INTERESTING ARCHÆOLOGICAL DISCOVERY.

Kumara Times, Issue 3050, 12 August 1886, Page 3

INTERESTING ARCHÆOLOGICAL DISCOVERY.

Major Powell, Chief of the United States Geological Survey, has discovered in New Mexico, near California Mountain, what he pronounces to be the oldest human habitation upon the American continent. " The mountains in this vicinity," says a Santa Fe paper, "are covered with huge beds of lava, in which the pre-historic man and his comrade? have excavated square rooms, which were lined with a species of plaster made from the lava; and in these rooms were found various evidences of an advanced civilisation, among them being a species of cloth made of woven hair, and a large number of pieces of pottery. In the sides of the rooms cupboards and shelves were excavated. In a little conoealed niche there was discovered a small figure resembling a man done up in a closely woven fabric, which with the touch of the hand, turned to dust. It was blackened and crisp like the mummy cloths of Egypt. In all, some sixty groups of these lava villages were found, there being about twenty houses in each group. The evidences of civilisation were similar to, bnt removed by their crudity and want of skill a considerable distance from, the articles found in the cliff houses, which have been fully describedin the reports of the Geological Survey."