ANCIENT TRAILS IN NORTH AFRICA

[Music] long before the white man set foot on the western world the coast of North Africa was the homeland of a tough warlike branch of his race called the bear burst in small boats generally ruled by prisoners taken in warfare they raided a much larger ship of the Europeans and made their name the dread of all who sail the Mediterranean [Music] cannon capped it from their enemies as well as more ancient catapults that could Greek fire into the opposing craft generally open the battle as the craft closed in [Music] [Applause] [Music] hand-to-hand fighting by boarding parties all too often finished it this is the way naval water look only six centuries ago in a manner of speaking only yesterday in the long train of empire that rolls and fell on these shores but we go back much further as we watch an international scientific expedition dig into the ruins on the site of ancient Carthage many thousands of tons of Earth and debris have been removed to reveal the glories of civilizations long since buried under the garbage of their conquerors the archaeologists studies the light of ancient peoples from their relics left behind in buried cities or in their refuse jumps and graves reveal much important knowledge of the past that should serve as lesson for the future here in Carthage we find the relics not of one buried city but of seven one on top of the other we can thus trace the story of how our Phoenicians sematic people invaded these shores to build a proud capital from which they dominated the then known world and how their great land armies when they blow by the naval strength of the young Roman nation Rome in turn powers before they turn vader's vandal Byzantine and Arab on this one spot we can trace a sort of layer cake of civilization literally each new layer stealing from the one that went before while destroying and bang that which it could make its own by digging long and deep we learned that the first that came the original Libyan then about a thousand years BC the Carthaginians then the Romans who destroyed their rival city only to rebuild it with all the added cultural riches of Greece and Rome then came the Vandals barbarians from Northern Europe who simply destroyed everything and left nothing the Byzantine Empire new glory is only to give way to the conquering Arabs who in turn were ousted during the Crusades their conquests were succeeded by the Barbary pirates then in turn by the Turks and then by the French even the American Navy in 1815 had a hand in changing power relationships on this coast and in the Global War American armed forces became a spearhead to beat back the Nazi fascist attempt to build still another invader empire on the ruins of those we are about to uncover here is an interesting cursed stone carved with Punic maledictions against anyone who might disturb it and as soon as an inscription like this is found we make a squeeze of it with wet paper so that experts can get to work at once to decipher its meaning so dire with a threat on the stone that our Arab diggers refuse to dig further until they got a raise in wages our excavations in the temple of tenant mullah disclose the inscriptions relating to the family of Hannibal the greatest of all Carthaginian generals this work must be done with the greatest care thousands of tons of Earth have to be brushed and sifted so that not even the smallest coin jewels or other relics may be lost one of the most amazing of all our findings was a temple of the goddess Tanis the equivalent to the Phoenicians asked arctic and consort of the terrible god Moloch in these are temple ruins we found urns at first just a few then we dug further there were hundreds yes thousands of them each containing the bones and ashes of a child that had been sacrificed to these gods in time of famine or war the parents were forced to sacrifice their most precious possessions so we find in many of these carefully steel urns marvelous jewels and other riches plus the bones of their firstborn in three years work here we uncovered 18,000 of these horror relics a more pleasant discovery followed the raising of this 3,000 pound stone that sealed the grave of a dancing girl her remains were surrounded by the gifts of her admirers of 30 centuries ago great ample or wine jug once filled with vintages of North Africa many perfume bottles to Andrews and other cosmetics containers she was paid with her spine jewel even with her gold and dancing symbols so that she might be sure to delight he admires in the next world as she had in this one priceless are the ornaments found in this grave she literally had rings on her fingers and bells on her toes digging deeper into civilizations layer cakes we find the pottery worth to the Phoenicians epoch and North African occupation a great mass of pottery has been protected through the centuries under its deep blanket of sand and earth among our pines a child savings bank very much like the little piggy banks of our own time and with his six coins the day 300 BC many children's toys too that tell much about the customs of the elders as well for even then to the toys of the young copy the implements of the adults most bottles in those days were used like this high in the mound the house where Cato the Roman philosopher who oppose Caesar committed suicide here we found some marvellous frescoes and historical manuscripts such houses also disclosed gorgeous mosaic floors paintings and stones made of bits of smooth marble of many colors in viewing this picture you are sharing one of the great thrills of an archaeologists life the original disclosure of an important link in mankind's chain of culture such mosaics often depict battle scenes hunting scenes and other phases of ancient life they are real works of art but we are searching for still earlier chapters in the history of man in North Africa who knows but that we may be able to go back far enough to find there the very cradle of our races this strange land in southern Tunisia was once covered by the sea we cross over a hundred miles of inland Lakes dangerous sparsely people country where hole caverns have been lost without trace the to bed ruins we met gave us but little help all eat at Medellin in the matmata mountains we see some very strange dwellings they are the skyscrapers of the Sahara some of them 14 stories high and built of salt and mud it hardly ever rains here in fact the Berbers hope it won't or a heavy rain would melt their houses all water comes from deep wells these are the native people of this section of North Africa and have lived here from time immemorial with little change in their way of life a favorite tidbit in the native diet is the live scorpion yes they eat them alive it is not easy to climb the steep exposed stairways these dwellings are fortresses too and the stairs can be destroyed quickly in case of attack the old Berber defense trenches came into military use again only recently this is the famous Maris line when cars can go no further we take to dunkers top little beasts who can carry even the heaviest of our party if we don't let our feet hang but we want to turn back our story still further so we journeyed to the land of the troglodytes or cave dwellers thousands of people live underground here just as they must have lived for countless centuries their homes go down 6 and even 7 stories in some cases for protection against the hostile nomad tribes they keep their livestock underground also back still further to the valley of 10,000 caves the home of the men of the Old Stone Age now inhabited only by hyenas jackals and vampire bats but the Paleolithic coins that cover the cave walls tell us that 50000 years or more ago this region was no desert but a country of rivers and forests and much wildlife that supported a large human population once more we dig into a layer cake of Forgotten culture layer on there we work our way down to uncover literally thousands of print implements some of the implements are a great size their users must have been tremendously strong this whole region of southern Tunisia and Algeria deserves much further study it may well prove to have been the true cradle of the human race our expressions follow the course of the ancient riverbeds until they are lost in the great sand waste of the Sahara that greatest of all expanse of sand on the Earth's surface larger than the whole of the United States was all to once a land of countless lakes its mountains and canyons still remind us of the time when streams rushed through vividly coloured gorgeous on their way to those lakes but the waters rushed no more and the lake country of old is now 3,000 miles of shifting sands we will explore that country and its strange people at another time our desert friends on their beautiful Arab steed escort us back to civilization we have explored many thousands of miles and brought back for science many wonderful specimens of the history of men from this land of gold and fans and [Music]