THE NILE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 107, 21 September 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE NILE.

IB EGYPTIAN CIVILISATION 50,000 TO 500,000 YEAKS OLD.

NEW LIGHT ON PIIOBLEM OK HUMAN ANTIQUITY.

Dr Felix Oswald, expert on gcologv and Probate Registrar of Nottingham, who wan sent to British East Africa by the British Museum, reports that he has found conclusive evidence that the great Lake of Victoria Nyanza has been in existence since the Miocene Age—a matter of 3,000,000 years or so. The lake is of vast extent and lies at an altitude of 4,000 ft, in a mountainous region of the equator. In places it is off vast depth, the bottom probably being below sea level.

Dr Oswald found buried on the eastern shore of the lake parts of a number of prehistoric mammals, including the jawbone and teeth of a dinotherium of the Tertiary Era, and some bones of aeeratherium and anthratherium, the ancient types of rhinoceros. They were all found close to the mouth of the Kuji or Kuya River. Other traces of fossils were unearthed at points five and iifteen miles distant, in what appeared to be the same gully"Our trip," says Dr Oswald, "establishes the great age of the high lake, the Victoria Nyanza, for it is evident from the position of the old delta that the river of which it is the relic, most probably the old course of the present day Kuji, was running there into the lake at least as far back as the Lower Miocene period." According to the British Museum experts the discovery of the vast age of Victoria Nyanza throws an entirely new light on the problem of human antiquity. One consequence is that civilisation in Egypt may have* to be assumed as probably having existed from 50,000 to 500,000 years ago or even longer. Eor, they say, if Victoria Nyanza is 3,ooo,oooyears old. the river Nile, of which it is the source, is sot only of practically equal age, but has in that almost inconceivably long period flowed from the equator to the Mediterranean.

That means, according to the museum scientists, that the Valley, of the Nile in Egypt has remained for more than 1,000,000 years in virtually its present physical state, with conditions as favorable to human occupation and human civilisation a Million year's ago as they were > 12,000 years ago, at what is called the "dawn" of Egyptian history. And, inasmuch as the Egyptian culture of 12,000 yeart, ago was as pronounced as it ie to-day, there is no way of limiting, by inference, the actual extent of its antiquity. In the course of the ages the Lake of Victoria Nyanza may have fallen somewhat in level, with a corresponding fall of the level of the Nile in Egypt, so that in prehistoric times the people lived further back inland; so it is further inland that their monuments and other remains are to be sought.

The discoveries of Dr Oswald as to the everlasting condition of Lake Victoria Nyanza are, it is said at the museum, of the utmost significance as indicating the peculiar conditions in the Nile Valley in Egypt favorable to the development, far back in the dim past, of human civilisation, there to flourish unaffected by geographic or climatic changes. •'The heat where we worked," says Dr Oswald, "was terrific. Tsetse flies abounded, and I have seen the midges come over the lake in a cloud that obscured the sun to a dull yellow tinge, and the noise of their humming as they passed sounded like the lower O note on a pipe organ. Flying crickets as large as sparrows were common. There were ants three-quarters of an inch long. But what oppressed me most was the dreadful loneliness. Strange to say, the intensely hot air was stimulating to the nerves. I drank a gallon of milk a day."