SINISTER SWASTIKA

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 12, 4 February 1942, Page 6

SINISTER SWASTIKA

SYMBOL OF TERROR IS 20,000 YEARS OLD

NOTHING ARYAN ABOUT IT

In the Availing Ice Age, 20,000 years ago, a Cave Man carved cm a mammoth's tusk the first SAvastika that Avd lcnoAv. There may have been other SAvastikas like it, because this was the beginning of famous Avanderings, states an English exchange. From Megnic, in South Russia, where this first sign of the sinister swastika cross Avas found among other relics of Stone Age hunters, it traA r elled as a symbol painted on small female idols, or as an ornament on painted pottery, to the Tigris and the Euphrates and to the peoples who dwelt in Irak 6000 years ago. At first it symbolised the beginning of life, but later it began to be the emblem of death. Father Abraham may have knoAvn it, or handled a vessel on which it Avas painted, AAlien he Avas at Ur oif the Chaklccs.. From Irak it travelled in ft thousand years more to Troy, where it has been found on shards 5000 years old and after Troy it found its Avay to Cyprus and Avestem Greece. Many generations followed before the swastika, still travelling westwards, reached MoraA'ia and (later Still) central Germany; and hoav it ] had entirely ceased ,t<;> be the symbol of life and had become a ■ sinister emblem associated Avith the snake and the toad and the head of the dog of death. Jt> earliest journeyings were in A*ia: but there it had nothing to do with the warrh-<-gods. It was the emblem <>! the most primitive idolatry. I "NV are gJrtd to know avJ ere it .bejLian: Ave ;shall i'e gladder to see tlie end of it. But a ; John Prune Low enstein. who has written a 1 islory of ti, alTirms it i-.n> notldn-, Aryan (d)iiut St.