DISCOVERIES AT GLOZEL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19924, 18 April 1928, Page 11

DISCOVERIES AT GLOZEL.

CONTROVERSY REOPENED. « .i i j RELICS DECLARED GENUINE. MINISTER TO INVESTIGATE.

(Received April 17, 6.15 d.ie.) United Service. PARIS, April 17.

The Glozel Commission, which is largely composed of pre-declared pro-Gioze;lians, after three days of digging, declare that the du.coverie.s there belong to the Neolithic Age. The Minister of Education, M. Herriot, who originally annulled the order scheduling the tiito as a national monument after the International Commission had declared the discoveries to be valueless, now announces that he will visit Glozel after the general election. Considering that the new commission's finding reopens the question of the authenticity of the discoveries, the Minister says ho is determined to clear up the controversy, in which the good name of French scientists is involved.

Several objects were found in September. 1927, at Glozel, a small hamlet near Vichy, France, which gave rise to the controversy referred to in the cablegram. The site was sequestered and scheduled by the French Government as an aacienfc monument of national importance. The views of eminent archaeologists on the matter have differed widely. Glozel lies hidden awav in the mountains and is not an easy place to get- to. It consists of four houses only, forming a farm occupied by a peasant family named Fradin. In March,, 1924, young Fradin, then apparently a boy in his teens, was ploughing in a field there, when ho struck some big stones with his plough. Ho set to work and soon revealed what was evidently tie debris of a glass-furnace, This was declared by one expert to be genuine. Other articles found were denounced as frauds by some archaeologists and acclaimed as genuine by others. A Buckinghamshire farm labourer, Hunter Charles Rogers, subsequently asserted that he had placed the supposed relics at Giozel. A commission of experts set up by the French Government condemned the finds as fraudulent. Early this year Jin investigation was carried out by Sir Arthur Evans, an English archaeologist. He corroborated the verdict of the commission. He said: "That the Glozel 'reliefs' aro one and all tlie work of the same industrious hand I have no shadow of doubt, and it is difficult to understand hovr they can deceive amy expert eye. The finds themselves present the most startling incongruities. The culture which is, here supposed to hav*» revealed itself is of all ages. In its repeated engravings of reindeer ill is still Magdaieman. Its implements are niishapen copies of Neolithic. Other objects, including a crude schist imitation of an advanced type of arrowhead, xeflect the Age of Metals, while the script itself contains selections from historic alphabets." Finally, on February 6, the French police seized six tabhts, a mould, two files and other tools found in the house of the farmer, Fradin. Tho members of Fradin's family were arrested. They had been charging an entrance fee for inspecting the finds. Tho action of the police was the outcomo of a formal charge of fraud made by the Prehistoric Society. The latter characterised Glozel as a vast hoax, which tended to discredit French scientific work.