ANCIENT INDIAN GRAVES

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 36, 11 August 1923, Page 14

ANCIENT INDIAN GRAVES

DISCOVERIES IN BRAZIL.

Indians whose remains have been unearthed by the excavators on the Ambassador Hotel site at Santa Barbara. Brazil, by the representatives of the Smithsonian Institution may have been aa peace-loving as scientists believe, tut some of the relics found in the graves indicate that they _were familiar with preparedness.

One of the objects found, says a correspondent of the " San Francisco Chronicle," is an oblong stone four or five inches long and a little more than half that diameter. Around th 6 middle of the stone is a shallow groove where a rawhide thong probably was attached. This stone, with its thong, made an effective weapon of offence" and defence for- Mr. Stonehatchet. '

Some of the skulls found, which are of great; age, have round holes in the top where the bones join. There seems no reasonable explanation for /these holes. An examination of the animal bones show, that they must have been large and powerful. The prehistoric bear, the bones of which were al6o found, in the opinion of J. P. Harrington, who is in charge of the excavation for the Smithsonian. Institution, was an animal as large as the largest of our cinnamon bears of to-day, but much smaller than the grizzly. "It is evident that the deeper graves we have found were much older than those first found," said Mr. Harrington. "' The burial customs were different at the different periods. I have hopes that when we got to still lower levels we shall find evidences of a sliil older civilisation."