ANCIENT MAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 181, 1 August 1936, Page 11

ANCIENT MAN.

ABSORBING STUDY.

CZECHOSLOVAKIAN REMAINS. MODERN COMPARISONS. Fascinating to layman and scientist alike is a study of comparisons between the objects of the palaeolithic man of three hundred centuries ago and Maori stone and bone implements only a centuiy old. Mr, B. Pospisil, author and traveller, of the Czecho-Slovakian Geographical Society and the Government Museum of Moravia, who is at present in Auckland, drew attention in an interview to striking similarities. Arrangements with several of the museums of the Dominion for exchanges of exhibits, particularly of Maori implements, carvings and garments, have been made by Mr. Pospisil. The Auckland War Memorial Museum is interested in implements, art and jewellery of the mammal and reindeer hunters who lived some 30,000 years ago in recently-dis-covered caves and fields in CzechbSlovakia. Sir Arthur Keith, F.R.S., in "New Discoveries Relating to the Antiquity of Man," calls the finds "the prehistoric Pompeii," and considers them the greatest anrignacian site in the world. Mr. Pospisil, who is on his second visit to New Zealand, and who, among other books, has written a volume on the Dominion, "Wandering on the Islands of Wonder." was pleasantly surprised when the director of the Auckland Museum. Mr. Gilbert Arcliey, and the ethnologist, Mr. V. F. Fisher, pointed to the remarkable similarity in the implements of the mammoth hunters and those of the Maori. Bone Implements. "The points of comparison are numerous," said Mr. Pospisil in an interview. The Maoris, for instance, used to out implements, particularly needles, from

the lower jaw of a native dog or the bone of a bird; the reindeer and mammoth hunters cut tools and daggers from the lower jaw of a wild horse in an identical manner, and needles from the limb bones of a horse or from the hollow bones of birds' wings. Certain tribes of New Guinea cut weapons from the lower jaw of a crocodile in the same way. _ . There are also amazing similarities in the forms of instruments and decorations, according to Mr. Pospisil. Hie decorative objects prove that even the primitives of the glacial period suffered from a vanity complex. Necklaces have been found, made frc«n shells, pebbles, the teeth of the Arctic fox, bear, lion and wolf, perforated and strung together. The holes were made with a borer or with a thin stone saw, or by rubbing the shell at its thinnest spot. The shapes of stone dishes and pestles of mammoth tusks resemble modern shapes. The discoverer, Dr. Karl Absolom, curator of the museum which Mr. Pospisil represents, found also that tatooing of the body was practised in palaeolithic times. Sculpture and Music. "The art of kneading, modelling and baking clay was discovered before the Neolithic Age," said Mr. Pospisil. "This is something of a revolutionary statement, contrary to present theory. The plastic art of mammoth and reindeer hunters is unique in the science of prehistory; it is the earliest-known sculpturo. The museum is forming a gallery of ancient art. There were found figures of Arctic fox, lioness, owl, reindeer head, wolverine, mammoth, wild horse, and the first-known prehistoric sculpture of the extinct woolly rhinoceros. The art of the mammoth hunters was very near to that of modern primitive tribes, as can be proved by comparison. A great variety of whistles, some of them resembling the North American Indian flute or the Eskimo whistle, were made of lion tooth, wild goose wing bone, reindeer foot joints, or swan bones. .Some of tliem are even double-noted, with different tone.s; that is evidence of the primitive beginn'-ngs or music, and helps to show that the palaeolithic Moravian also sang.

'"Thousands of acres are still unexplored, and scientists have several years of hard work ahead of them to solve problems of world-wide interest.