Evening star., 1925-02-26
EARLY CIVILIZATION
TRACES ARE FOUND
Bones and China Dug Up in
Philippines Are Held of
Great Value.
BY WALTER ROBB.

Daily News
MANILA, P. l., February 2.-The
strangest cargoes ever collected in the
Philippines are being shipped to the
University of the Philippines from the
isles of Opon, near Cebu, celebrated in
Philippine history as the scene of the
death, at the hands of belligerent ma
tives, of Fernando Magellan, circumnav-
igator. The cargoes consist of such
gruesome tidbits as decayed skulls, shin
bones. even entire skeletons-with teeth
an especially priced item on the mani
tests. Along with all this go ton after
ton of china and crockery, seemingly
the more precious il specimen is made
up OF hundred or more broken pieces.
However, broken pieces are not abso
q lutely mandatory. A teapot or burial
n jar dating from the Ming dynasty or
n thereabouts, and so perfectly burned as
& to bear every appearance of having
b come new from a shop on Bubbling Well
road, is not rejected because it happens
to be whole after doing service for
III millinneum or So
Such d piece will even get a special
8 packing, perhaps be slowed in the cap
Stain's cabin; but no carelessness attends
the packing and slowing of what are
2apparently the humblest portions of
this archaelogic cargo-all of it only
Foughly catalogued as yet, and none of
CdISIu ullS SluUleu
Michigan Man in Charge.
The material is being gathered by DR..
Carl z. Guthe head of the depart
nent of anthropology at Michigan, out
n the Philippines on an archaeological
Expedition for two years now. and ex-
pecting to bring his work to a close
M about February and return to Ann Ar
Dor to spend a long period on the
laboratory end of the research. His
headquarters are at the compound of
The Philippine Refining Corporation, a
# cocoanut oil and by-products factory
Established some ten years ago on Opon
by another Michigan man, DIR. Dean c.
Worcester, himself a scientist as well
hs a business man.
Says DR.. Guthe, surveying obviously
china plate that will only be plate
h when SO catalogued pieces and a few
Nh hondescript chips are cemented to-
#gether, Il don't know what I've got,
put it's a lot" 1t is-the greatest single
Philippine archaeological collection ever
gathered. One of the problems it will
help to trace through buried history is
u hat the successive migrations to the
S Philippines. Another is that of the
& probable duration and depth of influence
bf Hindu culture, and still another
Though more recent, and perhaps older
"a oo-the scope of Chinese contact with
he Philippines.
Trace of Early Civilization.
M The romantic fact is that the porce-
ain burial Jars in great burial caves,
" Ind in what has been found by DR..
Iuthe in rough-hewn old molave cof-
ins in cemeteries long abandoned to
he jungle, are definite tracings of the
arly civilizations of the world-and the
B md of what must have been distant
nd ambitious religio-military crusades.
Cor, earlier than what is Hindu and
*Mohamedan, earlier than what is Chi
pese, there was a pagan or turanian
people in the islands, as the purposely
Reformed shape of many of the Oldest
skulls prove-they and the relics found
e hear them.
ii There is many a hint in the collection
that when finally and thoroughly
studied it will corroborate the earliest
sTriters about the Philippines. A Jap
hnese matchbox, just now dignlfied as
receptacle Of scientific treasure trove,
holds dozen or so gold filled teeth,
Nforroborating precisely passages in
Pigafetti, the Italian historian, who ac-
8 Etompanied the first Spanish expedition.
Holes were bored in the teeth, and gold
put into the cavities; and gold facings
some of them made removable, were an
8Aprnament for the front teeth of prin-
eesses and their male consorts. ct is
Better thus stated, for in that period
the Malayans in the Philippines had not
abandoned the Matriarchal forms of
3#government established by their ances-
Stors in ancient Sumatra.)
81 Skulls Disturb Natives.
This research interests no Filipinos;
they don't hone" to cultivate ia
il #miliarity with skeletons, be these new
#or old. DIR. Guthe has, indeed, a very
Incapable senior high school assistant,
but the work he does is all daylight
work. AS the afternoon merges into
evening, this young Filipino disciple of
Il Minerva grows extremely restless in the
close environment of the ancient dead
and their relics. Before twilight he
! is away from it all, with the door well
q locked behind him. He helps clean the
specimens, and pack them in Secony
oil-can cases, which, when sufficiently
reinforced with strip iron and hard
wood, make perfect containers to in
sure safe shipment of the collection to
! Ann Arbor. But though the case will
get the collection safely to it's destina-
ton, once arrived, it will be another
case of scientists of dozen different
categories working years to unravel
the tale the collection tells.
One curious object is a crude granite
stone device the early Spaniards copied
from the natives and utilized for re-
ducing gold ore and quartz. The loss
was tremendous. On the same ground
I low grade projects are now being op-
4 Grated, yielding perhaps a greater
profit than the Spaniards won from the
first run of the dirt.
Copyright 1925, by Chicago Daily News Co..