ICE BURIAL, the third book in the Mother People Series, will be published as an e-book in August, 2012. It tells the story of Oetzi, sometimes called the Iceman, a 5,000 year old man found buried beneath a melting glacier in the Italian Alps. Oetzi was thought at first to have died of exposure. In fact, he was murdered, making his death the first human murder mystery.
AUTHOR’S NOTES 1
Part I: The first Zena was a late Homo Habilis, or early Homo Erectus, human ancestors who lived about one million years ago and had a brain size of about 900 cc. (Human brains range from 1,000 to 1,400 cc.) They were distinctly humanlike, but probably did not have extensive speech.
Tope's death in a flash flood was inspired by "Lucy," a remarkably complete fossil skeleton of an earlier pre-human type who is thought by some anthropologists to have died in just that fashion. The scene in which Zena steps in Dak's footprints was inspired by anthropologist Mary Leakey's discovery of early human footprints, in which a smaller person inexplicably walked inside the prints of another, larger companion.
Inspiration also came from the discovery of a two-million- year-old circle of stones in the Olduvai Gorge in Africa. The space within the stones had obviously been used, but it contained few of the bone and stone fragments associated with living sites. Instead, it may be the first circle of stones built by our ancestors for spiritual or ceremonial purposes.
Infanticide is common among primates, and probably existed among our early ancestors as well. Male primates are generally protective of infants born to females in the troop, but will often try to kill infants of strange females, females with whom they have not mated. The female then becomes sexually receptive so the male can mate with her and get his genes into circulation. For this reason, and because mating brings special favors, female primates usually mate with all the males in the troop. I believe our early ancestors had similar mating habits. For females especially, monogamy had no rewards.
Part II: The second Zena belonged to a tribe of people who were in transition from late Homo Erectus, with a brain size of about 1,100cc, to Homo Sapiens. The transition began about half a million years ago and resulted not just in increased brain size, but also in extensive brain reorganization. The frontal lobes especially became larger, permitting greater language and cognitive facility. The forehead became higher and more rounded, the skull larger. Birth was undoubtedly difficult during this period. The pelvic girdle cannot expand beyond a certain point in animals that walk upright, because hips that are too widely spaced make it impossible to do anything but waddle - a dangerously slow gait in a world filled with fast and efficient predators. Natural selection finally forged a solution: accelerated birth. Human infants began to be born earlier in the developmental process and lived outside the womb for many months before they reached the stage of maturity typical of other primates at birth. Skulls became lighter and somewhat smaller, and were probably more easily compressed during birth because fontanels, areas in the skull that have not yet fused, were larger than in the past. But before these adaptations were perfected, many females must have died trying to deliver babies who had remained longer than usual in the womb while gaining the maturity to be viable at birth, and whose heads, especially, were too large to fit through the birth canal, and many infants born at the normal time must have died because they were not developed enough to live outside the womb.
Zena herself was Homo Sapiens, born before this balance was achieved. Her brain capacity was probably greater than that of people today, and she could be thought of as an early genius. Zena was unusual in another way: she was the first woman to develop the ability to conceive before an existing child was weaned. Like other primates and hunter gatherer women today, our female ancestors normally gave birth every four or five years. About ten thousand years ago, probably due to increased body fat and decreased mobility, the capacity to give birth at more frequent intervals spread through the population, with profound consequences for human fertility.
The Big Ones Zena and her tribe encountered are a remnant population of a pre-human type called Australopithecus Bosei, a large, omnivorous creature that eventually died out.
The Fierce Ones are another remnant population, called Australopithecus Africanus, which also died out.
Part III: The third Zena was Homo Sapiens, often known at this stage as Cro-Magnon, and lived between 50,000 and 35,000 years ago. She and all the others in her tribe would have been indistinguishable from ourselves. Cro-Magnon artists created the magnificent painting on the cave walls in France and Spain.
Gunor and his tribe were Neanderthals, who lived at the same time. They had light hair, often reddish, though they are often mistakenly depicted as swarthy in illustrations. They lived in the north, where light skin was adaptive because it absorbed more sun. Neanderthals were short and stocky and unusually strong. Scientists today believe they were intelligent and capable of speech, although they may have had trouble pronouncing certain vowels. One of evolution's great mysteries is why Neanderthals disappear from the fossil record about 30,000 years ago. Some scientists believe they were killed off by Homo Sapiens, but today interbreeding, as suggested in this book, is the favored hypothesis. The other suggestion made in this book is that they never developed the adaptations to the enlarging brain that saved Homo Sapiens from extinction. Neanderthal skulls were larger and heavier than our own; if they continued to grow without the life-saving adaptations of accelerated birth and lighter bones
, birth may eventually have become almost impossible.
