THE ANCIENT WORLD

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 795, 16 October 1929, Page 15

THE ANCIENT WORLD

Some little time ago two French archaeologists were digging in the side of a small valley in the South of France. They had come upon a deposit very rich in the flint implements of paleolithic man, and by the sharp and fresh condition of these relics the investigators knew that an actual encampment of prehistoric times had been unearthed. The type of implements found showed clearly that the people who made them had lived in the far-distant epoch when the great glaciers of the frozen north had advanced for the third time over Europe. In those days (called the Alousterian period) there lived in France a strange race of men with long low skulls and projecting eyebrow ridges, walking with a shambling and uncouth gait* They were evidently very unpleasant-looking people, and judging from their primitive type they lived a life not far removed from that of the animals with which they were associated. As the French diggers proceeded up the side of the valley, more and more implements and flakes were found, until no fewer than 2,300 had been collected. It was clear that the ancient land surface upon which Alousterian man had lived extended up into a small cave in the valley side, and the archaeologists began to excavate it. They had not worked very long before they found to their amazement what was evidently a grave dug down below the level of. the old land surface, and in this grave, with the limb-bones doubled up in the contracted posture, .was the skeleton of a hunter. He had been buried with some ceremonial, for with him were many flakes of flint and quartz, while above his head rested same large bones of the ox which, when they were interred, had been covered with the flesh of the animal. There cannot be any doubt that these things were put in the grave to provide the dead hunter with weapons and food for the long and unknown journey he had entered on. It is clear that these uncouth Alousterian people, with their ape-like appearance, cherished a belief in a future life, and that even in those remote days the custom of reverently burying the dead was carried The Alotisterian period existed in Europe about 100.000 years ago. It must be considered as rather startling to find that men had faith in immortality in that dim past of the ancient world. SALT IN THE SEA A ton of water from the Dead Sea, when evaporated, would yield 1871 b of salt. A ton of Atlantic water gives Sllb, and a ton of Pacific water 791 b.