vol. xxx, no. 4 april 1926 universal brotherhood - a fact in nature

NEWS FROM THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL FIELD
"Hundreds of native dates found on Mayan monuments and temple-rvalls have been
translated into our calendar, and erridence of their highly scientific methods and the extremely
accurate results which they obtained in their calculations increases with further research.
The Mayas reached practically the same figure for the true length of the year that we have
today. They made calculations over vast stretches of time. Their calendar was more accu-
rate than our nwn, a hich has an error ol one day in 3,300 years."
WE are too much inclined to think that the interest in and re-
search into natural problems are particularly characteristic of com-
paratively recent years, say since the establishment of the Royal Society
in London in the middle of the seventeenth century. Disregarding the
marvelous advances in science and civilization made many thousands of
years ago in Egypt which permitted the conception and creation of such
a monument of skill and organization as the Great Pyramid, the in-
tellectual activities of the early centuries of our era are very striking --
the close of the cycle of later antiquity before the Dark Ages settled down
like a fog over Europe. This quotation, from The Neu! Archaeological
Discoveries by Dr. C. M. Cobern, refers to this period:
"The whole civilized world throbbed with a sudden liberated energy. It seemed
as if a new intellectual dynamic had been injected into the blood of the race. Pioneers of
science like Strabo were inventing geological theories which strangely resemble those of modern
times; scholars like Tacitus and Livy were writing histories of such elegance and philosophic
insight that they are yet classics of their kind; educators like Quintilian were originating
methods of pedagogy which are only now in the twentieth century being carried into effect.
"The astronomers in Alexandria were calculating eclipses, determining the equi-
noctial points, solstices, etc., much as is done today, and were reaching decisions concerning
the size of the earth and the moon which were not far removed from those obtained by modern
scholars. The sphericity of the earth was taught and illustrated in the schools, as we know
from a fresco on which a terrestrial globe is represented, recently found near Rome.
"Nero had a pipe-organ worked by machinery, a circular dining-room which re-
volved like an astronomical dome with the sun, and a bronze hydraulic engine, found only
recently in the ruins of his palace; and Dr. Boni has just discovered an elevator 120 feet high
connected with the emperor's palace. . . .
SYMBOL of almost eternal duration, of unknown age, the great
Sphinx of Ghizeh has lately been found to be in serious danger of destruction
by the forces of Nature, slowly and imperceptibly but surely working
towards change. The Egyptian Antiquities Department has come to its
rescue in time and is now repairing it very thoroughly. Complete clearance
of the sand which usually conceals most of the lion's body has been
made, and it is now fully exposed to sight, which, it is believed, has not
been the case for at least two thousand years.
To prevent the fall of the colossal head by the threatened breaking
of the neck owing to disintegration, an iron collar is being fixed round