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Show "PRINTS" ABOUT OLD AS FINGERS Proofs of Their Wide Use in Old Palestine. Of course, It is generally known in this day of wide use of fingerprints for purposes of identification that that merry old Missourian, Mark Twain, did not In truth invent the fingerprint for the use he made of it as an Interesting point in detailing "The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson." Wil-son." And less generally known is that the fingerprint sweeps back to its use on official documents in China several centuries ago. But it was known only recently and then by very few persons that the fingerprint was employed In Palestine and possibly pos-sibly with purpose as long ago as six to a dozen centuries before Christ. Dr. William F. Bade, professor of Semitic literature and languages in the Pacific School of Religion, in his capacity as director of the Palestine Institute of the Tell en-Nasbeh expedition, expe-dition, studying pottery and bits of earthenware recovered by searchers from a 12-acre mound near Jerusalem Jerusa-lem in the last four years, has recognized recog-nized a pattern of fingerprints running run-ning through many of the specimens that indicates that they were used then almost as we use trademarks In the Twentieth century. Prof. August Vollmer, former police chief In Berkeley, Berk-eley, who is now teaching police administration ad-ministration In the Pacific school, aided Doctor Bade in the study, turn ing his knowledge of fingerprints and their distinctive characteristics to good account in classifying the groups of relics according to their makers. The knowledge thus gained has a practical value in determining periods. peri-ods. As the specimens were obtained ob-tained at varying levels of the 300-foot 300-foot mound it was not illogical to believe be-lieve that the different levels represented repre-sented different periods of history, with a spread, possibly, of several centuries. But Identification of a number of jars found at different levels lev-els of the mound, bearing the same "prints," indicates that the theory of hundreds of years separating the levels lev-els must be revised to suit the evidence. evi-dence. Several pottery vases in the collection have been identified as belonging be-longing to the period when the Israelites Isra-elites were carried off into exile in Babylonia. On the larger two-handled jars the prints were regularly on the upper parts of the handles and give support to the belief that they were intended to serve as the potter's trademark. The smaller jars are marked Indiscriminately and may have been nothing more than chance marks made in shaping the clay when it was soft. True enough, these fingerprints may not have the clearness and the identification certainty that the records rec-ords of modern prints bear, but the clay-recorded Impressions are sufficient suffi-cient to give new value to archeolog-ical archeolog-ical research. St. Louis Globe-Democrat. |