Show great cities were built by people of the stone age acre handsome land sonie architecture found in mesopotamia new haven conn con n su surprising evidence that stone age man became a civilized city fellow and that it is all wrong to think of our stone age ancestors as nee necessarily essa rily primitive crimiti 1 ve has been unearthed from far depths of the worlds oldest city from the earthen mound at gawra in mesopotamia where prof E A of the university of pennsylvania is digging out the thirteenth layer of ruins he has bent sent word of finding an acropolis of impressive architecture the ruins represent the earliest known example of monumental architecture the buildings stood in their grandeur over years before christ the acropolis of the stone age city consists of three buildings a N northern orth temple eastern shrine and central temple all opening upon a main court with dwellings on one side completing the enclosure prof announced the discovery to prof millar burrows president of the american schools of oriental research which is joint sponsor of the expedition together with the university of pennsylvania and cropsie college main alain court awe inspiring the complete acropolis can be reconstructed prof believes he calls the central temple the purple temple because all the rooms show traces of red purple P paint aint the main court was an inspiring sight the archaeologist reports paved first with fine gravel and later covered with stamped clay all but surrounded by monumental buildings this court was dominated by the great niche of the central or purple temple whether calculated or no not t the effect must have been awe inspiring to the excavators excava tors who could view the sight at what was but a suggestion of the original surroundings the experience was none the less profoundly moving not primitive people the acropolis discovery prof states clears up a problem concerning this prehistoric era the people have heretofore been called painted pottery peoples because of the mistaken notion that they could build only flimsy mud hovels and that their only cleverness lay in making good clay wares they are now revealed as far from primitive and it can be at last understood how they were able to spread over and dominate a vast portion of the ancient world pointing out that mesopotamia still has buried secrets prof says that several layers remain to be dug these may reveal man in the inchoate infancy of his civilization iza tion until these unknown levels are probed the archaeologists do not feel sure whether the stone age acropolis and its builders represent 49 mankind in its exuberant youth or in the maturity of an advance of incalculable duration |