Diggers

While modern historians set down records of present-day doings, antiquarians with picks and shovels scratch the earths surface, attempt to fill gaps in early man's history. Digging expeditions planned, afoot or lately returned include the following:

In Alexandria. History's magnificent madman, Alexander of Macedonia, some 2253 years ago engaged in a classically long and hard drinking bout. After many days the quantity of iced, fermented honey that passed down his gullet weakened him, killed him. Expiring in Babylon, a stopping-off point on his insane meandering path about the earth, he left no trace of his tomb.

Knowing Alexander's almost negroid penchant for big funerals* two expeditions hope that without too much difficulty they will find traces of his tomb. Britisher Howard Carter, discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamun, proposes to start soon for Alexandria. Says he: "According to Plutarch exact position of Alexander's tomb was unknown. However, it may possibly be found in one of the Royal cemeteries, but I anticipate a long, difficult and expensive search."

With characteristic Carter thoroughness he will drill a great circle of test holes about the cemetery, gradually work toward the centre. If the drills bring up interesting material, excavations will begin.

When Howard Carter arrives in Alexandria he will find Professor Evaristo Breccia, director of the Graeco-Roman Museum of Alexandria, already probing in the dust beneath the Mosque of the Prophet Daniel, searching for Alexander's body. For 25 years Professor Breccia Pleaded with Moslem authorities for the privilege of digging, only last week received permission.

Discovery of Alexander's bones would be an outstanding feat of modern archeology, would make the discovery of Tutankhamun appear as a child's beach digging. If the body of Alexander is found beneath the Mosque it will not go to any foreign museum but will remain where it has been for tens of centuries. Thus reads Professor Breccia's contract.

The Gobi. Begun last month was another of Roy Chapman Andrews' perennial excursions into the dismal wastes of Gobi Desert. Prime object of the expedition: to find traces of some twigs from the family tree of the "Peking Man." world's earliest human discovered comparatively recently near Peking by Pei Wen-chung, Chinese archeologist

Traveling from Peking to Kalgan by train, thence 400 mi. inland by camel the Andrews party hopes to find the dried lake bed of which a Mongol guide told them. To prove his story the guide fetched an armful of fossilized bones.

In this Gobi boneyard the party will probe a Pliocene stratum (age ended 550,000 years ago) Said Dr. Andrews: "It is June 9, 1930 just the right age where we expect to find evidence of the origin of man "

In Nevada. "Either Pleistocene animals survived in America many thousand years after they were supposed to have died out [20,000-30,000 years ago] or man jived in America some 20,000 years before he was supposed to." Reason for such a conclusion from Dr. Mark Raymond Harrington of the Los Angeles Southwest Museum: he had discovered remains of a man-made fire under seven feet of gypsum in a Nevada cave. The fire was surrounded by bones of a giant ground sloth which apparently the fire-builder had dis patched and eaten. Also in the cave were discovered 900 man-things, including scores of long fighting darts, feathers bound with sinew (probably a religious piece), a white stone knife, gypsum pendants.

West Virginia is pocked with Indian mounds which have yielded bushels of arrow heads and other implements. One of the greatest mound discoveries was in Moundsville where, in 1838, was unearthed stone plaque covered with cryptic writing. Hoping to find some trace of the ancestry of prehistoric Americans savants plunged into the task of deciphering the writing.

Many translations followed, each backed by careful reasoning. For more than 90 years the controversy waxed and waned. Not until this year was it conclusively settled, by West Virginia's famed scholar and wit Andrew Price, president of the State Historical Society.

Scholar Price says he first hunted up ancient alphabets, "including Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, Babylonian cuneiform, Semitic Phoenician, Greek, Hebrew and Roman and sat down to draw far-fetched conclusions."

Glancing at the picture of the tablet before him his printer's eye vaguely detected the date Oct. 14, 1838, worked into the scrawl. Closer inspection ingenious juggling, deciphered the writing, "BIL STUMPS STONE OCT. 14, 1838 "!

Then Scholar Price recalled how in Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers the famed Club was hoaxed. Samuel Pickwick unearthed a stone, found the inscription,"X BILST U M PSHI S.M. ARK." Much erudite discussion ensued, many translations were given. Tongue-in-cheek Author Dickens was guying scientific men. The translation was simply "Bil Stumps his mark."

Pickwick Papers was published two years before the date on the Moundsville Stone, was doubtless the inspiration for the hoax. Hoaxes have included: Bureau of American Ethnology, Congress of Americanists (France), scores of scholars,

*At the death of one of his cronies, Hephaestion, Alexander had the attending physician crucified, had every horse in Persia shorn, prohibited all music, caused hundreds of people to be massacred as sacrifices, set aside 10,000 talents (about $12,000,000) for a tomb.

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