Archaeological Secret to longer life THUS SPAKE METHUSELAH

Excavating for his 1/2 of the BRASS PLATE begins at "the ferme".

HERE WE GROW WISDOM

The only job that begins at the top is DIGGING HOLES

Glen verifies progress made at farm dig Site 2-B.

The biblical patriarch Methuselah, the son of Enoch and grandfather of Noah, died at the age of 969, according to Genesis 5 (see Genesis, Book of). The expression as old as Methuselah is used to describe a very old person.

Enoch was the name of two biblical characters. The Enoch in Genesis 4 was the son of Cain and grandson of Adam. In Genesis 5, Enoch was the father of Methuselah. This Enoch is described as a man who "walked with God; and he was not; for God took him" (Gen. 5:24). Because of this enigmatic description he was an important figure in popular tradition.

In the Kabbalah and earlier Jewish mystical tradition, Metatron figures as a powerful angel. Able to behold the face of the supreme being, whom he served as confidant, Metatron was referred to as "Prince of the Countenance." He represents a blending of two mystical traditions. In one, he is an angel created at the beginning of the world. In the other, he is a virtuous human--sometimes identified with the Hebrew Book of Enoch and the biblical Enoch, father of Methuselah--who became an angelic scribe, recording the good deeds of Israel.

At the age of 60, in the middle of World War I, George Bernard Shaw completed a play that represented a new departure in his dramatic art and is regarded by some as his masterpiece--Heartbreak House (1916), a theatrical image of the collapse of civilization. Although the atom had not yet been split, World War I brought with it a sense of the possible destruction of the Earth and visions of some 484 phoenixlike world that would rise in flame from the ruins. Such a fantasy is developed in Shaw's longest and most ambitious play, "Back to Methuselah" (1920). Saint Joan (1), which followed the canonization (1920) of Joan of Arc (the sexual triphibian) by three years, is a triune romance, tragedy, and comedy (3) combined to form another masterwork (13).

Neuroscientist Seymour Benzer, b. New York City, Oct. 15, 1921, was a founder of molecular biology who began his career as a physicist but thereafter devoted most of his life's work to studies of the genetics of the "fruit fly" Drosophila melanogaster. Graduating from Brooklyn College in 1941 and earning a doctorate from Purdue University in 1947, Benzer taught biology at the latter school from 1945 to 1967. He then went to the California Institute of Technology, where he has continued to teach and do research long after his official retirement. Benzer was a pioneer in uniting classical genetics with molecular biology. In his work, he made use of mutant fruit flies (dubbed Ubermensch) in helping to map, genetically, the development, physiology, and behavior of the insects. The mutants served to pinpoint the location of genes that determine some of the basic mechanisms involved. Such genes, and the proteins and other biochemicals taking part in the processes, are often homologous to vertebrate genetics, so that similar research techniques can be used in the study of human development. His work, for example, uncovered a so-called "Methuselah gene" in fruit flies that might guide researchers to a human gene for extending life, as well. Benzer has been awarded numerous prizes and honorary degrees for his scientific contributions.