Science: Diggers

The pick-&-shovel corps of Science toils far afield, probing the earth for traces of vanished animals, men and civilizations. Recent doings of diggers:

Guatemala. In the ruins of the Mayan city of Piedras Negras, an expedition headed by Dr. J. Alden Mason of Philadelphia’s University Museum found a rectangular limestone carving in high relief which showed plainly that the unknown sculptor had a sense of humor, at least of satiric portraiture. The block, 49 in. long, was called a lintel, although its scanty margins indicated that it was used not over a doorway but as a wall tablet. Parts of the carving were effaced, but by squeezing every available clue Miss M. Louise Baker, experienced archeological artist, was able to make a wash-drawing reconstruction of the original (see cut).

The lintel appears to depict a ceremonial harangue by a Mayan chieftain, sitting cross-legged on an altar and flanked by bowls of fruit. Artist Baker interprets the scene thus: The two standing figures at extreme left, paying no attention, are absorbed in their own argument, while the next man indignantly nudges one of them with his hip. The first seated figure on the left is delicately poking the back of the man in front to ask what is going on, and the latter is trying to see over the towering headdress of the fat man in front of him. Two of the seated figures meditatively finger their beads. The last on the right, losing interest, toys with his earplug.

Arizona. Huge, beaked reptiles gliding on batlike wings, the pterosaurs reached their greatest size in the Chalk Age (60-130 million years ago), achieved wingspreads up to 30 feet. These hollow-boned hobgoblins weighed no more than a Thanksgiving turkey. In the older Jurassic period (130-170 million years ago) they were generally much smaller than in the Chalk Age. Digging into a desert mountain slope which once was seabottom, Dr. T. A. Stoyanow, University of Arizona geologist, laid bare a Jurassic pterosaur skeleton with a wingspread of some 28 feet, biggest specimen of that period ever found.

Michigan. Fossil seaweeds have been found as old as 1,200,000,000 years. In a quarry between the north and south iron veins of the Menominee Range, a dynamite blast exposed Proterozoic seaweed which Oscar Halvorsen Reinholt, geologist and mining engineer, pronounced 1,500,000,000 years old. “The upper Michigan peninsula,” said he, “now takes precedence over the section near Saratoga Springs, N. Y., as the oldest region in which life forms are known to have existed.” Harvard’s Peabody Museum eagerly sent for samples.

California. The U. S. is strong in ancient low life but not in ancient man. The “Minnesota Maid&” (TIME, Nov. 25, 1932), first dated at 20,000 years ago and thus a likely prospect for champion U. S. oldster, was later set down by many a scientist as an “intrusion”—a polite word which experts apply to material that does not belong to the geological layer in which it is found. This year, WPA workmen digging a storm drain for Ballona Creek near Los Angeles found a human skull. Dr. Aberdeen Orlando Bowden, head of the University of Southern California’s anthropology department, pronounced it that of a 70-year-old woman with a long, narrow head. Dr. Bowden stated that the skull could not possibly be an “intrusion” since it was under a 13-ft. deposit of clay, referred it definitely to glacial times, put its age tentatively at 30,000 years. “The Ballona Woman,” he wrote, “gives a more conclusive proof than any yet found of very early prehistoric man in America.” He found remains of a Pleistocene elephant nearby.

Egypt. At Gizeh, near the great pyramids of Chephren and of Cheops, Professor Selim Hassan of Cairo gouged into a bank of mud and sand left by the encroaching Nile, came upon the limestone tomb of a princess whom he took to be the daughter of Chephren. This Pharaoh was of the Fourth Dynasty, which experts variously locate between 3,100 and 2,800 B. c. The sarcophagus was completely sealed with mortar, evidence that thieves had never broken in.

The princess lay on her back with her head to the north. Most of the mummy and its wrappings had disintegrated, but the head was well preserved. With the skeleton were bracelets, anklets, two necklaces of gold and a copper girdle, a gold headdress with streamers of copper and gold. Atop the sarcophagus was an ala baster headrest, shaped like a crescent moon on a pedestal (see cut). Professor Hassan found four sculptured gold fingers, searched for six more gold fingers and ten gold toes. Director John A. Wilson of Chicago’s rich Oriental Institute called Chephren’s daughter, “one of the best finds in recent years!”

Few days later, undeterred by the fact that a native laborer stabbed his foreman in the back. Professor Hassan opened four other tombs, including that of Prince Khnumba-ef, Chephren’s son, whose name means “His soul is the Creator”; and of Kishnofer, a provincial governor whose burial place bore the inscription, “First under the King.”

Greece. Continuing his long delving on the site of ancient Athens, Dr. Theodore Leslie Shear of Princeton found the base of a statue bearing the signature of the famed sculptor, Praxiteles. The figure itself had vanished, but an inscription disclosed that it had been ordered by Kleiokrateia, daughter of Polyeuctus, wife of Spoudias. This woman was referred to in the 4151 oration of Demosthenes (361 B.C.), arguing a suit over the will of Polyeuctus, but scholars had not previously known her name.

Another trophy was a fragment of a marble sign, probably from the Library of Trajan, which bore this warning: “No book shall be taken out. We have sworn it! The library will be open from the first hour until the sixth.”

Other finds included a foot-high statuet of ivory, first Greek copy ever found of the Apollo Lykeos; the bronze shield of Brasidas, captured at the Battle of Pylos in 425 B.C.; and a statue base bearing the epigram of Simonides, familiar to many a schoolboy: A marvelous great light shone for the Athenians when Harmodios and Aristogeiton slew Hipparchus.

Persia. The great palaces and spacious grounds at Persepolis were the Versailles of ancient civilization, from which more than 2,400 years ago Darius and his son Xerxes ruled the greatest empire their world had seen. Unearthing palace buildings on the quarter-mile-long artificial terrace, Dr. Erich F. Schmidt of Chicago’s Oriental Institute came upon two magnificent pieces of wall sculpture, each 20 ft. long. They depicted the same scene, a royal audience, as viewed from right and left. Xerxes stands behind Darius, seated in an ornate chair. Their figures are seven feet tall, the others lifesize. A petitioner, slightly bowed, holds his hand to his mouth “in a gesture of respect and appeal.” One of the court officials appears to be a Food Taster, as he holds a napkin. The monarch and his son grasp twin-budded lotus blossoms, symbols of royalty. Their shoes are like those of present-day Iranians.

Iraq. “Cyclops” means “Round-Eye.” The Cyclops of Greek myth was a giant with a single monstrous eye centred in his forehead, who sank ships by throwing boulders at them. Heading another Oriental Institute expedition to Tell Osmar, Dr. Henri Frankfort found evidence that Cyclops was not a Greek invention. On a Babylonian site at least a millennium older than Homer, the diggers discovered a relief carving showing a god with bow & arrow stabbing a Cyclops in the belly with a broad-bladed knife. Rays emanating from Cyclops’ head indicate that he was a demon of light or fire. Despite the fact that his hands are bound behind him and his assailant is stepping on his toe, the monster nonchalantly faces what in a newspicture would be the camera, the better to show his single eye. The flounced skirt which he wears was obsolete as ordinary apparel in Mesopotamia at the time of the carving (about 2,000 B.C.) and according to Dr. Frankfort the artist bungled its design.

“This is an instance,” said the scientist, “of the Oriental origin of certain motives which the Greeks borrowed from the East. It reminds us . . . the Greeks were late arrivals in an ancient and highly developed civilized world.”