ANCIENT HITTITE LAND.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 11452, 28 February 1931, Page 12

ANCIENT HITTITE LAND.

DIGGING THROUGH DERR OF 12,000 YEARS.

Burrowing for f>ve years tlir.iugh a grav, sun-baked mound m the heart of the amiewt land oi tites, American archaeologists have cut a cross-section of tho history of mankind as they dug for a so!ntiou. of -the Hittite myst -vv.. On this .one mound, !S3 south-east of Angora, the Orient*, Institute of University of Chicago has just completed its fifth season of excavations. Dr. Hans. Henning von der Osten. leader of the expedition ;• Richard -Martin of Clnrng,, and a German, Herr Reif'enmullet ,• aij veteran pursuers of Hittite mysterise, saw the 1930 expedition uncover the most important finds <•! five years in Anatolia. Digging SI feet below' the ejfa-M wall which; 'crowns the Alishar Mound, the expedition this year struck the dwelling-place of stoneage man, exposing relics of a settlement existing at least 10,000 jeais before the Christian era. Working down to this neolithic level, the expedition has exposed one of top of the other, relies of 10 distinct pmiods of man’s history. Remains were found in .succession of the Oscnianli strata, Seljuk, the Byzantine, the Roman, and the remains of the period comprising at once the Gallic invasions of Asia Minor, the Cappadocian Kingdom, and the Phrygian.

Downward, farther away and longer ago, come the strata of the new Hittite Empire, and downward again, leaving the iron and coining to the bronze age, appear the remains of the great first Hittite Empire, which rose to power in the -e'o«i I half of the third nrillenium B.C. and fell somewhere round 1800 B.C. Piercing below this great treasure house for Hittite study, the American expedition passed the strata of men of the copper age, and so at last reached Neolithic-urn, exposing the wooden roof-support of a dwelling inhabited hv man 12,000 years ago.