Diggers

The cave of Ghar Hotu lies near the North Iranian village of Turujan, just south of Behshahr, about three miles from the Caspian. In the remote past, the sea lapped at its entrance. Primitive men built fires there and stared out across the dark waters. One cool evening, thousands of years ago, disaster struck. The roof fell in, burying three of the cave dwellers in Pleistocene sand and gravel, and prehistoric ages piled sand and stone above their bones.

Last February, Dr. Carleton ("Cannonball") Coon, a University of Pennsylvania archaeologist who had made a specialty of Iran, revisited the area around Ghar Hotu.* In semidarkness, assorted Iranian laborers and kibitzers, directed by Dr. Coon and his young (25) Harvard assistant, Louis Dupree, stripped layer after layer from the surface of the cave. At the Iron Age layer they turned up arrowheads, pins and pottery. The Bronze Age yielded javelin heads, rings and vases. Deeper down they found fine painted crocks, and then "software Neolithic," probably the oldest plain Neolithic pottery on record.

Below these layers they went through a large rockfall to hit glacial gravel of the Pleistocene. After the discovery of a rare hand ax, tension in the deep hole grew as thick as the close air below the cave floor. Then, in the sputtering light of a Coleman lamp, the Iranian workmen disinterred the skeletons of the three prehistoric men who had met sudden death there some 75,000 years ago.

The lost men of Hotu differ from moderns mainly in their reduced brain capacity. They were heavy-set and stood about 5 ft. 8 in., with low-placed eyes, long teeth, and perfectly human chins. Last week, in Teheran, still bubbling with excitement, Dr. Coon speculated on the importance of the discovery. "We have proven that men of human type existed contemporaneously with more primitive forms elsewhere . . . Here we are on the main line of evolution." Backed up by further study, his discovery may upset the prevalent notion that modern man is descended from the subhuman Neanderthal. According to Coon, the Hotu man, a true human (Homo sapiens), may actually have preceded Neanderthal.

Their digging on the Caspian done for this year, Coon and Dupree are already planning another expedition. Native workmen told them a fabulous tale of immense stone sculpture in another cave, hidden in high, wild mountains to the south. If they can, they will return next year. But time may be running out. Like other scientists, they fear the Russians will take over the "heartland" of archaeology.

After almost three months of digging near the biblical city of Jericho, Professor James B. Pritchard of the Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pa. announced last week that he had probably found the winter palace of Herod the Great. Prematurely "discovered" last year by archaeologists who had really dug up a nearby Roman fortress, the imposing building predates the birth of Christ.

Big as a football field, the palace had 36 rooms and a couple of picture windows looking toward the Dead Sea. The floors were of intricate mosaic and the walls blazed out in brilliant red and gold. Elaborate hot and cold baths were supplied with running water brought down from nearby mountain springs in a stone conduit still used by Arabs.

During his long reign, Herod went up to Jericho to escape the damp, chilly winters of Jerusalem. Across the Jordan at Shuneh, King Abdullah still has a winter palace. But Professor Pritchard's discoveries suggest that not even modern royalty lives in comparable luxury.

* In the old days, according to legend, a man could stand at the cave mouth, shout Ho, wait for a few seconds, and the cave would answer Tu.

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