MYSTERY OF MANY AGES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 261, 25 March 1911, Page 9

MYSTERY OF MANY AGES.

GKRMN'S ALLKGKD FIND OP. LOST CIVILISATION. Berlin, February 1. Dr. Leo Frobenius, the Gorman explorer, has written from Southern Nigeria describing Home remarkable discoveries of an ancient civilisation in the Benin district, He asserts that these discoveries bear out liis 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 he looked for somewhere in Africa. The German learned world reserves judgment as to the value of his discoveries.

Letters from the explorer to friends in Germany .have been made public giving details of his finds, and, incidentally, making a vicious attack upon the British oilicials in the colony for depriving him of the fruits of his labors.

Writing from Illai on December 7, Dr. Frobenius says: •'I have made an incredible discovery in West Africa. I have found traces of a high and extremely ancient urban civilisation. lam having excavations made, and am searching the whole neighborhood. I have unearthed wonderfully worked quartz pillars, remains of granite figures 40 inches high, burnt clay, portraits of classic beauty, and vessels and fragments of pottery splendidly overlaid •with glass of various colors. The most important thing is that I have discovered the place where the treasures are buried about 12 feet below the surface. Most of the things are on pieces, but so beautiful that they can be properly 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 any one would set it down as classical work but for the fine tattooing 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 2, Dr. Froebenius writes: ''The news of my discovery of a eity of ancient Atlantis reached the English. My letter of December 11 was seized and sent back to me. On December 10 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." Benim bronzes are nothing new, and the scientific world is awaiting further details regarding Dr. Frobenius' discoveries.