WORLD’S OLDEST HOMES.

Grey River Argus, 19 June 1925, Page 2

WORLD’S OLDEST HOMES.

WiHlltl-: MEX lIEST LIVED. MISTS OF I’HE PAST. i NTERESING RELICS. | 'Tim discovery ii South Africa of I what are believed Io be the oldest j human remains y.-i found has inter. | e>ted others besiJes men of science. | 'l'here is hardly a spot on the earth’s suriaci l which is not the s'-ene of energetic exploration, and many of them lepay the Imsv searchers. Slowlv and steadily the mists that hide man’s pas! arc being ' died away. The work I began with Layard, who, nearly SO years ago. stalled digging on the site of ancient Nineveh. The discoverv there in 1872 ■•!' an ancient tablet recording the Deluge stirred the who! 1 world. Alany people believe that civilisaticu ' rises in wav. s, and that many thous. ? amis of year ago the l greater part of the Atlantic was dry land, inhabited I by a race of people who. in some ro_ | spects, had risen higher than wo our. ' solves have risen. However that may I be. digging on what i still dry bind | has proved that civilisation is much | older than we used to think. Some years ago the I'niversitv of Pennsylvania sent an expedition to the Euphrates \allev Digging down. I I r, | the members found a great temple and city belonging to King Ashurhanapal. who lived 60() B.C. Farther down they | discovered relics of King Kadnsh-'/ n } Turgu, who was a great monarch 80 years earlier. A third layer was then uncovered, showing the temple of T’r Gur, wh'i reigned long before the days , of Abie ham. AIENTTONED TN GENESTS. Digging still deeper the city of Sargon came to light. Sargon flourished about !8f)0 years before Christ was born. Even so, the bottom had not been reached, for, breaking through the floor of Sargon’s temple, the explorer* found themselves standing among the ruins of Calush, which is mentioned in Genesis, and which was a hemo of civilised man ftiPv 7069 years ago. Here they found an altar on which lay the ashes of sacrifice. and a key-

stone arch which had hitherto been supposed to be a Roman invention. They found remains of a vast palace wilh a frontage of 600 ft. A’lost interesting of all were tho relics of the temple library, 18,000 tablets. each inscribed with stories of tin* life of iliat remote period. These ancient people had fireplaces in their houses and a good system of drainage. They ate from dishes made iof baked clay. Records were found lof contracts, mortgages, and hills of sale. The strangest find of all was a elav pot containing broken fragments of • pottery, and upon it an inscription by tho priests who had collected them, telling that these were tho remains of some ancient and forgotten folk, found while digging the foundations for tin. 1 temple. So even seventy centuries ago civilisation was already old. A FORGOTTEN CONTINENT. I hose discoveries do little to solve the problem of whore earliest man came into being. Occulists tell us that the earliest home of our own ancestors was in the Desert of Gobi, Central Asia. That country, they say, was then much lower than it is now, and into it ran an arm of the Arctic Ocean, on which the first groat city was founded. On the other hand, one of ihe great • •St authorities gives his opinion” that" the Caucaston race had its birthplace io Northern Africa. The modern idea

is that each t the great human races had a separate origin,* rising slowly to manlike form out of monkeylike ancestors. Tn Ponape, an island in niid_Pacii ruins of amazing age and size have been discovered. The walls are 15ft thick, and there is every proof that many thousands of years ago this island was part of a continent p.qailat. ed by civilised people.