Science: The Diggers

Little bands of men roaming over the earth, poking in pits, caves, quarries, stream beds for vestiges of the creatures who roamed the earth before them, . .. Bigger bands of men examining maps, bringing steam shovels, excavating a tooth, a bracelet, a, whole dead civilization. . . . Millions of dollars are spent in digging every year. Following are significant efforts and exhumations in the Americas during the past few months.

Bones. Old bones, so old that they have turned to stone, excite the lay imagination more quickly than anything else the diggers find. Students of Pomona College (Claremont, Calif.) saw a bony protuberance exposed by a landslide on the shale cliffs of Los Angeles Harbor last spring. They picked and pried it loose, a bone five feet long, weighing 55 pounds, encrusted with marine fossils. What was it? wondered gaping natives. The femur (thigh bone), said Pomona professors, of a giant elephant that roamed California 20,000 years ago when the rim of the Pacific lay much higher inland.

Similarly, excavators at Venice, Fla., turned up a mammoth’s skeleton, nearly intact. Near Alva, Okla., Dr. James W. Gidley of the Smithsonian Institution dug up another mammoth; also parts of a giant sloth. Near Sarasota, Fla., Dr. Gidley found a deep bed rich with bones for future investigation.

Diggers for the Field Museum, Chicago, returned last winter from the barrens of northern Argentina, bringing 3,000 pounds of fossil promacrauchenia (ancestor of the llama), glyptodonts (giant armadillos), toxodonts (hippopotami).

American Man. Prehistoric animals are now so well-known, dated and classified by their bones that fresh discoveries are now important chiefly as corroborations of theory or as clues to the mysterious history of man. When did man first live in the Americas? If he migrated from Asia, perhaps he came only 25,000 years ago. If he originated in the Americas, it may have been a million years ago.

The discovery, in a coal mine on the windswept mountain slopes near Billings, Mont., of a fossil molar tooth of human appearance, mixed in with fossil clams and lizards known to belong in the Eocene period, 50 to 60 million years ago, caused a great deal of newspaper talk last autumn. But experts were inclined to view the molar as that of euprotogonia, doglike Eocene quadruped with manlike teeth in its bearlike-horselike head.

Arrow- and spearheads found near Ice Age bison bones near Folsom, N. Mex.,seemed a more definite discovery.

Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, anthropologist of the Smithsonian Institution, is of the opinion that man reached North America via the Aleutian Islands, or a onetime land bridge, from eastern Siberia. Last summer Dr. Hrdlicka scoured the Alaskan shore north to Cape Barrow, returning via the Yukon River (TIME, Oct. 11). He found many traces of an extinct culture higher than the present Eskimo culture; became certain that Eskimos and Red Indians are kindred stocks.In May, Ethnologist Herbert W. Krieger of the Smithsonian Institution went to the Yukon to elaborate Dr. Hrdlicka’s preliminary diggings. Before leaving, Mr. Krieger gave his opinion of the runic inscriptions on a boulder near Spokane, Wash., which some had held recounted a battle there between Indians and Norsemen in 1010 A. D. (TIME, Oct. 11). Mr. Krieger thought the “runes” were Indian ideographs, recording migrations up the Columbia River for food.

In Hava Supai Canyon, Arizona, Archaeologist Samuel Hubbard, of the Oakland (Calif.) Museum, financed by Edward L. Doheny, oilman, picked and shoveled the banks of the Colorado River seeking traces of an “apeman” with nine feet of vertebrae, including tail; twelve-legged dragons; animals answering Biblical descriptions. Digger Hubbard is unique in his profession. He hopes to prove Evolution wrong, the Bible right, about man’s origin.

In Nevada, on dry beds in Lake Lahontan, near Lovelock, were found the remains of a human settlement evidently of Asiatic origin for it had camels. Piute and Shoshone Indians have legends about a wise race that lived in the Nevada desert. In 1833 a white trader found a live camel in an Indian Village. The Lake Lahontan settlement appeared to have been exterminated about 200 years ago.

In Lower California, in the desolate volcanic waste near Punta Baja, Edward H. Davis of the Museum of the American Indian (Manhattan), found vast caverns decorated with mural paintings. In one cave the ceiling bristled with arrows shot into it at least 500 years ago. Carved stone vessels and long-walled lanes through the lava floes indicated high culture among the Cochimi, Guaycuru and Pericue Indians whom Spanish travelers reported finding on that lonely coast in the 16th Century. Ethnologist Davis judged that these tribes were gigantic in stature.

Mayan Items. Though he did not dig, U. S. Vice President Charles Gates Dawes exhibited scholarly interest in archaeology when he visited Panama last spring. He went home to Chicago bearing souvenirs from the Mayan ruins of Cocle Province. A stone elephant aroused his curiosity specially; also, a possible original of the see-no-evil, speak-no-evil,hear-no-evil monkey images of Japan.

During Mr. Dawes’ visit four treasure-hunters—F. W. Kealey, David Blair and George Williams, Britishers; and Wallace Bain of the U. S.—were poking about in the jungle covered ruins of Old Panama City with a gold indicator. They thought they might find riches buried by Pirate Henry Morgan after he sacked Panama in 1671. All they found was a few pounds of assorted jewelry, worth perhaps $3,000. So they proceeded inland to the Mayan ruins of Cocle. There they found acres of graves. From one grave they took a skeleton in copper armor plated with gold; with solid gold breastplates.

In Yucatan, the district court took action against Edward H. Thomson, for many years U. S. consul at Merida, who lately returned to the Peabody Museum (Boston) with, a vast collection of Mayan artifacts taken from the sacred well at Chichen Itza (TIME, Nov. 16, 1925).Mexico wanted back the handiwork of its aborigines.

Near Cartersville, Ga., Dr. Warren K. Moorehead of the Phillips Academy Museum (Andover, Mass.) found stone sarcophagi in a burial mound. Copper plates, engraved shells, stone idols, etc., were of workmanship that led him to believe there had been contact, if not relationship, between the moundbuilder and Mayan civilizations.

In British Honduras, a British expedition delved in the ruins of Lubaantun and Pusilha, perhaps 12,000 years old. Pyramids, spiral shells, stucco, buttons, figurines and copper ax blades seemed to antedate Mayan culture.