Science: Diggers

Little bands of men roaming over the earth, poking in caves, pits, mounds, quarries, buttes for vestiges of the creatures that roamed the earth before them. Bigger bands of men examining maps, bringing steam shovels, excavating whole dead civilizations. Millions of dollars spent in digging every year. . . . Following are significant efforts and exhumations of recent weeks:

In France and Spain. The Mediterranean region has long been a fertile field for the archeologist’s shovel. Although many Stone Age relics have been unearthed there, they have been somewhat neglected for findings of the more brilliant Minoan, Egyptian, Grecian and Roman periods. Feeling that prehistoric man was much smarter than is commonly believed, Charles Gates Dawes, banker, musician, ambassador and archeologist, has been taking a holiday in France and Spain to co-ordinate Stone Age findings. With him went Professor George Grant MacCurdy of Yale University, director of the American School of Prehistoric Research in Europe and Addison L. Green, chairman of that school’s board of trustees. Professor MacCurdy did most of the coordinating.

Mr. Dawes & friends wandered last fortnight into the Dordogne section of southwestern France, to clamber about the rocks of the Vezere valley, penetrated dark caves and troglodytic dwellings. Traveling from there into northern Spain, the party went to Santander, to visit Altamira Cavern and study the famed Paleolithic frescoes painted with mineral oxides, the bison engravings cut into rock. Then Mr. Dawes visited the National Archeological Museum and the Museum of Natural History in Madrid. Headquarters of the expedition in Spain was in the southern province of Huelva.

In the Mediterranean. Halfway between Persia and Egypt, near Loadikies, an old Greek colony, F. A. Schaeffer and Georges Chenet, French archeologists, found the unwieldy schoolbooks of a forgotten university. The books were clay tablets 4,000 years old covered with language lessons in four tongues: Assyro-Chaldean cuneiforms, the language of old time diplomats; Sumerian, the language of scientists; Phoenician, the language of the maritime merchants; and an unknown tongue. Other tablets had Egyptian and Hittite inscriptions. Where the schoolbooks were found, according to the inscriptions which scientists could read, existed a University City called Zapuna, a midpoint joining Mycenaean, Egyptian & Babylonian cultures. There ancient scholars exchanged languages, ideas.

In Colorado. In the ancient untouched Lowry Ruins of southwestern Colorado, an expedition has been digging under the direction of Dr. Paul S. Martin, assistant curator of the Field Museum, Chicago. Cutting into the mounds, scientists found the houses and pottery of three highly developed Indian tribes built one on top of the other. Ten men throwing out 21 tons of debris per day cleared out a

Pueblo kiva, a large room used for worship, for men’s sleeping quarters. On the walls were 1,000-year-old paintings done in black & white with severe “modernistic” lines. Investigating below the first kiva, Dr. Martin discovered another older one, whose mud walls were painted like a prehistoric pot with pictures of lightning, rain and clouds. The ancient firepits were still filled with fine grey wood ash. Oldest material found in Lowry Ruin is estimated to date back 30 centuries.

Central America. Six years ago Dr. Herbert Joseph Spinden, authority on Mayan culture, figured out the Mayan calendar, was puzzled by strange hieroglyphics which he could not explain. Recent study of temple inscriptions has shown these strange signs to be the records of eclipses.

When the Mayan people saw an eclipse 2,500 yr. ago, they thought a demon was having his lunch, was chewing up the sun and moon. To frighten him away they cried loudly, beat upon drums. On the monuments of their cities, they inscribed dates with signs, one for sun darkness, one for moon death. Figuring from the collected data, Mayan scientists learned to foretell eclipses, warned witchdoctors when to make their magic. If the demon failed to worry the sun or moon, Mayans rejoiced, congratulated their witch doctors, their scientists.

In a ditch near Mexico City, Pandurang Khankloje, Hindu archeologist, last week found Chalchihuitlicue, Goddess of Water. Chalchihuitlicue is made of stone 33 ft. high, 20 ft. thick, largest idol ever found in America. To move it out of its ditch will require the building of a railroad. Although probably older than Aztec civilization, the fantastic carving, the original paint are still visible.

In China. In Choukoutien Cave, near Peiping, members of an expedition led by Dr. Davidson Black for the Geological Survey of China found the scattered fragments of a skull. Last year in the same cave they had discovered part of a female skull which they deduced to be that of a Dawn Woman (TIME, Dec. 23). Carefully, like children with a puzzle, anthropologists fitted each little fragment of the new find together. When they were finished they had almost the entire skull of a young man. Peiping man and woman seemed to be much the same except that the female skull was thicker than the male. The nasal orifice showed that the nose had been broad and flat.

In the Gobi. From a single jawbone, scientists have long tried to picture a platybelodon, the giant mastodon which scooped up its food like a steam shovel with jaws 6 ft. in diameter. This summer, while hunting for the Peiping man’s ancestor, Roy Chapman Andrews, on his fifth (and “last”) expedition to the Gobi desert, stumbled on a platybelodon graveyard, dug up enough bones to fill many a museum. Poking about the shores of an inland sea near the outer border of Mongolia, Dr. Andrews found 15 baby platy-belodons apparently deserted by their parents when they had been trapped in a bog some three million years ago. Digging in a swamp a short distance away, Dr. Andrews discovered the parents, 30 immense skeletons in perfect condition.

Last week he emerged from the Gobi, reached troubled Peiping, announced: ”As regards the number of specimens found, when the expedition returns at the beginning of October it will be possible to make some announcements of great scientific interest.”

In Czechoslovakia. The Paleontological Institute of Brno, Moravia, expects to open shortly with the finest collection of extinct animals in the world. Because the Institute needs more money, a Dr. Stehlik, Moravian paleontologist, plans to go into the mammoth business, utilizing Czechoslovakia’s especially rich deposits. Before the Institute scientists can fill an order, they must dig up their mammoth, clean the bones thoroughly, wash them in a solution of chloric acid and water. When the bones are dry, they must treat them with glue, coat them with shellac. The price of a complete mammoth is $30,000 f. o. b. Czechoslovakia.

In Moravia, there are 100 places exceptionally rich in diluvial deposits. Every year the Czechoslovakian Government gives large sums of money for the excavation of these paleontological treasure houses. The new Institute is designed especially to be a centre for such activities.