Ted Kosmatka - Prophet of Bones

“That’s one of the things I’m afraid of.”

“One?”

“It’s easy to pretend that it’s just theories we’re playing with—ideas dreamed up in some ivory tower between warring factions of scientists like it’s all some intellectual exercise.” Gavin looked at him, his dark eyes grave. “But then you see the actual bones; you feel their weight in your hands, the sheer factual irrefutability of their existence…” Gavin stared at the road ahead. Finally, he said, “Sometimes theories die between your fingers.”

The track down to the valley floor was all broken zigzags and occasional rounding turns. Gavin leaned into the horn as they approached blind curves, though they never came across another vehicle. The temperature rose as they descended. For long stretches, overhanging branches made a tunnel of the roadway, the jungle a damp cloth slapping at the windshield. But here and there that damp cloth was yanked aside, and out over the edge of the drop you could see a valley Hollywood would love, an archetype to represent all valleys, jungle floor visible through jungle haze. On those stretches of muddy road, a sharp left pull on the steering wheel would have gotten them there quicker, deader.

“Liang Bua,” Gavin called their destination. “The Cold Cave.” And Gavin explained that this was how they thought it happened, the scenario: this steamy jungle all around, so two or three of them went inside to get cool, to sleep. Or maybe it was raining, and they went into the cave to get dry—only the rain didn’t stop, and the river flooded, as the local rivers often did, and they were trapped inside the cave by the rising waters, their drowned bodies settling to the bottom to be buried by mud, and sediment, and millennia.

The men rode in silence for a while before Gavin said it, a third option, Paul felt coming: “Or they were eaten there.”

“Eaten by what?”

“ Homo homini lupus est ,” Gavin said. “Man is wolf to man.”

They forded a swollen river, water rising to the bottom of the doors. Paul felt the current grab the jeep, pull, and it was a close thing, Gavin cursing and white-knuckled on the wheel, trying to keep them to the shallows while the water seeped onto the floorboards. When they were past it he said, “You’ve got to stay to the north when you cross; if you slide a few feet off straight, the whole bugger’ll go tumbling downriver.”

Paul didn’t ask him how he knew.

Beyond the river was the camp. Researchers in wide-brimmed hats or bandannas. Young and old. Two or three shirtless. Men with buckets, trowels, and bamboo stakes. A dark-haired woman in a white shirt sat on a log outside her tent. The sole commonality between them all: a kind of war weariness in their eyes. They’d been here long enough to have been worn down by the place.

That was when it occurred to Paul that some of these people had probably been digging here, in this same camp, for years.

Every face followed the jeep, and when it pulled to a stop, a small crowd gathered to help them unpack. Gavin introduced Paul around. Eight researchers, plus two laborers still in the cave and another two still working the sieves. Australian mostly. Indonesian. One American.

“Herpetology, mate,” one of them said when he shook Paul’s hand. Small, stocky, red-headed; he couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. He wore a shaggy, coppery beard. Paul forgot his name the moment he heard it, but the introduction, “Herpetology, mate,” stuck with him. “That’s my specialty,” the small man continued. “I got mixed up in this because of Professor McMaster here. University of New England—the Australian one.” His smile was two feet wide under a sharp nose that pointed at his own chin. Paul liked him instantly.

When they’d finished unpacking the jeep, Gavin turned to Paul. “So are you ready for the tour?”

Paul nodded.

The operation was larger than he’d expected. There were two different sieving setups, one dry, one wet, and a dozen tables and tents and benches, all spread out in a small clearing just beyond the mouth of the cave. A generator rumbled in the background, providing all the electricity for their lights and equipment. Construction-helmeted laborers shuffled to and from the cave, bent under their work, local villagers who spoke a language Paul couldn’t understand.

“We used to sleep in the village of Terus during the dig season,” Gavin said. “It’s just up the road. But you’ll be staying here.” Gavin gestured toward a white canvass tent.

Paul lifted the heavy tent flap and stuck his head inside. The space was clean and functional, like the room in Ruteng.

“Why don’t you stay in Terus anymore?”

“Safety issues.”

“So Terus isn’t a friendly place, I take it?”

“No, Terus is wonderful. It’s their safety we’re worried about.”

Gavin’s face produced a smile. “Now I think it’s time we made the most important introductions.”

It was a short walk to the cave. Jag-toothed limestone jutted from the jungle, an overhang of vine, and, beneath that, a dark mouth. The stone was the brown-white of old ivory. Cool air enveloped Paul, and entering Liang Bua was a distinct process of stepping down. Inside, it took Paul’s eyes a moment to adjust. The chamber was thirty yards wide, open to the jungle in a wide crescent—mud floor, high-domed ceiling. The overall impression was one of expanse, like the interior of an ancient church. He followed Gavin deeper. There was not much to see at first. In the far corner, two sticks angled from the mud, and when he looked closer Paul saw the hole.

“Is that it?”

“That’s it.”

Paul took off his backpack and stripped the white paper suit out of its plastic wrapper. He peered down into the dig. “Who else has touched it?”

“Talford, Margaret, me.”

Paul pulled a light from his backpack and shined it into the hole. It was then that he realized just how deep it went. A system of bamboo ladders led down to the bottom, thirty feet below. He was staring into a pit. “I’ll need blood samples from everybody for comparison assays.”

“DNA contamination?”

“Yeah.”

“We stopped the dig when we realized the significance.”

“Still. I’ll need blood samples from anybody who’s dug here, anybody who came anywhere near the bones. I’ll take the samples myself tomorrow.”

“I understand. Is there anything else you require?”

“Solitude.” Paul smiled. “I don’t want anybody in the cave for this part.”

Gavin nodded and left. Paul broke out his tarps and hooks. It was best if the sampler was the person who dug the fossils out of the ground—or, better yet, if the DNA samples were taken when the bones were still in the ground. Less contamination that way. And there was sure to be contamination. Always. No matter what precautions were taken, no matter how many tarps or how few people worked at the site, there was still always contamination.

Paul staked the tarps down at one end and slid into the hole, a flashlight strapped to his forehead, his white paper suit slick on the moist earth. He gripped the ladder as he descended into the dark cold, the bamboo rungs flexing under his weight like thin ice. He wondered how much heavier he was than the average worker on the site. When his feet finally touched down on damp clay, he turned and squatted. The working floor was two meters by two meters.

From his perspective, he couldn’t tell what the bones were—only that they were bones, in situ, half-buried in earth. But that was all that mattered. The material was soft, unfossilized; he’d have to be careful. It was commonly accepted that bones needed at least a few thousand years to fossilize. These were younger than a lot of archaeological finds.