The Ward County independent. [volume] (Minot, Ward County, N.D.) 1902-1965, 1909-08-05

gained from a life time OF expert
ence, and conversation with their
neighbors and frienGs, largely died
with them, as traditional information
commonly does. If the world had
all of the information gathered by
mans experience, und had never
been forced to retrace the same
ground and discover facts a second
time, we would be vastly further
along in our knowledge today.
What did they know? Does some
one ask. Even that cannot be ans
wered definitely. The heating Of
houses by the hot water system has
been taken up by this civilization
within the memory Of our middleag-
ed men, and is considered valuable
feature and discovery. The cities of
Herculanean and Pompeii knew the
secret, and they were buried by old
Mount Vesuvius and literally forgot
ten as the years come and went, SO
that gardener with his vinyard
growing above Pompeii in boring q
posthole for grape trellis ran his
auger into q house-top and discover
ed the city to our civilization. These
cities are now partially unearthed
and what do we discover. Iron pipes,
hot water heat in their dwellings,
deep ruts worn in tneir streets by
vehicles-what sort Of tires did they
have in them? Had they thought Of
the ball bearing axle? Had they
other elements of cunning that we
know not Of and cannot trace? How
old were these cities do you ask
The Greek. and Roman left us rec
ords Of their doing of more than
two thousand years ago-but they
left US no clues to these buried cit
ies Shall we add another thousand
years to their time and say that
thirty centuries ago the plumber and
the gas pipe were familiar sights in
Pompeii?
Loaves Of light bread were found
in the ruins of those cities, so that
the use of yeast was -common-does
this mean that they understood fungi
and bacteria, that their physicians
used antiseptics to prevent infection
in wounds? There is no way of
this question, but II they
did countless thousands human be-
ings have died from the loss of that
What sort Of mills they
had for grinding their wheat and the
kind of wheat they grew are ques-
lions which cannot answer. 1t is
reasonably certain, however, that
they had a better plan for grinding
than the ten to twenty generations
which followed them, or the loaves
which have been unearthed would not
have shown the texture which Is
described by those who have seen
them. II
corning what we have lost, turn to
the pyramids Of Egypt, built it is said
a few thousand years before our
Christian era. No one knows who
built the pyramids and no one knows
how they were constructed. The
first record we have is of their being
listed as one of the seven wonders
of the world and I believe they are
the sole surviving member Of the
seven. It is said that the largest Of
these pyramids contain enough stone
to build wall, four feet high and
eighteen inches thick from New York
to San Francisco. 1t contains three
apartments, convenient passages and
has provisions for ventilation. 1t Is
said that the stones constituting the
ceiling of one Of the rooms, must
weigh at least fifty-forr tons. There
is evidence that these stones must
have been transported thousand
miles, raised two hundred feet high,
and put in place. All of this must
have happened forty centuries ago.
The apartments of the pyramid are as
highly polished as the best masons
are able to do today, and the stone
blocks massive as they are fit SO
perfectly together that the turist is
required to use magnifying glass to
see the joint. For some peculiar
reason the great pyramid is located
almost in the center Of the land Of
the world, the meridian and parallel,
which passes thru the longest areas
of land cross at this point. Does this
mean that the mind which located it
knew that the world was round? And
understood meridians and parallels,