The Coolidge examiner., 1933-08-11
FIND NEW CLUE
TO EARLY RACE
Excavations in Chaldea Il
Eliminating.

How the first clue to the real
founders of civilization, in the val
leys of the Tigris and the Euphrates
rivers, hung on the finding OF a pc
culiar brick and a bit of painted pot
terry, was told the American Associa-
tiOn for the Advancement of Science
in Chicago recently by Prof. z. S.
Speiser, of the University of Pennsyl-
vania, as part of the romance of
modern archaeological research.
No Sherlock Holmes of fiction ever
exercised more potent powers of de-
ductiOn than the university men ana
their colleagues of the British mu-
scum, long engaged in excavating the
site of Ur of the Chaldees. Abra-
hams home town.
Beneath IS layers of debris, the
dumped refuse of many a vanished
people. there were found a number
of bricks, fiat on three sides round
ed on the fourth, deposited there at
least 1000 years ago by race once,
thought to be the Sumerians, build
ers of the Tower of Babel.
But the novel building material
was used long before the arrival Of
the Sumerians in the country of the
fertile crescent" Professor Speiscr
declared
"At no other period was this ma
terial in evidence" he said. I'VE.
know that this type of brick was not
developed on the spot. but was i'm
ported from elsewhere. 1t is much.
too clumsy and impractical to have
replaced the convenient at-toppeCb
shape Of the previous age without
any pressure from the outside.
"In other words the plano-convex:
brick was introduced by a group of
invaders who, for one reason or an
other, probably on account of superior
numbers or greater power, became,
the dominant force in the land.
But we can go even farther than
that without fear of contradiction.
1t is possible to determine the gen.
eral direction from which the new
comers arrived. The plano. convex
shape is obviously initiative of stcpe'
models. Builders are notoriouslv
conservative and archaizing in the
choice Of their material Having
been accustomed to stone and finding
themselves of a sudden in n region
of this material, they promptly con-
trived to make artificial stones Of
clay instead of taking full advantage
of the new medium.
Here we have absolutely clear
proof that the newcomers were
mountain folk. This means that they
could only have come from the north
or the northeast. Translated into.
terms of race and language. and with,
what knowledge we have on this SUBJ
ject from historic times. it is safe to-
deduce that our impractical invaders
were not Semites like the Sumerians,.
for these were almost invariably To-
Gated to the south and to the west,
and not Europeans, who we're
not to appear on the scene prior to.
5000 B. G.
"They must have come from the.
mountain districts to the northeast
or possibly from even more remote
mountain area. From the distinc-
tive painted pottery of the time we
can declare that these people occu-
pied wide area extending from
northern Syria all the way to Balu
chistan, the center of gravity being
clearly in the Zagros mountains and
the Iranian plateau.
1.-THE people in question were be-
yond any reasonable doubt mem
bers of the same larger group that
is Still dominant in that highland
zone, group commonly associated:
with the Alp,ne race"