The figure Kalar asked Lett to carve was the first example of the large-breasted, wide-hipped "Venus" figures that abound in archeological sites in early Europe. Their purpose was not pornographic, as some (usually male) scientists suggested, but was instead spiritual, a way of thanking the Goddess, or asking for Her help.
Similarly, Conar's painting of the bison that saved Zena was the first of the many superb cave paintings discovered in France and Spain. No one knows what inspired the paintings, though many believe they were related to hunting activities. I believe they were instead gifts to the Mother that expressed a profound appreciation for the wondrous abundance of life She had created. The fact that there are few paintings of the animals most often hunted seems to support this theory, as does the fact that many of the paintings are found deep underground, not where people lived but in special chambers where storms and extremes of temperature did not affect them. As gifts to the Goddess, they were meant to last.
Hand prints are also often found on the cave walls. New research suggests that they are female hand prints (because of their small size) and that it was females, not males, who created the magnificent art works we so admire today. The women may have left the handprints as their identifying marks It is also possible that the prints were made not for some profound purpose, but for fun, to entertain the children while their mothers painted.
The fierce hunters from the north are based on pre-historical evidence showing that bands of invaders periodically came from the north to devastate the peace-loving, Goddess-worshiping people who lived in southern Europe. The raids continued for thousands of years and ultimately destroyed the Goddess. Why the northern hunters were so violent, in contrast to Goddess-worshiping societies, is a question with profound significance today. Zena and her people understood intuitively what science is now beginning to confirm: that people who have been bullied or abused as children are at risk of becoming violent adults, and that only intensive remedial efforts can repair the damage. In scientific terms, the damage is real - repeated abuse leads to changes in brain circuitry for two neurotransmitters that regulate aggression. Zena's people also believed what cross-cultural studies and contemporary experience confirm: that children who are raised in a violent culture will tend to become violent themselves, that young men, especially, are at risk of becoming violent, and that an occasional individual may be innately violent and incapable of empathy, and cannot be changed. Tron was one of these.
AUTHOR’S NOTES 2<
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The Mother People really did exist. They lived in southern Europe and in what is now known as the Fertile Crescent, as evidence meticulously unearthed by archeologists shows, for many thousands of years. Their findings also show that the Mother People lived by the ways of the Goddess, the ways of peace and compassion and respect for all that lived on the earth.
Evidence also shows that waves of invaders from the north seeking new sources of food and game decimated these peaceful societies. The men with knives, the Mother People called them. For these invaders, violence was a way of life. Some killed and raped and pillaged everything in their path; others took over the Mother People’s territory, one village at a time, and imposed their own beliefs.
The Mother People had few defenses against these onslaughts. They had no weapons, no knowledge of fighting. All they could do was cling to their beliefs and worship the Goddess in secret. Their last stronghold was Crete, and after that we hear little of the Mother People. Or do we? In fact, evidence of their continuing presence is everywhere in Europe especially, in the thousands of circles of stone, cave paintings and small statues of what is now known as the Virgin Mary, and the magnificent standing stones whose enigmatic meaning still eludes us today.
And after that? The Mother People did not disappear. Many of them took to the sea and traveled as far as North America. Some came by way of the Bering Straits, as the history books tell us; others chose a route along the western coast of Europe, from there to Iceland and then Greenland and the east coast of Canada and into a place we now call the United States of America.
How do I know that? The Mother People’s story came to me in dreams, but for those who do not believe in such things, it also came in scholarly articles. That is the part of their story I will tell in my next book: INTO THE FROZEN MIST, the prospective fourth book in the Mother People Series.
Joan Dahr Lambert, EdM, holds a Master’s degree from The Harvard Graduate School of Education and has done postgraduate work at New York University on the evolution of human sexuality and female contributions to human evolution. She has taught at a variety of schools and colleges. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband.
Lambert has written two additional novels in the Mother People Series - CIRCLES IN THE SKY, and ICE BURIAL, which tells the story of the five-thousand-year-old man found buried in the Alps as the ice that had enclosed him slowly melted. ICE BURIAL will be published as an e-book in August, 2012 and will soon also be published in paperback. Look for it on my Amazon page.
Lambert is also the author of three mysteries in the Laura Morland series: WALKING INTO MURDER, WADING INTO MURDER and SKIING INTO MURDER, all available as e-books. WALKING INTO MURDER is also available in paperback on Amazon, the two other mysteries will also soon be published in paperback. Lambert is working on her fourth mystery and cogitating on the idea of a fourth book in the Mother People Series that would bring the Mother People to a new home in the southeastern United States.
CIRCLES OF STONE (THE MOTHER PEOPLE SERIES) Page 50