ARCHAIC FIGURES

Evening Star, Issue 21934, 22 January 1935, Page 10

ARCHAIC FIGURES

SCIENTISTS MYSTIFIED NEW INVESTIGATION. ROME, January />. 'Hie vast number ol rock incisions with figures of imaginary or real men and animals in the valleys of the Maritime Alps on the Italian side, between the Clol di Tenda and Bordigliera, lias again become the object of close study by Italian scholars. At one time British scholars tried to decipher the archaic incisions in the Maritime Alps. A writer of Nice, Gioffredo, loft his own inscription as a student on the rocks in 1610, as did Toesca, another scholar, in 1727. Even a Franciscan friar left his name in 1307 to show that the archaic figures had also interested his studious mind. . The Turin sculptor. Carlo Conti, has been the latest investigator, and he calculates that the incisions number more than 12,000. By clearing the rocks of Monte Bega be discovered some additional 2,000. The figures can bo included, roughly, in eight classes - Horned animals, chiefly oxen; rudimentary ploughs; instruments and primitive arms; human lieings, chiefly males; very primitive huts and dwellings; geometric signs; insects, spiders, and scorpions; and heterogeneous signs which cannot easily be classified.

A book is shortly fo bo published on the mysterious figures and signs.