Thirty Thousand Years Old.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 108, 14 February 1901, Page 3

Thirty Thousand Years Old.

Tho oldest subject in the world bus lieeii found. He is uow on view at tho British Museum, and it lie could tell his story lie would untold tho strangest tale which ever fell on the ears of living mortal.

The subject is a mummy, but it is no ordinary mummy. It is a mummy which was old when Greece and Homo were young, whoso story would go away back into the nvsts of a hoary antiquity of unrecorded time.

'The mummified runains have noon removed from a shallow sandstone grave in the west banks of the Nile, in Upper Egypt, to the publicity of a glass case in the British Museum. Not even science can tell ns within a margin of 20,000 years when this dead body had its life and being. What it does say is that this prehistoric man probably lived some time between 20,000 13. G. and '>o,ooo 13.0. This means that a period *>f at least 20,000 years Inis elapsed since the body r was embalmed ami wrapped in the grave clothes from which it has now emerged. To help the imagination to realise this age, it may be recalled that at this very remote period, and, indeed, until thousands of years later, history had no existence ; that the Egyptians we term “ ancient ” wore not then a people, and did not until years after conquer the predecessors of this mammy and settle in Egypt ; and that man was in the neolithic, or second, period of the stone age. During the thousands of years which have since elapsed, this body has been so pieeerved in. its grave by a preparation of bitumen that it presents a human form perfect in every detail; in tact, the only flaw visible to the unscientific observer is that the index finger of the left hand is missing. This dead body of petrified flesh and bone, human in its shape and proportions, ghastly in its lifelessness, .presents a spectacle of wondrous,'; awesome interest. It lies within the shallow interior of a sandstone grave, roughly modelled from the original, anti partly covered with slabs of unworked stone.

The .posture in which :it was found, and which is retained, is a curious one. It Is turned on the left side, with the hands before the face, and the knees drawn up nearly on a level with the chin.

Its state -of preservation is remarkable.

As a matter of fact it presents the appearance of a body from which the skin hashpen burned, but .which has ;been rescued before the flesh was consumed or the bones charred. On the head there, are still a few tufts of hair;?, the face also has retained its distinctive features. Besides the ! bo(ly in,, the grave are a number of vases partly filled with the remains of fbe dust of

funeral offerings. Several are large;; the others in size and shape are very much like small window pots for plants. A few flint instruments complete the contents of this prehistoric oofiin. What has science to say about this mummy ? The reply, is speculative, and to the effect that this body is of a raaTi who belonged to the fair skinned, light-haired race., winch tuny he regarded as one of the aboriginal stocks of Egypt.

The style of the flint instruments indicate that the man live l ' in the later neolithic period of Egypt. His life was of the rudest possible character, but not without its religion, for the mummy as it lay in its grave bad its face turned towards the east.

Ho and bis f dlows probably wore skins held loos iy ove r the shoulders by thongs., bunted animals for food., and in turn 'veto hunted by them, suffered mtieo from cold and ether hardships, and died violent deaths.