SCIENCE AND SURMISE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19608, 9 April 1927, Page 5 (Supplement)

SCIENCE AND SURMISE.

• —: NEW FACTS AND THEORIES.

' BY TEAIfK H. BODLE. Hitherto it has been difficult to assess with any approach to precision, the antiquity of any civilisations on the American continents. In Europe, Asia and North Africa, inter-related chronologies, written records and traditions enable events and periods to be dated with considerable accuracy. In America, North or South, there is no relation to known and dated events of other lands. By reason of this, it has taken a very long time to discredit the old theory that American civilisations owed their inspiration to migrants from Asia and until this had been done ancient datings for native American cultures were widely doubted. However, a general ethnographic survey has to some extent cleared the way for a better understanding of man's story in America, for it has been shown that from remote times there have been four main types of aborigines on the two Western continents. In this research the New York Museum of the American Indian has taken an active part and recently one of its expeditions to Central America made some remarkable finds suggesting a minimum of 4000 or 5000 years for a distinctly civilised American community. On the Western coast of the Panama Isthmus, between the Pacific and the Cordilleras is a sterile area, now largely swamp, 500 square miles in area,' dominated by the volcano Guacamayo. This mountain, like our own Ngaurahoe, is still intermittently active and there is evidence that in the past it was responsible for reducing this formerly fertile district to its present desolation. This plain is now without populous, as may be judged by the many ancient burials, by the great quantities of old pottery and by the many bulky stone monuments requiring the labour of a legion of hands for their erection. In the largest city of this plain, the chief temple, containing rows of stone idols, over a thousand in all, each facing eastward, to the mystic land whence daily comes the sun, has been uncovered. Here, too, were found over one hundred stelae, or inscribed stone pillars. It was the custom of the Mayas to, erect one such stela' every 20 years, so that in all probility brown-skinned men and women continuously worshipped in that many-idoled temple for a period of over 2000 years. A little before the beginning of the Christian era, perhaps 2000 years back, in the violence of an eruption akin to that which buried Pompeii, the city and the temple were deserted, the blind, unanswering' gods left to their lonely meditations. " Through unheeding centuries, soil—apart from the volcanic debris—slowly drifted in and accumulated till it had covered the old ground level, 6 ft. to 12ft. deep. Allowing a deposit of 2in. to 3in. to the century, there is here evidence that the forgotten inhabitants abandoned their city at least two milleniums ago, so that adding this period to the length of its human occupation, it is evident that the foundations of the metropolis were laid out not less than 40 cantunes back. It is then contemporary with early Babylon of the period when Hammurabi the Lawgiver was codifying what have been called the " Oldest laws in the world!" That this civilisation of the Panama plain was original and not foreign is evidenced in its numerous sculptures, abundant pottery and domestic and field implements. All these show phases of gradual, development, of slow upgrowth from the crude earliest attempts to the final masterpieces of use and artistry. As yet the merest fringe has been explored, but enough evidence has been secured to refute the old theory of an Asian origin of American civilisation. Quite clearly here, as elsewhere in America, the red man laboriously groped his way toward an original and independent culture of no mean order. THE LIFE OF THE EEL. The life history of the common eel was for long a sealed book and this lack of knowledge led to many curious and fantastic beliefs in regard to its habits. The problem was first systematically ! tackled about 1904, with the result that each year its early history become less and less of a mystery. Two years ago, ! the only essential observation that had still to be made was the discovery of the eggs of the eel on the ocean floor. It had been demonstrated that at maturity both European and American eels migrated to the Central Atlantic, that thereafter swarms of tiny eels made their appearance, the old and new world species, by most marvellous instinct, each returning to its proper home. • Now the last veil of mystery has been brushed aside, for, in 1925, the oceanographical ship Arcturus, drew up from ocean depths what have since proved to be eel eggs. Ten miles south-west from the Bermudas, upon the edge of the " Challenger" bank, the mid-Atlantic ridge generally held to be the last vestige of that lost Atlantis, which in Miocene times probably made a land-bridge across the Atlantic Ocean—at 506 fathoms, in a region where the sea-floor slopes steeply t,o more than 2000 fathoms, the Peterson trawl brought up 4 eggs, each 3.3 millimetres (about in length. The only way to find out what these objects really were was to hatch them and by the exercise of much care and ingenuity, this has now been done. Four brisk young eels of the American species have emerged from the eggs. It seems clear then that to the oozy plains of lost Atlantis of many legends, amid a clutter of volcanic debris that strews the ridge from the Azores across to the Spanish Main, resort the eels of two hemispheres to lay their eggs. If there be truth in Plato's story that this sunken land was once the seat of Imperial power, that it should now be but a breeding ground for eels, offers a pointed comment on the transience of material greatness. ANTIQUITY OF IRON TOOLS. Without doubt many folks have wondered how it was that ancient peoples have been able to carve sitone monuments with wonderful skill, when, so it was thought, they had no hard metal tools for this work. For instance, it has been consistently denied that the older Egyptians had a knowledge of steel and iron, until the tomb of Tutankhamen sent forth a message that upset all the theories. In the royal coffin, more precious than the wealth of golden splendour, was found a tempered iron dagger. It is beginning to be recognised that iron is the most perishable of all the metals. Except under unusual and specially favourable conditions, all trace of small iron tools will completely disappear, in a few centuries. It is not impossible then that iron was anciently used in many lands where no trace of iron tools has been found, but where its use is hinted by skilful stone-cutting. Now iron has been found, to explain the mystery of American carved monuments. A veteran Central American explorer, A. Hyatt. Verrill, convinced after much experimental carving with hard stone tools that the only result of such effort must be the destruction of the stone has been searching for iron implements, since there were no copper or bronze tools found in the district he was exploring. He was working in a partially buried Maya town of consider-, able antiquity, where much beautiful carving has been done in very hard stone. He excavated around a ruined temple and s|ft. below this, among ancient broken pottery, imbedded in charcoal, he found a steel or hardened iron implement. Corrosion had destroyed the greater part of this, but the chisel-end was sound and so hard that it scratched glass. The find explained the evident tool-marks on statues and also indicates that there will have to be a decided revision of view as to the antiquity of the use of iron and consequently of the cultural state of people now thought to be the Stone, Age.