The Lost Forest

by John Francis Kinsella

  Chapter 13

  THE CAVE

  They passed the night in a small but comfortable house rented by Winston Marshall near the main road from Kuching and not far from the lake. They had decided to avoid the Hilton Jungle Resort Hotel where they could draw unnecessary attention to themselves. The following day they left for the longhouse, a long day’s travel ahead of them, up the rivers through the jungle to the border area where the mountains drained down to the many rivers that flowed to the South China Sea. In appearance it looked like a typical tourist jungle adventure expedition. Ennis had explained to Winston that his guests were interested in ethnology and wanted investigate the cave discovered during his last trip, which could be ancient burial site of some interest. Aris was introduced as an ethnologist accompanied by Agus Hendarin, a speleologist, who would assist them in exploring the cave.

  Winston was used to such expeditions but had nevertheless been surprised when Ennis asked him to organise another one so soon and with four other people, including two Indonesians. However, even if he suspected something other than a simple interest in ancient burial sites and caves the honour code of an ex-Ghurkha officer did not permit him pose awkward questions to honest clients. As well as his long standing business relationship with Ennis, he was also a respected was a friend; besides his own long experience had taught him that time and patience would tell everything and John Ennis would always need his services.

  They arrived at the Ruma Nyaving longhouse in the early afternoon and were welcomed by the Tuay, who had been informed of their arrival by a neighbouring longhouse an hour downriver, equipped with a radio telephone. The young Tuay was happy to see Winston so soon, whose first visit had been good with fine gifts, maybe it was a sign that their life would take a turn for the better and they would have some of the things he had seen in other longhouses downriver. The boatmen unloaded their luggage, as the visitors settled into the longhouse rooms that the Tuay had prepared for them.

  Ennis had warned his group not to be impatient, leaving Winston to the organisation whilst Aris talked in Malay to the Tuay. Aris had a long experience with the tribes’ people of the Indonesian forests; he had spent his life in the forestry business and knew what counted for them. Whilst all Dayaks valued their traditional and independent way of life they also coveted many of the things of civilisation, tools, radios, motors, things that made their life easier. Aris presented the Tuay with a radio, a cassette player and hunting knives, and best of all he promised a small bore hunting rifle at the end of their trip.

  That evening sitting around the Tuay, he told them of his people and the forest, as they drank glass after glass of tuak. “In our longhouse amongst the trees of the forest my people live in the land of our forefathers according to their laws and traditions with our beliefs, it is our land, our home,” he told them. “In our forest land we find shelter, game, fruit, vegetables, medicine and every material we need. The history of our people is here – the spirits and stories of the exploits of our fathers and our great warriors. On our forest trails, every tree has a message, where we have hunted, where we have found a sago palm, everything. There is a tree marked by my father, who is now dead. The lives of our people are interwoven with the forest. We know every single tree and turn of the river, in our forest we are never lost. We have our names for every stream and river, even the smallest trickle of water, we have names for every tree, plant, animal and insect.”

  The old Tuay talked late into the night, recounting the legends of his people, until they finished the last bottle of tuak.

  The next morning still fuzzy from the tuak they took the boats to the point where Ennis recognised the broad gravel strewn river bank. The Ibans hauled the boats onto the bank where they unloaded their packs. Aris paused and noted a couple of reading with his handheld GPS, writing down the coordinates in his notebook.

  They followed the path, which was not a path rather a series of rocks that led up through the undergrowth. It was damp and very slippery. The effort in the humid jungle soon had them panting. Initially Ennis was worried for the Professor but he soon saw that he was in good condition, as excited as a fourteen year old on his first camping expedition; it was Aris who was the least agile, more used to being chauffer driven in four wheel drives over flat terrain in his tree plantations.

  Ennis recognised the spot and after carefully scrambling over the rock slabs by the pool side they reached the thick curtain of creepers that had grown back into place as though it had never been disturbed. Winston once again hacked his way through the creepers and they made their way forward to the cave entrance.

  Winston returned to the river bank with Agus, the speleologist, collected the packs and cords that the Ibans had unloaded from the boats. Aris made more GPS readings, jotting them into his book, before apprehensively following them into the cave. He carefully returned his GPS into a pocket on his backpack and took out a handheld laser apparatus used for measuring distances.

  At the entrance to the cave Ennis pointed the way ahead to Agus. It was not difficult; they followed the same natural direction through the largest tunnels as he had done some weeks earlier. They arrived in the first gallery where Agus inspected the walls and ceiling with his powerful lamp noting the formation of the cave.

