Word: ancient
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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After digging for several months, Dr. Howell figured out why the ancient lake was so popular with ancient man. About 10,000 years ago, he thinks, Tanganyika had a capricious climate. During rainy periods, the lowland plains and valleys were good places to live. Animals preferred them to the hills, and ancient human hunters stayed near the animals. The upland lake was deep during rainy periods, and its bottom collected a layer of clay, but it had no attraction...
After hundreds of thousands of years of this, the climate grew drier. Tanganyika's lowlands turned arid. The upland lake shrank, but it did not disappear. Up from the hungry plains trooped the animals, and soon ancient men moved in with them. For centuries they lived on the beaches, chipped their razor-sharp weapons and fed on the animals. When the rains came again, animals and men trooped back to the plains. This alternation seems to have happened four times; then the lake went dry. The shaggy men, the giant hippos, the giant pigs and the antlered giraffes abandoned...
Fearing the indignation of the British public if the ancient stones were damaged during restoration, the ministry is taking no chances. One stone, 4 ft. thick and weighing 45 tons, was known to have cracks, but no one knew whether they went deep enough to weaken the stone so it would break if lifted. To find out, the ministry called on Britain's atomic research station at Harwell. The scientists put 24 grams of sodium carbonate in a reactor and exposed it to neutrons until it became fiercely radioactive. They took it to Stonehenge by truck...
...films showed nothing at all, indicating that the ancient stone was fairly sound. A lifting cradle was built around it and a powerful crane hoisted it gingerly out of the ground, doing in a few minutes the job that a tribe of skin-clad men had done with panting slowness 3,000 years...
Professor George M. A. Hanfmann's current ancient mystery is the fabulous Lydian civilization, whose capital city in Sardis, Turkey, will be excavated during the next three summers. He returned on April 14th from a preliminary survey of the area and will leave again late in May to begin digging. "Sardis is an extremely rich place," says Professor Hanfmann, his "r's" revealing a slight German accent. "There are several big ruins above ground from the Hellenistic and the Roman period, but the palace of Croesus and the Temple of Zeus are buried. We will probably take on some...