Evening Star Newspaper, April 10, 1932, Page 81

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., APRIL 10, 1932 HE GREAT WALL OF AMERICA Explorers Flying Over Peru Discover a Mighty Fortification Resembling the Great Wall of China, and Scientists Say It Was Erected by the Long-Extinct Chimu Indians of South America. BY EMILY C. DAVIS. HE Great Wall of China, winding like a mighty, protecting serpent along the old northern boundary of the Celestial Kingdam: : Hadrian's Wall, the Great Wall of Britain, built and fortified to shut the barbarians of the north cut of southern Britain in the days of the Roman empire—-. And now, added to this small, select list of great walls in the world is an American entry— the Great Wall of Peru, which has been dis- covered by explorers flying over the Andes. The American wall was built with hard labor by an Indian people called the Chimu, who had an important civilization long ago on the Pa- cific Coast of Peru, until finally they were swallowed up in a terrific struggle by the pow- erful empire of the Incas. That a great wzll many milcs long should be hidden or lost or forgotten seems incredible. A great wall would seem to be as conspicucus as the proverbial white elephant. But the great walls of China and Britain have had a way of fading out of sight for many centuries and coming to light again in modern times. And the new-found Wall of Peru is just like them. How very, very inconspicuous a great wall can be was proved by the Chinese wall, which was unknown outside of Asia for almost 2,000 years. And it is 1,500 miles long—that is half the width of the United States. As late as 50 years ago articles were actually written argu- ing that the Chinese wall was a myth. In England archeologists are still discover- ing Hadrian’s Wall, which runs clear across the island from east to west for 73 miles. Only last year a brandgnew fort along the wall was unearthed with much excitement in England. S for the Great Wall of Peru, it has just gained the world’s attention for the first time. It was sighted from the air unexpectedly as the recent Shippee-Johnson Peruvian expe- dition flew over the foothills of the Andes. Never having heard of any barricade of such size in Peru, the surprised explorers, Robert Shippee and George R. Johnson and their party, studdied their air photographs and puz- wled over them and finally decided to make another flight to trace the length of this mys- terious barricade. This time the flying explorers started from a point near the Pacific Coast where ruins of a village lie buried in sand. There the great wall springs up. The whole Pacific Coast of Peru is a desert strip of sand about 50 miles wide, cut across by a number of rivers which make the land habitable. East of that desert strip the ranges of the Andes begin. THE great wall crosses this strip and rises into the foothills. It was apparently built to follow the Santa River from sea to mountain. In many places the barricade wanders more than a mile from the river. Occasionally it comes close, even crossing the river's path. Like the Chinese Wall and the Wall of Ha- drian, the Great Wall of Peru was strengthened by a series of forts. The discoverers sighted 14 of these forts. They stood on both sides of the wall and at a short distance from it. Some of the forts are circular, some are rectangular. Most of them were cleverly set in the tops of small hills, where they would be quite invisible from the valley floor. As the flyers followed the wall up into the Andes, at an elevation of 10,000 feet in the mountains they lost the trail. Weather condi- tions were against them. The light was fail- Ing. But they had succeeded in following the wall for more than 40 miles. They had seen enough to convince them that this construction project of ancient America ranks with remark- able feats of the past. Viewed from an airplane over the Andes, the Great Wall of Peru is a seam, a long, fine scar on the face of the mountains. After the fiyers had surveyed it from the air, they set out in an automobile and on foot to examine the wall at close range. They found a tall, crumbling rampart of mud-cemented boulders. Where it crosses gul- Hes it rises as high as 20 or 30 feet. The av- erage height appears to have been 12 to 15 feet. At the base it was about 12 to 15 feet thick, and toward the top it tapered. T is interesiing to compare this wall with the other two previously mentioned. The Great Wall of China, built about 200 B.C. is 1,500 miles long, has 25000 towers for forts, rises from 15 to 30 feet high and is 25 feet thick at its base. Hadrian’s Wall in England was built around 150 AD. is 73 miles long, has 14 large forts and 80 small ones, stands nearly 20 feet high and is 8 feet thick. The Great Wall of America is known to be 40 miles long and may be longer, may have been built as early as 300 A.D., nas an aver- age height equal to that of the Chinese wall, is strengthened by 14 forts and is from 12 to 15 feet thick. Now that the great wall has been revealed by aerial photography, there is real surprise that so big a monument was never mentioned in early historic writings about Peru. The Spanish conquerors, who were so curious about all the wonders of the Incan empire in Peru, seem to have heard nothing about a great wall. At least, they never wrote of it. The Spaniards exclaimed over the long, smooth highways built by the Incas for their armies to march over. They marveled to see Incan temples built of stone and shining in gold and jeweled ornaments. They took the keenest interest