The viral upload narrates Ken Arok as the inventor of the lato-lato game. Whether joking or not, the information in the photo makes many people confused about the veracity of this information.
"DID YOU KNOW? This is a statue of Ken Arok who is suspected of being the inventor of the lato-lato game. It is said that he created this game to calm down after killing Mpu Gandring and Tunggul Ametung," wrote a netizen who spread the upload.
So, is it true that Ken Arok is the inventor of lato-lato? Hari Setyawan, an archaeologist at the Borobudur Conservation Center, gave us his view, Wednesday (11/1/2023).
According to the man who is familiarly called Parto, the statue is true. The statue is a statue of the Majapahit era which represents the style before the fall of the kingdom. However, he denied that the area on the statue was lato-lato.
"The depiction of the lato-lato-like attributes of the statue is not lato-lato. But the physical anatomy of the statue," he said.
The statue in the picture is the Bima statue. The statue is 79 cm high and was made in the 15th century.
The last few days the game of lato-lato is booming again after it had faded. Therefore, information about lato-lato is much sought after by people. However, don't just digest the information we receive, let alone believe that there are lato-lato in the iconographic elements of the statue which turn out to be fake news. It can be concluded that Ken Arok, the inventor of lato-lato, is a hoax.