ANCIENT PEOPLE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 91, 8 December 1931, Page 2

ANCIENT PEOPLE

RACE WHICH EXISTED 7000 YEARS AGO. fashions and iiouses. Discoveries illustrating the life. of a people that existed 5000 years before the eoming of Christ are described by vv. Hermann Junker, of the Vienna Academy of Sciences, in a report on his recent excavations in the neolithie settlement of Merimda, near Beni Salama, about 30 miles north-west of Cairo, states an exchange. The furniture of the; Merimda people was extremely varied, and the ceramic art was tolerably well developed. Undamaged vases have been found and new forms recorded, notably large water jars with handles, aecom-pani-ed by pottery ladles with which the liquid was baled out. The tools were all of flint, copper not having been used. It is not certain how the inhabitants were clothed, but it can be gathered that they were not so fond of dress as their Upper Egyptiari neighbours, since little has been found in the way of ornaments, except some pendants of shell with se-rrated edges, fragments of a necklace of bone and stone, and an ivory bracelet. The presence of palettes shows that the practice of painting round the eyes existed, at Merimda as well as in Upper Egypt and the Fayyum. Entirely different from the customs hitherto known were the methods of. dealing with the dead. There were no J special cemeteries, but the dead were buried in contracted attitudes, among the buildings of the settlement, especially near hearths. Corn was thrown on the body to serve as food, espe- ^ eially near the head, and sometimes 1 in the hands, which were placed over | the mouth. It seems that the bodies | were buried near human habitations | so that they could share the food of 1 the living. |