RELICS OF EARLY MAN.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3294, 12 August 1911, Page 9

RELICS OF EARLY MAN.

LATE DISCOVERIES IN TURKESTAN.

Valuable discoveries have been maue by the recent expedition sent by the Carnegie Institute into Eastern Turkestan. Dispatched primarily for the purpose, of geological research, the explorers came upon a Avealth of archaeological remains dating back to a period compared Avith Avhicli the advent of Christ is modern history. The general tendency of the evidence accumulated by explorers is to point to the highlands of Central Asia, and especially Eastern Turkestan, as the region from Avhicli many migrations drifted over the Europe-Asian continent in the earliest geological ages. A chance exploration of one of these made by a, Russian general revealed tne fact that the kurgans Avere made up <ji superimposed remains of settlements extending from the earliest period of the Neolithic culture some 15,000 or 20,000 years before the Christian era to a copper culture Avhich terminated about B.C 2000.

The lowest strata revealed many most important facts as to the beginnings of Neolithic culture. The inhabitants lived in huts constructed of adobe or sun-dried bricks or wood, and slightly elevated above the plain to avoid the intense heat radiating from the ground at night, which rendered sleep difficult.

The inhabitants lived by hunting the wild animals of the region—the horse, the ox, AA’ild sheep, the bear, the gazelle, and some kinds of small deer. No trace of domestic animals were found, all the remains being those of animals slain in the chase. One important discovery made Avas that of a breed of wild horse closely resembling the well known Preioalskys horse, but certainly earlier. While subsisting on. the spoils of the chase these primitive people had acquired the arte of agriculture and cultivated wheat and barley, specimens of the straw and 1 ears of which were found in the rude hand-made pottery Avhicli they fabricated. So also the mortars and milling stones Avith which they crushed or ground the grain . No weapons, arrows nor spear-lieads were found, and it is probable that they used Avooden spears and daggers, clubs, etc., like the modern Polynesian savages. Flint scrapers, aAvls and bone needles AA r ere found, Avhich showed' that they made themselves clothes of the skins of the Avild animals.

This first rude primitive settlement, which from the depth of the deposits of debris must haA-e lasted over 1000 years, was finally destroyed by fire and the site for a toAvn abandoned.

A second settlement Avas founded some considerable period l later, and here we get evidence of much progress in civilisation. The new occupants baa domesticated the ox, long and short horned sheep ,the pig, and the horse. The wanderers brought back with them after their abandonment of the site important additions to the domestic animals, namely the camel, the goat, and the sheep dog. which seems to indicate that they had wandered eastward to what are now the Indian and Chinese empires.

Little later Ave find the metals copper and lead begin to appear, and the presence of turquoise and lapis lazuli beads indicates intercourse with regions whero those precious stones might be -obtained.

Here, then, the Pumpelly expedition proves the existence of an important and very ancient centre of culture in Turkestan in the early Neolithic age. It is to be hoped that the work so lavishly subsidised by Mr. Carnegie Avill be continued, for there must be other mounds than the tAvo already explored which ’ contain valuable material for the reconstruction of the beginnings of civilisation. No traces of writings have as yet been found. Still, it is to this region that Are must look for the beginnings of the t-Avo oldest systems in the world the cuneiform script of Babylonia and the pictorial Chinese. Central Asia is vindicating its title to be called, as Sir Henry Rawlinson said, “The Mount of Nations.”