SKELETON RIDDLE.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17633, 9 December 1922, Page 13

SKELETON RIDDLE.

PREHISTORIC MINER OR INVADER'S SLAVE 7 A full account of the discovery of a mysterious skeleton in what has been supposed to be a prehistorio gold mine is now to hand from the actual discoverer, Mr Duncan Simpson (says a London paper). The skull of a man and several bones were found in July in a very old working near Gwanda, Rhodesia. From the position of the find, the man had evidently been working at the face of a gold reef, and had probably been killed by a fall of rock. A heavy stone hammer lay by in the. position in which it would have been held if the worker h,ad been lying prone. Ihe skiill and bones are now in charge of Dt. Arnold, of the Ehodesian Museum, and are to be examined by experts to decide what was the race or character of the ' man to whom they belonged. 'On a cursory inspection they are thought to have been Bantu or African Negro. If so a point of great importance will have been established. There is a tradition that certain comers from Asia—Phoenicians or other Semites—mined gold in South Africa; and the workings by "the Ancients" with which Rhodesia is covered have been generally attributed to them. But never before has a skeleton been found in one of these workings in such conditions that it can be said (as in the case of the present find) that it was the skeleton of one of the original minors.. The skeleton lay under 20ft. of debris in the old mine, and within a few inches of the stone hammer discovered near it was an undetached portion of the gold-reef, which probably indicated the worker's, point of attack. The stone hammer does not necessarily indicate age, as there are parts of Africa where iron is rare, and where stone implements were used in quite recent times. In some of the Rhodesian workings made by "The Ancients" iron tools have been discovered, but these do not* fix die date, as the use of iron goes back to very remote times and overlapsHhe use of stcne. Great Heat Used In Work. The examination of the old workings has left many mysteries whic-h have xo be solved. The first is as to the rare which made them—and some- light may be thrown on this when the verdict on the recent skull is known. The second is as to the methods which they einEloyed. In some of the workings ore as been removed which only contains the merest fraction of an ounce per ton. such a small fraction of gold as could not have been extracted by civilised man until the modern cyanide process was introduced. Again, how the ore was cut cleanly out of the rock is another mystery. Apparently the work was performed by the application of great heat, veiy carefully controlled, as the ore body, according to an account published in the Johannesburg "Sunday Times." has been so skilfully removed that it is rare to find a piece adhering to the walls. It is, of course, possible that the work was done for Semites by African slaves, and that the engineers and directors came from the Mediterranean or Asia, and were Cretans, Philistines, or Phoenicians, or possibly even Egyptians. This has been conjectured, but as vet beyond some pottery finds there has been nothing to give it support. The systematic archaeological examination of southern Africa is, however, .only just beginning, and may solve many of the mysteries mentioned.