Word: ancient
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Rocks yield ancient footprints
...moment, the scientists can say little more about the creature who walked along the lakeside aeons ago. But they are clearly awed by the ancient tracks he left...
...inevitable that publishers would discover the Nile. Several have done so, simultaneously vulgarizing the past and present. But two new books offer a deep understanding of how people looked and thought a world ago. In Mummies Made in Egypt (Crowell; $8.95), Aliki unravels the secrets of ba, the ancient Egyptian concept of the soul, and ka, the invisible twin of the deceased. Both ba and ka wandered after death, and they could only return to a recognizable body-hence the art of preservation. Aliki's crisp narrative and delicate artwork never veer toward necrology; her interest...
Like the miners of the Klondike, the ancient artisans obtained much of their gold by panning. They also dug shafts into the ground and even set fire to hillsides to expose the gold-bearing soil. Smelting was done in small clay crucibles. Some objects, like the breastplates made in the Calima region of southwestern Colombia, were hammered into shape on stone anvils with instruments made of iron found in meteorites. To prevent the gold from becoming brittle and breaking while it was being worked, the goldsmiths annealed it-heating it and quenching it rapidly in water. For joining different pieces...
Respect for the glowing handiwork of the Colombian Indians extends beyond the museums and the museumgoers of Colombia and the U.S. Even the guaqueros, who in the past would melt down these treasures, have come to recognize that an ancient art object may be worth more than its weight in gold...