MONOLITH FINDS IN PANAMA.

Thames Star, Volume LXII, Issue 17318, 5 January 1928, Page 4

MONOLITH FINDS IN PANAMA.

According to discoveries ma.de by A. Hyatt Verrill, in the Province of Code, in the Republic of Panama, as printed in the New York World, an unknown race of highly developed culture existed there in the early dawn of civilisation. He has unearthed columns 15 to 20 feet high and from 18 to 30 inches square. In nearly every case these monoliths had been hand-cut and tooled —some square, some octagonal or pentagonal, and others oval or cylindrical—as truly as though they had been turned in a lathe.

• Many were elaborately carved in bas relief in involved and symbolic designs. Mr Verrill thinks these are inscriptions readily decipherable to their designers, butt meaningless to us. Traces of colouring are faintly discernible, which lead Mr Verrill to think that originally they were gaily painted in'red and yellow similar to many of the Mayan monuments.

The condition of these monuments prove their great age. The stone from which they were made must have come out of the quarry on the farther side of the Broad River. To have cut the stone from a solid rock and transported it must have been, he says, an almost superhuman feat. Mr Verill unearthed what was evidently the site of a temple, containing more than a thousand idols. Some were of human figures, others of animals, two of them being of elephants; Several were of Siamese twins, back to back. The frequency of this figure, as well as a hunchback dwarf with a masked face, makes it probable, in Mr Verrill’s opinion, that these freaks were regarded as super-natural or divine, or that at some period the peoples had rules who were thus malformed. In nearly every instance the idols appeared with face to the East.