Diggers

During the war the bones and buildings of Ancient Man slept soundly. With almost every promising digging site out of bounds for one reason or another, the world's archeologists--many of whom were engaged in military intelligence work --had a long breather. Now, having evaluated such new, war-perfected tools as mine detectors, stereoscopic air photography and explosive microcharges, they are on the prowl again.

Roman Relics. In a way, the war was a help to archeology. Bombs, shells and fires wrecked many European cities, sweeping modern structures from the ancient remains beneath. British diggers, of course, pounced on blitzed east London, site of Roman Londinium. So far, they have found little, but they are excavating furiously--before the stone jungle of the rebuilt city swallows their opportunity.

At Canterbury (Roman Durovernum), many feet below the leveled shopping district, the diggers found a 3rd-Century mosaic floor, as perfect as when its Roman builders set down their tools 1,700 years ago. A more elaborate floor (see cut) showed up in Low Ham, Somerset, complete with prancing mosaic horsemen, naked ladies, and amorous Roman warriors.

French archeologists also profited by war's destruction. Last week the French were busily clearing away the rubble of the German-demolished "Old Port" of Marseilles, turning up traces of ancient Greek Masillia (6th Century B.C.).

Donkey Bones. More exciting to French diggers is the art-crammed neolithic cave at Montignac-sur-Vezere. Named after some donkey bones found near the surface, the cave was first explored in 1940 by schoolboys. A few pictures of it leaked out through Vichy (TIME, July 28, 1941), but detailed study had to wait until after the war. Last week scientific investigation was going full speed ahead.

Archeologists believe that the Montignac cave's deep, twisting chambers were occupied between 10,000 and 30,000 years ago by successive races of cave-dwelling men who covered its walls with many layers of spirited, colorful drawings. It will take years of hard work to trace the half-erased lines and chart the cave's long history.

Ancient Americans. Probably the greenest diggers' pasture at present is the Western Hemisphere. During the last Ice Age, some 15,000 years ago, the now arid U.S. southwest was a well-watered temperate paradise swarming with bison, camels, mammoths, horses, giant ground-sloths. Clad in skins and armed with puny, flint-pointed darts, Ancient Man scurried about this dangerous, Pleistocene zoo.

Of these earliest Americans--Folsom Man, Sandia Man, Cochise Man--not a single bone has yet been found. But weapons, gnawed animal bones and camp sites indicate his existence beyond dispute. The first archeologist to find the authentic bones of a Pleistocene American will be the most famous digger in the Western Hemisphere.

Hot on the trail last week was Dr. Frank C. Hibben of the University of New Mexico. In 1941 he followed the trail to Alaska, where he found the characteristic Folsom dart points. This summer he will dig in Saskatchewan. His dream is to ransack Siberia, where the earliest Americans presumably came from.

Temple Paradise. In Guatemala last week, an expedition financed by the United Fruit Co. was restoring the Mayan city of Zaculeu, near Huehuetenango. Zaculeu's spectacular pyramid temple is surrounded by a diggers' paradise of lesser temples and altars. (Near by is a court for the breakneck religious ball game which Central Americans believe to be the ancestor of basket ball.) Guatemala is dotted with dead stone cities, and United Fruit has promised a five-year program to put them back in shape.

The farther south the Ancient Americans wandered, the weirder their civilization became. In northern Peru's coastal Viru Valley, diggers were last week excavating the whole series of civilizations that flourished there in the past 2,000 years.

About a month ago they found the first traces of the most primitive Viruvians, who lived in caves cut into the hard-baked soil. About the time of Christ they were replaced by (or developed into) the Chavin people. Step by step, as the centuries passed, the tight little valley's life became more complex. With the Mochica culture (500-900 A.D.), it reached a peak of sophistication. The Mochicas fertilized their fields with guano and watered them with intricate irrigation ditches, one of which was 113 kilometers (70 miles) long. They wove marvelous textiles, had a highly centralized government, built pyramids, fortresses, palaces, roads, and boats.

Talking Pottery. The Mochicas, and most other ancient Peruvians, buried sculptured pots with their dead. With painstaking detail, and sometimes with hair-raising sound effects, these pots show birth and death, work and play, war and worship. One famed example of the Peruvian pottery art shows a surgeon at work on a woman's back. When filled with water and tipped back & forth, the pot gives a long-drawn sigh, then a loud scream of pain.

The present crew of diggers are certain to find many new prizes, for Peru is an archeological treasure house. Exciting unfinished business is the neatly planned city of Chan Chan, whose massive ruins cover twelve square miles. Chan Chan, 30 miles north of the Viru Valley, was probably the greatest prehistoric metropolis in the Americas. Its culture lasted until 1400, when the Incas swept down from the High Sierras, freezing Peruvian life to such brittle rigidity that it shattered to dust when the Spaniards came.

By reconstructing the Viru Valley region, the diggers can span the whole sweep of the human cycle, from its primitive beginnings to rigor mortis.

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