A LOST CIVILISATION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 970, 23 March 1911, Page 4

A LOST CIVILISATION.

Dr. Leo Frobenius, the German explorer, has written from Southern Nigera to Berlin describing some remarkable discoveries of an ancient civilisation in the Benin district. He asserts that these discoveries bear out his theory regarding the former existence of the continent of Atlantis. The explorer who has been excavating in Southern Nigeria for some months is known as an eager advocate of the theory that Atlantis really existed, and is to be looked for somewhere in Africa. The German learned world reserves judgment as to the value of his discoveries. Letters from the explorers to friends in Germany have been made public, giving details of his finds, and, incidentally, making a vicious attack on the British officials in the colony for depriving him of the fruits of his labours. Writing from Illai on December 7th, Dr. Frobenius says : “I have made an incredible discovery in West Africa. I have found traces of a high and extremely ancient civilisation. I am having excavations made, and am searching the whole neighbourhood. “I have unearthed wonderfully worked quartz pillars, remains of granite figures forty inches high, burnt clay portraits of classic beauty, and vessels and fragments of pottery splendidly overlaid with glass of various colours. “The most important thing is that I have discovered the place where all the treasures are buried about twelve feet below the surface. Most of the . things are in pieces, but so beautiful that they can properly be compared with relics of classical antiquity.” In another letter the explorer mentions that his principal discovery is a hollow bronze cast of a head so beautiful that anyone would set it down as classical work but tor the fine tatooing with which it is covered. Dr. Frobenius says of his discoveries : “I have thus proved in the broadest sense that my Atlantis theory is correct.” In a third letter, dated Ibadan, January 2nd, Dr. Frobenius writes : “The news of my discovery of a city 01 ancient Atlantis reached the Eluglish. My letter of December nth was seized and sent back to me. On December 16th a high official suddenly appeared. They tried to take all my finds from me, on the pretext that the natives had stolen them from each other and sold them illegally to me. “Excavations were forbidden, and everything ancient must remain in the country —and more to the same effect. The same brutal barbarism with which Sven Hedin, Carl Peters, and the German steamer Bundesrath were treated ! “Most of what I had won they took, including the bronze head, fragments, and potsherds. However, thank the Lord, I am smarter than a good many people, and promptly buried the good clay heads. They are saved.” Benin bronzes are nothing new, and the scientific world is awaiting further details regarding Dr,. Frobeuius’s discoveries.