ANCIENT OR MODERN?

Evening Star, Issue 19666, 20 September 1927, Page 6

ANCIENT OR MODERN?

v THE GUZEL TOMBS \ FRENCH ARCHAEOLOGIST'S ALLEGATIONS SAID TO BE FAKED. Press Association —By Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, September 18. (Received September 20, at 1.30 a.m.) The Paris correspondent of the ‘Daily News’ says that if M. Dussand, tho archaeologist, he correst in his deductions, a tremendous scientific hoax is exploded. M. Dussaud told a secret meeting of the Academy of Inscriptions and Fine Arts that the field of dead at Glozel, where supposedly authentic prehistoric objects were found in tombs, ftas a fraud. The inscriptions, purporting to reveal tho world’s oldest alphabet, were faked, and the drawings of animals were quite recent, and possibly done by schoolboys. The bones of animals were the remains of modern cows. The Glozel tombs were discovered in 1924, and contained 200 objects, which it was supposed were associated with prehistoric man, the eeriest being implants of hands on an inscription tablet in one of the .tombs. M. Dussaud asserts that the discoveries were clumsily fabricated by modern persons.—Sydney ‘ Sun ’ Cable. [Could prehistoric man read and write? Did he originate the modern alphabet? We know that men of the Stone Age were artists, as their colored pictures of the mammoth and reindeer are still to be seen well preserved in certain caves. B.ut had they literary aspirations as well? This is suggested by a communication just made to the Academic des Inscriptions by Dr A. Morel, of the University of Lyons (states an English paper). Some neolithic remains were recently dug up at Glozel, twelve miles from Vichy. They included tools, weapons, and vases, as well as stones marked by inscriptions, which Dr Morel contends go to prove that man of tho Stone Age made use of an alphabet. In the days when tho reindeer still roamed oyer the country of France primitive man had learned to represent his ideas by means of a syllabic alphabet. Dr Morel has detected ninety of these alphabetic characters. Ho argues that the Phoenicians really derived their alphabet from neolithic tribes, ns may be seen by striking resemblances in the forms of the letters. M. Salomon Reinach confirms Dr Morel’s statements. Tho distinguished academician made a special visit to Glozel, and personally saw an inscribed tablet unearthed from a stratum of clay. In these remains, lie said, there was not a vestige of any metal nor of any Roman or Gallic pottery. Fifty of the tablets are covered with well-formed and regular writing, some of tho signs recalling in a surprising manner tho Phoenician and Arclueic Greek alphabets, although it is impossible to decipher tho text. _ Tiies© communications have' given rise to a very keen academic controversy.]