RICH AND STRANGE

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 142, 13 December 1933, Page 5

RICH AND STRANGE

SVEN HEDIN DISCOVERIES

ASIAN EXPEDITION

Fossil animals, fish, insects, and delicate gossamer flies 100,000,000 years old and perfectly, preserved have been found embedded in the rocks of Central Asia by Dr. Sven Hedin's scientific mission, which has just closed six and a half years of intensive research and exploratory work, says the "New1 York Times." This is only one of an amazing scries of discoveries made by Dr. Hedin and his twenty-seven colleagues who constitute the largest scientific expedition from the West to put foot on Asian soil. The expedition covered much of the vast area of 3,700,000 square miles and brought back tens of thousaiids of sx'ecimens of ancient implements, pottery, footwear, arrowheads, ornaments, early scripts, rare plants, primitive articles of clothing, as well as highly important data throwing fresh light on the history of the earth. Although no fossil remains of man were found in Central Asia, the expedition discovered many primitive flint instruments from the paleolithic period, 500,000 years ago. Fossils of ancient dinosaurs from the Mesozoie Age, more than 50,000,000' years ago, were unearthed. More than 50,000 implements of the new Stone Age were discovered. Ten thousand scripts, 2000 years old, painted on wood, and made long before the invention of paper, were found. The scripts relate principally to the raiding of the ancient Chinese silk route to Rome. FANTASTIC FINDS. Accustomed as he is'to rare phenomena aud remarkable discoveries of all kinds in the realm of science, Dr. Hedin, who has spent forty-eight years in studying the origin and formation of the earth, declared these latest discoveries were nothing short of fantastic It will take fully ten years and at least forty-five large volumes, he said, to describe the marvellous finds. Regions in Central Asia upon which no white man ever gazed were surveyed and mapped by the expedition. Researches also were niaxle into the cult of Lamaism in China', Mongolia, and Tibet. With a "front" of 2600 miles stretching from Peiping to Kashgar, the expedition made an exhaustive study of the whole of the Central Asia desert between the Bdsin Gol and the Pamirs. So-called wandering lakes and rivers, which throughvthe ages had changed their beds by hundreds of miles, were discovered and charted. The most famous of these lakes, Lop Nor, it was found, had returned sixty miles to its original position near the lost city of Lou Lan, discovered by Dr. Sven Hedin many years ago, which it deserted in the fourth century. Fragments, of ostrich shells, about 2,000,000 years old, were discovered. The remains of animals believed to be new to science also were unearthed.