Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 January 1913 — LOST CITY IS FOUND [ARTICLE]

LOST CITY IS FOUND

Believed to Have Been Built by Chinese in Mexico.

Three Towns Were Erected on the Same Site by Three Civilizations Prior to the Aztecs—Mongolian image Is Discovered.

City of Mexico. —A sensation has been .created in British scientific circles hy advices received from Sir Martin Conway, Prof. William Niven and Senor Ramon Mena of the discovery of absolute Mongolian remains only a couple of hours’ walk from the City of Mexico, thereby confirming the hypothesis that has long been held that the most ancient civilization of Mexico and Peru preceding that of the Toltecs and the Aztecs was of Mongolian origin, says a correspondent.

Close to and partly beneath the ruins of the ancient city of Tootihuacan, about nineteen miles northeast of the City of Mexico, the scientists uncovered the still more ancient city of Otumba, which flourished with a wondrous civilization centuries before the Aztecs or Toltecß rose to power, possibly even before Babylon and Nineveh swayed the destinies of western Asia.

With the financial assistance of the Mexican government the expedition began the removal of a six-foot layer of earth, representing the dust and detritus of more than twenty centuries. This soon brought into view many evidences of a vast and populous city of a very high order of civilization. Chief among these was a great pyramids It is 700 feet square at the base and its apex is 187 feet high, while many of the giant blocks of stone in its massive walls must have required extraordinary engineering skill to handle. This pyramid also has its riddle, for the axis of the main gallery is coincidental with the magnetic meridian.

The workmanship is of a high order, the figures being boldly drawn and carefully colored. Then came the greatest discovery of all. While excavating near the base of the great pyramid Professor Niven unearthed the remains of yet a . third civilization beneath the ruins of ancient Otumba, making three great cities of lost and forgotten races, built one above the oth^r. In what appears been a tomb of the lowesFlilty, whose age so far defies calculation, Professor Niven found the clay image of a Chinaman, with oblique eye slits, padded coat, flowing trousers and slippers. Only the queue was lacking to make a complete portrait of a mandarin of the recently defunct Chinese empire. It should be remembered, however, that the Chinese did not adopt the queue until after they had been conquered by the Tartar hordes from the north. The image is about seven inches in length, and where the arms are broken the edges of the clay show red and friable in the «enter. The outer surface of the clay, however, is of granite hardness and it is only with the greatest difficulty that it can be chipped with a hammer. “This Chinese image,” writes Professor Niven, “was not made by the Aztecs. It is much older and proves that the ancient people of Mexico were familiar with the Mongol type. "It should be borne in mind that this image was not a god or an idol, but an ornament —perhaps a portrait

done in clay by some prehistoric sculptor. "The age of the figure is difficult to determine without further data. Circumstances, however, warrant the rough guess that about 5,000 years ago Chinese navigators crossed the Pacific in their primitive Junks and discovered America thousands of years before Columbus was born. Settling there, they built a city, and in a grave of one of their number, many years after, a clay image of the man was buried with him. “This great city fell into ruins—-pej-haps through conquest—but the image lay safe. The ruins of this first city were covered with earth and there arose through the centuries another splendid and mysterious city. This, too, fell into ruins, and upon it was raised a third metropolis of some forgotten race of men. At last the ' third city crumbled into dust, but underneath them all the Chinaman’s image still lay safe and undisturbed until a little group of searchers in the cause of science in this wonderful twentieth century of ours have brought it to light, and perhaps through it we may now solve the enigma of the new world’s beginning.