Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1915-03-11
NEW EXPLORATIONS OF THE PAST
Discoveries Of Live Interest Are Being Made by the Museum Of
University of Pennsylvania Story of Five Expeditions
Into Little Known Regions of the Earth
BY WILLIAM A. McGARRY

| THE mystery of the huge, quantity deco
| L rated bowls vases sent to the museum
of the University of Pennsylvania many
months ago from the Businesses of the Upper
Amazon by Dr. william C. Farrabee has been
solved at last. They are used by the Conebo
Indians for making chci, the native wine,
drunk almost exclusively at the coming OUT
parties of the young women. This informa-
ton was contained in a recent letter from
Doctor Farrabee, written just before he and
his party left the last outpost of civilization
a second time and started up the slopes of
the Andes in a hunt for more villages of
hitherto unknown races of Indians. There
probably will be no further message from
the explorers for months.
Comparatively few PhIladelphians know
the extent of the chronological and archae-
illogical work under way, and the Importance
of the results so far achieved by the scien-
lists conducting the explorations for the
Museum of the University of Pennsylvania.
No fewer than five expeditions are now busy
In many corners of the earth.
Twenty-Five or thirty years ago museums
were hardly more than curio exhibitions.
Specimens of the craft and art of the
ancients picked up here and there by trav-
elers were displayed with bare description
of where they were found. and little effort
was made to get at the real significance of
such objects The study of the races of men
who lived and fourished when the world
was young was confined almost solely to
old manuscript records. Bits of baked clay
with Cuneiform inscriptions of which there
are hundreds at the University Museum, at
tracted the attention only of few scholars,
But the methods of science in ethnoogy and
archaeology have been changed of late years.
Nearly every spot in the world where races,
since wiped out, are known to have lived in
ancient times is being explored and studied.
One of the University Museum expeditions
is that which is at work in the Caribbean
Archipelago. The others are the expedition
to Siberia, headed by Doctor Fisher; the
Egyptian expedition, financed by Eckley B.
Coke, Jr., president of the r>useum (the fifth,
by the way, sent into land of the Pharaohs
by Mr. Coxe); the Amazon expedition. in
charge of Doctor Farrabee and that of DR..
C. W. Bishop, to Japan and China, which has
just reached the field.
Extinct Americans
Mr.. George c. Heye wealthy New York
business man who pursues ethnology as an
avocatlon with all the ardor of the great
est scientists, is in charge of the Carib-
bean explorers For years he has been
studying the extinct races of the Americas
and nearby islands. and his collection of
objects from these lands is one of the most
comprehensive in the world. Most of his
specimens are deposited with the University
Museum ,Hhe present expedition is now
making a second and more thorough explora-
tion of Cuba, excellent results having been
attained in the first
branch party sent out by Mr. Heye is
at work among the smaller islands for traces
OF the Arowak Indians, a race exterminated
within 50 years after the arrival OF the
spaniards. So far little is known of these
Indians, but the expedition is meeting with
marked success. and undoubtedly will make
some important chronological discoveries.
Waiting for Winter in Siberia
Material additions to our knowledge of the |
romantic. II sometimes bloody. history of the |
Mongols, the Tartars and the Huns. and the |
early stocks from which they sprang, may |
be made by the expedition which has gone /
into the Siberian wastes, journey to which |
attaches some OF the heroic glamour OF a |
dash 10 the North Pole Doctor Fisher and /
MS party We're last heard from in October.
until that month they had been waiting on
me outskirts OF Siberian mOrass. 10 feet
aeep IN summer II is impossible save in
the winter months. Beneath this swamp.
now frozen over and being traversed by the
party. Is supposed 10 be about so feet Of lee.
Il was y TINS country, near the Arctic Circle
ana west Of the Lena, that Russian explorers
some years ago discovered a mammatb ,,,eh
nesh SIN preserved. Il had been frozen lnse
The lee II the glacial period. ana 4nas. 49,
lfsa ss.sse feaFa aso. The skeleton s nos