a ruling party official had called him before the press conference urging him to ask about the new travel law.

In the interview, broadcast on April 16 in Germany, Ehrmann said: "The question concerning the travel law: that was no coincidence." He had received a "mysterious phone call," he said, from the "submarine" — a reference to the conference room of the East German state news agency ADN. Although Ehrmann in the interview didn't reveal the identity of the caller, he has since been identified as Gunter Potschke, general director of the ADN and a personal friend of Ehrmann's.

Gunter Schabowski, meantime, insists that his announcement at the press conference was spontaneous and called Ehrmann's new version of the story "completely absurd."

But historians find the story entirely plausible. Hans-Hermann Hertle from the Potsdam-based Center for Research on Contemporary History tells TIME that he had "already wondered about that 15 years ago." Hertle cites the fact that an American reporter present at the press conference, when attempting to speak, was cut short by Schabowski, who then allowed the Italian journalist to ask his question first, as an indication that Ehrmann's question had been prompted by the party. But neither Ehrmann, Potschke nor Schabowski confirmed Hertle's suspicion back then.

Most historians have long recognised that William Wallace was wrongly convicted of treason in London in 1305.

The knight – effectively the ruler of Scotland – had been accused of betraying an English crown that he did not recognise.

Gerry Sinclair, chief executive of the SCCRC, said last night that the organisation would not carry out such a review.

The Fishkill site’s story is not entirely lost. Historians have chronicled its place in the revolutionary effort, but it has been described as “the last of the important Revolutionary War sites yet to be properly explored, studied and preserved.” It became a place where food, grain, clothes and ammunition were stored in more than 10 buildings, with a prison, a hospital, bakeries, blacksmiths, stables and workshops for the manufacture of almost everything the troops needed.

Almost none of it remains, save for the Van Wyck Homestead, an early-18th-century Dutch Colonial house that served as the depot headquarters and now functions as a museum in the shadow of Interstate 84.

Some critics, local historical society members who formed Fishkill Historical Focus to lobby for the preservation of the site, say the town chose commerce over history. “So many local people have no idea what they have here because the town has been so intent on covering the entire town in blacktop,” said Mara Farrell of Fishkill Historical Focus. “The history is inconvenient.”

BUT the town supervisor, Joan A. Pagones, said that Fishkill did not have the ability to arbitrarily turn down appropriate development. And some seem to think that what’s lost is lost. The latest proposal for the site was for a 50,000-square-foot retail and restaurant center.

But these days, no one, including the site’s developer, Scott Jerutis, expects that to materialize. With the recession, little is being built. And advances in ground-penetrating radar have led to the discovery of more than 100 graves in a corner of the site, and there could be many more. Paving over history is one thing; paving over graves is another. The State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation is encouraging the town to protect the site, saying the opportunity to preserve it is unlikely to come again.

Maybe before the next strip center or retail plaza is proposed, someone will. But for now and the foreseeable future, the site figures to sit — revolutionary ghosts underground, mall across the street, traffic zipping up and down Route 9 — not a preserved monument, but not a paved-over memory either.