Science: The Diggers

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In Peru, on the windswept Paracas peninsula, Dr. William M. McGovern, of London University, and Dr. Julio Tello, Harvard-educated Peruvian archeologist, gathered scattered bones, bits of pottery and building stone; dug six yards down and found the red porphyry walls and courtyards of a city of unknown extent dating to 1000 B. C. Burial caverns, scooped into solid rock like the interior of flat-bottomed water-bottles with yard wide necks, contained groups of mummies sitting in circles, the chiefs holding carved wooden staffs. Headbands and other trinkets of gold; primitive pottery and "magnificent" textile remains, approximated the lost Tiahuanaco culture of the Bolivian highlands. The Paracas city was named Cerro Colorado. Not many miles away is the ancient Cabeza Larga, a city preceding the Nascan culture, which preceded the establishment of the Inca empire (circa 1100 A.D.).

In Yucatan, where hot, silent bush spreads like a sea over leagues of country through which not even the Indians always know their way, two big parties searched out "lost" cities of the Mayan civilization to fill the, gap from 600 to 1000 A.D. in known Maya history. Dr. Thomas W. F. Gann, famed Mayan authority, led his aides along a giant, 50-mile stone causeway from Chichen-Itza to the lost, lagoon-locked city of Coba, a march often made ceremonially by the Cobans into Chichen-Itza and finally as a migration by the Chichen-Itzans into Coba, probably in the Sixth Century. Inscriptions appeared to bring Coba's history down to the 14th Century.

Dr. Herbert J. Spinden of the Peabody Museum (Boston) and Gregory Mason, formerly on the editorial staff of the Outlook, cruised the Yucatan coast, putting ashore five times in six days to visit Mayan cities unknown to modern history—Xkaret, Paalmul. Chakalal, Actuo, Acomal. Four or five miles apart, they were each discoverable by a small temple seen from the sea, and might be approached in a launch by a creek or canal leading to a lake, lagoon or bay. These cities were on the trade route between northern Yucatan and Mayan centres in lower Central America, particularly Guatemala. Like Dr. Gann, the Mason-Spinden expedition found some of the ancient shrines still in use by Indian hunters and chicle* workers, who mingle Catholic and Mayan rites in their worship. Next week TIME will catalog archeological findings in Europe, Asia, Africa.