Science: The Diggers

Some of the major finds of diggers, archeologists and paleontologists, recently made or described, include:

¶In Pisidian Antioch,* an expedition financed by the University of Michigan and including Dr. David M. Robinson of Johns Hopkins University, unearthed two paved squares, one dedicated to Tiberius, the other to Augustus, a flight of marble steps and a propylea connecting the Iwo squares. The major find was the ruins of a great temple built in the first century by Augustus with a frieze of bulls’ heads connected by garlands of leaves and fruit.

¶In New Mexico, the students of Phillips Andover Academy completed their fifth season of excavation at Pecos Pueblo, south of Santa Fe. Pecos is one of the ancient Pueblos, and the discoveries are contributing to the reconstruction of pre-European Indian society.

¶In Yucatan, work has been given up until after the rainy season in uncovering the great Mayan City of Chichenitza. A great mosaic floor, several reservoirs lined with stone, and the “court of the thousand columns” were partly cleared, but work is to be continued for perhaps ten years more.

¶In Nebraska, the State Historical Society, making excavations along the banks of the Platte and Loup Rivers, layed bare the foundations of a great Indian settlement, believed to have been founded as early as 1341 and tentatively identified as the city of Quivira. Floors of large houses, pottery, and pieces of Spanish armor believed to have been taken from a massacred Spanish expedition in 1720 were discovered. The floors were circular in shape, and some as large as 60 ft. in diameter. ¶In Ober-St. Veit, a suburb of Vienna, on an oolitic cliff, a terraced settlement of an early Indo-Germanic tribe, dated at perhaps 2500 B. C., was discovered by an expedition directed by Professor Joseph Bayer. Bones of stags, roes, horses, pigs, sheep, goats, dogs and fish were discovered, but no human skeletons.

¶At Sakkara, Egypt, two stone chapels of the Third Dynasty were discovered. They were said to be “the earliest stone buildings ever discovered.”

¶In Tripoli, work has been going forward in uncovering the city of Leptis Magna, birthplace of the Emperor Septimius Severus. The city, 100 miles east of Tripoli, and about five miles from the sea at the present time, was formerly a seaport as the discovery of elaborate wharves proves. It was almost two miles square and the ruins are now buried in from 10 to 50 ft. of sand. A great palace, several statues and baths have been uncovered, and a series of columns nine metres high.

¶In Berlin, Dr. Kurt Sachs of the Prussian State Museum, announced that he had discovered the meaning of two previously unintelligible Assyrian inscriptions dating from the seventh century B. C. He believes that they were musical notations and on the basis of this interpretation has reconstructed a musical system for use with a 22-stringed harp.

¶In Utah, Director William Peterson, of the Utah Agricultural College, examining concretions of the roofs of coal mines, discovered them to be footprints of extinct animals. He believes that they were formed when the animals walked across peat bogs which had been covered with about a foot of silt. The heavy beasts sank through into the peat; and the mud, filling up their tracks, was petrified when the peat was converted to coal. The tracks are very large, 16 to 32 in. in maximum length, and are all three-toed. No traces of forefeet or tails were discovered. The tracks follow definite paths 20 to 30 ft. in width.

¶In Nevada, on the floor of the State Penitentiary at Carson, were discovered footprints of the Mylodon harlani, an ancient elephant. They were identified by John C. Merriam of the Carnegie Institute.

¶Near Urga, Mongolia, Prof. Peter Kozloff unearthed a great cache of animal skeletons, including 25 quadrupeds, 150 birds, 100 reptiles, and 1,000 giant insects.

*Not to be confused with the modern Antioch, capital of Syria. The Antioch alone referred to is on the border of Pisidia and Phrygia and is the city mentioned by Paul, Acts xiii.