Diggers

News of archeology and paleontology during the past fortnight:

Palestine. "And king Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom."--I. Kings 9:26.

In view of the above bit of Biblical maritime history, antiquarians have long been convinced that King Solomon in his years of splendor had a port on the Red Sea, but they did not know where it was. Last week Dr. Millar Burrows of Yale announced that the port had been found by explorations and excavations near Aqaba. The finder is Dr. Nelson Glueck, heading an expedition of the American School for Oriental Research. Aqaba is a town encircled by towering granite hills on a narrow gulf at the Red Sea's northern end. During the War it was captured from the Turks by Arabian forces under the late, strange Colonel T. E. Lawrence.

One reason Solomon's port remained so long hidden is that it is a half-mile inland from the present coast. The prevailing winds from the north carry heavy burdens of sand, which have built up the shore and extended it slowly southward into the sea.

Dr. Glueck's finds indicate that the busy inhabitants of Solomon's port, besides carrying on sea trade, ship-building and fishing, smelted copper and manufactured such copper implements as spearheads, fishhooks, nails. Some of the flues in the ancient smelter are still intact, and the north wind causes a strong draft through them. Dr. Glueck believes the necessity for such a natural draft was the reason this site was chosen for smelting.

It seemed to the diggers that the storied visit of the Queen of Sheba may have been motivated by fear that Solomon's new sea trade would interfere with her caravan commerce, and her consequent desire to make a deal.

Southeastern Asia. Dr. Hellmut de

Terra of Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences wirelessed from Java that he had found in Java and Burma crude Old Stone Age tools which convinced him that contemporaries of China's Peking Man and Java's Ape-Man (Pithecanthropus erectus) had wandered over the whole Asiatic coast as far west as the Indian Ocean. These old men of China and Java are considered the most ancient of human fossils--500,000 to 1,000,000 years old. Dr. de Terra now believes that the oldest toolmaking culture in Asia originated in the southeastern part of the continent, spread from there in widening circles.

England. At Maiden Castle in Dorsetshire are the remains of a fortress built and manned by the Belgie people before the Roman invasion (First Century). Last fortnight it was reported from London that the Maiden Castle diggers had uncovered a haphazard burial area containing about 30 skeletons. Some of the skulls and bones were nicked as if by weapons. Apparently the Belgies had made an ill-advised sortie from the stronghold to meet oncoming Romans, who slaughtered them. Aside from the marks of battle, however, the skeletons were well preserved, were expected to shed light on the physical characteristics of the little-known Belgies.

Utah, Dr. Frederick James Pack of the University of Utah displayed an eleven-foot hind leg and a six-foot backbone section of a brontosaurus, declared he would not disclose where the rest of the monster was imbedded until diggers of his own institution were ready to unearth it. His reason: too many dinosaurs had already been taken out of Utah by the Carnegie Institute, the American Museum of Natural History and other eastern organizations. "Utah dinosaurs for Utah museums--that's my slogan!" exclaimed Dr. Frederick James Pack.

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