With the Diggers

Archeological and paleontological progress since it was last recorded in TIME (March 3, April 28, May 12) is here summarized:

Egypt. Excavations at Thebes (Valley of the Kings) have been discontinued for the summer, but will be resumed next season by Howard Carter, American collaborator of the late Lord Carnarvon. The treasures found in TutankhAmen's tomb (including the throne, chairs, alabaster vases, shrines, caskets, bedsteads, and boxes elaborately carved of inlaid ivory, ebony and gold) have been removed to Cairo by a 500-mile boat trip, and will be exhibited in the museum there under the Egyptian Department of Antiquities until a decision is reached regarding those to be brought to England and America.

Palestine. The University of Pennsylvania mission at Beisan (the Old Testament Bethshean), 55 miles northeast of Jerusalem, has unearthed substantial Egyptian buildings and inscriptions of Seti I and Rameses II (19th dynasty, about 1366 B. C.), suggesting military occupation of Palestine at that time.

Babylonia. The joint expedition of Oxford University and the Field Museum, Chicago, under Prof. S. Langdon, has uncovered the ruins of Kish, an early capital of the Accadian kings, eight miles east of the site of Babylon, including the great tower of the temple to the war god Ilbaba, built about 2,100 B. C.

The Anglo-Pennsylvania expedition at Ur of the Chaldees, under C. Leonard Woolley, has made progress in revealing the great temple of the Moon God and his consort, erected by early Sumerian kings about 3,600 B. C., and remodeled by Nebuchadnezzar, the Assyrian conqueror, more than a score of centuries later.

Carthage. The excavations under Count Byron Kuhn de Prorok and the Prince de Waldeck have been suspended, but a more systematic scheme of operations will be started later by arrangement with the French authorities. A Roman chapel and Punic tombs were unearthed. The government has been aroused by indiscriminate vandalistic excavations, and future work at Carthage will be limited to those having permits from the resident-general at Tunis.

Europe. The recent excavations at Pompeii, under Prof. Vittorio Spinazzola, have made greater progress than all previous ones. To date, 530 meters of street have been uncovered by modern methods, which preserve the architecture intact. Old-fashioned excavation was carelessly done by workmen, digging into buildings from below and bringing valuable material down in ruins. Today ashes and rubbish are removed from above, walls and roofs are strengthened and supported, and all details are preserved, including the brilliant original colors of the frescoes.

The blocks of the Druidical circle at Stonehenge, England, must have been transported 180 miles from mountains in Pembrokeshire, the nearest location of similar rock, according to an announcement of Dr. H. H. Thomas, British petrographer. The average weight is 2 1/2 tons.

South Africa. A skull believed older than that of the Rhodesian man of the Broken Hill mine has been found at Belingwe, near Bulawayo. Sir Arthur Keith, who estimated the age of the other skull as older than the Neanderthal man (50,000 years), will examine it. If further remains are found in South Africa, it may prove to be one of the earliest homes of the race, rivalling Java.

China. The third Asiatic expedition of the American Museum of Natural History found in Mongolia the skull of another dinosaur, the titanothere, besides other choice fossils.

The Fogg Art Museum of Harvard has sent an expedition under Langdon Warner, recently of Pennsylvania, to west China to study ancient and medieval Chinese art treasures, including the kiln sites of the Sung dynasty (10th century) and Buddhist rock grottoes of the 5th century. Duncan McDougall, son of the psychologist, is in the party. Other expeditions from Boston, Washington, and Chicago museums are in China, and an American archeological school may be opened at Peking, similar to those at Rome, Athens, Jerusalem. Rubbings, photographs and measurements of early architecture in danger of decay will be taken.

Latin America. The Carnegie Institute has received a five-year concession from the Guatemalan Government to carry on explorations in the Peten district, contining Tikal, perhaps the oldest of the Maya cities (200 A. D.). Dr. Sylvanus Morley will soon return to Central America to take up this work. American archeologists are in charge of the museum at Guatemala City.

A perfectly preserved mummy of an Inca chief was unearthed, with art objects in a large earthern jar, in the province of Salta, Argentine. The embalment methods may prove superior to those of the Egyptians.

United States. Indian relics, tombs, and skeletons have been excavated at widely scattered points: 1) Near Staatsburg, N. Y., skeleton and full regalia of a Munsee Indian Chief. 2) In Harlan County, Ky., by University scientists and a 14-year-old mountain girl, skeletons of 9 primitive Indians. 3) In the Burton Mound, Santa Barbara, Cal., remains of a race with remarkable tooth development -- broad incisors like horses, and no cavities. 4) At Warehouse Point, Conn., bones of an Indian of large stature. 5) On the Wet River, Arkansas, implements of a vanished race with arts of weaving and carving. 6) At Pueblo Bonito, New Mexico, a great prehistoric com- munity dwelling, by the National Geographic Society, under Neil M. Judd. 7) At Mesa Verde National Park and the Rio Mimbres valley, New Mexico, a pipe shrine house, traces of a dice game, and other cliff-dwelling relics, by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, of the Smithsonian Institution. 8) In mounds at Albany, Ore., remains which indicate, in the belief of Dr. Edwin T. Hodge, of the University of Oregon, that the American aborigines, following the coast southward from Behring Straits, spread fanlike over the continent through the Columbia River gap.

In Keru County, Cal., bones of sabertooth tigers, giant sloths, and other beasts were found embedded in asphalt beds, Dr. William Bebb, of Northwestern University.

The Arbuckle Mountain area of Oklahoma contains perhaps the most complete series of sedimentary rocks from before pre-Cambrian times in America, says Prof. C. E. Decker, of the University of Oklahoma. Folding and erosion have exposed the beds, with great fossil deposits, for study.

Canada. Bones of a mastodon were excavated near Loudou, Ont., by Prof. A. D. Robertson, of Western University. The teeth are a foot long and 18 inches across, the tusks 8 feet long, the jawbone weighs 40 pounds. The animal is estimated to have weighed over 30 tons. Few complete mastodon skeletons have been found. This one may have lived before man inhabited the continent.