ANCIENT CITIES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 3 January 1925, Page 5

ANCIENT CITIES.

THEIR EXACT AGE REVEALED. Proofs of the most important and epoch-making discovery in American archaeology of recent years were submitted by Dr. .Jos. Spinden, of Harvard, at the congress of Americanists (a society devoted to the study of the early history .of man in America) at_ Gothenburg, Sweden (states Dr Thomas Gann in the Daily Mail). These proofs should result in the coirrelation of our calendar to the exact day with the calendar of the ancient Maya inhabitants of Central America. Maya dates start from the end of a Cycle 13, corresponding to our date I.4th October, 3373 B.C. (or 5296 years ago). This discovery will revolutionise the history of aboriginal Americans and date hundreds of vast ruined cities, temples, and 'monoliths to the very day.

Dr. Spinden was led to this discovery from observations on the position of two great stone monoliths erected on the summits of two bills, about four miles apart, at the ruins of Copan, Central America, used by the ancient inhabitants to indicate the exact position of the setting of the sun, in a line with both, on a certain date recorded oil one of the monoliths. The proofs discovered by Dr. Spinden, and now adduced, are to tlie effect that a huge proportion of the dates on the Maya monoliths cluster round the Solstices, ihe Equinoxes, and the, beginning and end of the Maya agricultural year. This is probably the most important contribution to the of ancient. America ever made. Dr. Sylvanus G. Morley, the famous nuthoritv on the Maya calendar, concurs with Dr. Spinden ' in ( the conclusions drawn from his discoveries.