30,000-YEAR-OLD FINGERPRINTS

Evening Star, Issue 22228, 4 January 1936, Page 12

30,000-YEAR-OLD FINGERPRINTS

HUMAN HANDS STILL THE SAME Fingerprints are now universally recognised as an infallible means of identification, and as a modern utility, their worth is unquestionable; but their present day practical status is only a portion of the role they have played in the affairs of mankind during the past. In Egypt, Assyria, Persia, China, Japan—in fact, in nearly every country —their records survive; ..not housed methodically in prosaic filing cabinets, but imprinted here and there where time’s scroll was touched by tbe hand of romance (writes Superintendent B. C. Bridges, of the Californian Police Department’s Bureau of Identification, in an article in the ‘ Scientific American ’). “ Looking backward,” be adds, “across the vistas of years, through tbe, eyes of fancy, we see fingerprints faintly outlined on the illuminated pages of hallowed, once-forbidden testaments. Dimly they still endure in ■hardened clay of oddly fashioned pottery shaped by hands that perished with Herculaneum and Pompeii. As mute evidence of forgotten crimes, they blacken the stone treasure chests where thieves, long dead, broke in and plundered the topibs of ancient Pharaohs. However, the age of even these prints becomes trivial when compared with the petroglypliics of Gavr’inis—stone carvings believed to be copies of fingerprints,. and conservatively estimated as being at least 30,000 years old.” Mr Bridges goes on to show that although the discovery of the little island of Gavr’inis, off Morbiban, France, was made.some time ago, the impressions were not at first recognised as fingerprints. The original find uncovered some metalithic monuments hidden beneath, earth mounds, while further excavations revealed subterranean passages, spacious galleries and chambers paved with flagstones and braced with vortical stone supports. Many of these roclj surfaces were inscribed with strange markings which greatly intrigued tbe archaeologists. They at first appear incomprehensible. The - dominating figures were concentric circles, eliptics, and spirals, seemingly placed together without order. They resembled the dolmens in Irish sculpture, particularly those of Lochcrew and New Grange. Without doubt the tools used in their reproduction were stone implements. They were considered by some to be Druid emblems, while others saw in them alphabetical signs similar to those of the Phoenicians, Celts, or Etruscans, and felt that they might have some connection with the famous Stonehenge megalith.

An acceptable explanation was found in the conclusion tnat the carvings represented fingerprint patterns. This was not so surprising, even considering the great age of the records. Reproductions of the human hand are found in many caverns of tbe Spanish Pyrenees, ornamented during the Paleolithic age, as well as in traces left by earlier inhabitants of America. Likewise, pre-Columbian engravings were discovered in 1893 on the side of a rock near Lake Kejimkoojik, in Nova Scotia, representing a hand with definite indications of palm .and finger ridges. It is possible that the ancient pseudoscience of palmistry, as practised in India, Chaldea, Egypt, and among the Jews and Chinese, may have bad its influence on the early observation of epidermis anatomy. Furthermore, oinking utensils, water jugs, and so on, were made from clay by aboriginal savages. We cannot suppose that these primitive potters failed to notice the impressions of their hands, which in many cases must have remained on the finished product as accidental decoration.' When once attention has bi-en called to these markings and their ornamental character, the impulse to reproduce them is quite understandable. Further considerations of the engravings in question _ only serve to strengthen the conviction that they are replicas of hand and finger designs, and when placed side by side with similar-sized reproductions of actual fingerprints they represent what •. ould seem to bo proof of real identity. The one great factor common tc all peoples of all times, influencing their arts and practices, is some terra of faith. In view of the innumerable archaeological specimens that feature digital tracery found in _ such widely separated places and various ages, it might be justifiable to . postulate the pre-existence of a mystical, universal religion with fingerprints as one of its salient symbols. The Gavr’inis carvings, as related to modern dactyloscopy, are unique, to say the least, but whether their significance may be symbolic or decorative we cannot say. However, we must perforce accept the concrete evidence that Neolithic man has shown in his dolmen sculptures a sense of observation and a fidelity of reproduction which many authorities bad considered absent in the primordial races; and that the skin structure of the hands of man in the Neolithic ago was the same as that to-day.