in the intricate Communist system of the Incan government. And chron- iclers who accompanied Pizarro busily wrote down impressions about these things. WAS the great wall already a ruin, forgot- ten, when the Spaniards conquered the Incas in the sixteenth century? That might account for silence of history on the subject A number of archeologists have been asked !heir opinions on the great wall by the Amer- ican Geographical Society, and there is virtual ag{eemex;t on one point. That is that the builders of the Great Wall of Peru were the Chimu Indians. They were living in the region when the great wall must haye been built, for they occupied the coast from very early centuries of the Christian era. There is a famous Chimu vase painting which shows a whole row of hand-to-hand combats An aerial view of the Great Wall of America, looking like a scar on the Perw vian mountains. ) The men who found the wal] . . . Left to right, Valentine Van Keuren, Irving G. Hay, George R. Johnson, Robert Shipee and Max Distel. between Chimu warriors and some opponents. Such a scene gives a pretty good idea of what Imdian fighting must have been like along the Great Wall of Peru in the days A likeness of one of the prehistoric Indians who built the Great Wall of America . . . A Chimu Indian, as por- trayed in a carving on a Chimu vase. when it was a fortification in active use. In the series of duels painted on this vase the best dressed contestant, the Chimu war- rior, is winning every time. And that is no wonder. For the winners are protected the head by pointed helmets of wood cotton with chin straps and ear plates s flap down the back of the neck. These warriors wear armor jackets, prolime ably made of slats of wood laced And they are loaded down with shields, axes, wicked-looking maces and other sories for close combat. War paint on and legs completes the fighting outfit. Some of the enemy in this fight have to wear. But most of them have only caps to save their heads from bludgeon blows and have little or no body protection. I ROM what is known of the Chimu Indiangy a great wall would have come in m at almost any period of their busy career. | When the Chimu were a young and r tribe in North Coast Peru, they were e in fighting civil wars among their own neigiw bors. Later the Chimu had to defend selves against Indian tribes from the higl of Peru. And then, somewhere between AD. and 1300 AD., the Chimu had to the conquering Incas, who finally added land to their kingdom. Experts on Peruvian archeology differ their views as to which age of Chimu brought the great wall into existence. Dr. R. Olson of the University of California that the great wall may have been a deft structure built by the early Chimu as extended their territory to north and Janizaries Once Powerful Force FOBCID into a service against their will and against their religious convictions, a group of Christian captives of the Turks back around 1300 became the nucleus of a force which be- came the terror as well as the safeguard of many Sultans for hundreds of years, until their extermination in the early years of the nine- teenth century. The prisoners, forced in 1330 by the Sultan Orkhan to espouse the faith of Mahomet, were formed into the first standing army of Turkey and given the name of Janizaries. Within 30 or 40 years their numbers had increased until there were more than 10,000 in the ranks. At first they were recruited from the ranks of prisoners, but as the fame of their fearless fighting grew the sons of Turkish nobles pos- sessed of adventurous spirits enlisted, and the Janizaries grew in official esteem until they were selected as the personal bodyguards of the Suitans. So powerful did their position become they soon wielded a great deal of control over the administration of the country and gradually intrigue and plotting grew up, until no Sultan, vizier or other high authority felt secure. As- sassinations furthering the schemes of the lead- ers of the Janizaries became frequent. Condi- tions were such that a Sultan dared not be guarded by them nor dared to have them around. It fell to the lot of Mahmud II more than a hundred years ago to rid the country of the Janizaries. He formed a new army and in a hard-fought battle conquered them, executing 15,000, thousands of whom were burned up in their barracks, to which they had been by the conquering forces of the Sultan. remainder, approximately 20,000, were from Turkey. Jasmine Origin Unknown JABMINE. often considered the perfume mos§ pleasing to men in general, is obtained from a shrub of that name common in Asig and Europe. The crigin of the jasmine is une known, but it is known to have been brough§ to Europe and Asia, where it met instant ape proval and the plant is to be found almos§ anywhere in the two continents where the Wins ter is not too severe. At maturity the shrub grows to a height of from 6 to 10 feet and is covered with evergreen leaves and bears a white, waxy flower, America’s “Kangaroo™ HE nearest thing native to North Americs to a kangaroo is the so-called jumping mouse. This small forest and field rodent with a head and body length of not more than 3 inches can leap as much as 15 feet in a single bound. Its hind legs, suggestive of the kan« garoo, are much longer than the forelegs and are used in the huge leaps the kangaroo ¢fe fects on a larger scale. ' The jumping mouse is a night-roaming &D~ _g imal, seldom making an appearance in the daytime. It feeds almost exclusively on and seeds. It is sought after by most of smaller predaceous animals.