  The cave appeared exactly as Ennis had left it, undisturbed; evidently the Ibans took their legends of the spirits that dwelt their very seriously. They continued following Agus pointing the beams of their lamps onto the ground until they reached the discovery gallery and the stream, it was further than Ennis remembered. Lundy told them excitedly to be extremely careful so as not to inadvertently disturb any vital evidence, as he and Carol started to unload their photographic material as Agus set up the carbide lamps.

  Once the lighting was in place Agus proceeded to draw a plan of the cave on squared paper with the aid of measurements made with a handheld laser measuring device, as Carol Lundy, following the instructions of her father, carefully photographed the discovery spot and its surroundings from different angles.

  Agus was certain that there was an entrance to the south-side of the hill and left them to continue exploration further into the cave. Lundy proceeded to probe the spot where Ennis had extracted the skull cap and with the greatest care started to scrape at the breccia with a small trowel. After what seemed like an eternity of painfully tedious work Lundy, filmed by his daughter with a video camera, extracted what he mumbled were pieces of facial bone, what looked to a small fragment of a lower jaw bone and two loose teeth. He carefully placed them in plastic envelopes and then into bubble bags.

  Lundy decided to leave the rest untouched for later more scientific excavations and turned his attention to the surroundings examining and photographing the rest of the gallery. It looked to him that the gulley cut in the cave floor had been gouged by the tumbling of water-borne rubble carried along by the stream after a collapse further back in the gallery and certainly at some relatively recent point in time. The watercourse was almost dry, possibly due to the flow being dammed by rubble and deviated at some further point upstream.

  The rock was a typical karstic form limestone where the flooding caused by regular tropical rain had cut and changed paths frequently in the soft rock.

  Ennis left them to clean up and followed the gulley out of the gallery into the narrow tunnel that Agus had taken. He continued for some distance before the tunnel broadened again, there was a deposit of mixed debris that had been left by the stream as it lost its force in the second gallery. He was about turn back when he saw a light approaching; it was Agus, who confirmed the existence of a large entrance some three hundred metres to the south.

  When they returned they were surprised to see Lundy and his daughter were again on their knees, carefully trowelling at something that had their full attention a little further along the course of the stream. Ennis stood watching them absorbed in their task. Then Lundy stood up slowly holding a thick stick like a valuable offering to some strange god.

/>   ‘Extraordinary!’ he said softly, ‘a femur.’

  It was the upper part of a femur.

  They were back in the longhouse just before nightfall weary from the heat and humidity after the afternoon’s work. Lundy was glowing with enthusiasm.

  ‘Well I think we have found what we came for,’ he said speaking in French, which neither Winton nor the others understood. ‘Tomorrow we shall leave. We cannot disturb such a valuable site. We have to organise a full scale dig with the approval of the authorities. For the moment though we shall keep it quiet.’

  Aris waited patiently realising that he should not interject. As soon as Winston had left to attend to the preparations for their return the next morning Aris turning to Professor Lundy asked, ‘What does the femur tell you?’

  ‘Well if my guess is right it belongs to our man.’

  ‘Is it fossilised?’

  ‘No, otherwise it would not be his.’

  ‘Is there anything special about the cave, I mean did it help to preserve the bones.’

  ‘In my opinion no, the cave has nothing special about it, it’s typical of this region,’ said Agus.

  ‘So what does that mean?’

  ‘That is the question,’ said Lundy.

  They flew back to Singapore with Aris, leaving Agus Hendarman at the airport in transit for his flight back to Jakarta, where he had the task of preparing a detailed map of the cave and fixing its position relative to the territorial limit of the adjoining two countries. Carol Lundy took the connecting flight to Paris; in her hand baggage were the precious bones, the facial fragments, teeth and the femur. Samples of the sand and breccia from the cave were with her check-in luggage.

  Ennis and Lundy were booked on the Air France flight the following day, staying over to discuss their next move with Aris. The following afternoon Aris informed them that his office had communicated the preliminary assessment made by Agus Hendarman, after calculations based on the on-site GPS readings, the entrance to the cave, according to Indonesian interpretation, was indeed on the Indonesia side of the border, as well its adjoining galleries. However, the precise position of the border could be open to dispute, on the ground the border was designated by marker stones every five hundred metres, but these had not been maintained and were lost in the dense forest, as a result the exact position of the border line separating the two countries was an open question, it had never been precisely mapped using modern methods by joint agreement between the governments of the two countries, and all related data was classified under the heading of national defence and security, by both Malayisa and Indonesia.

  Late the same afternoon Ennis together with Professor Lundy bid Aris goodbye, promising to keep him informed of every new development. Their flight to Paris was scheduled at eleven-thirty that evening. On arrival at Changi International Airport they checked-in and proceeded through passport control presenting their departure cards. As they continued to the first class lounge a uniformed man stopped them and invited them to return to customs.

  They were a little amused and bewildered as they were neither drug runners nor smugglers. They were politely shown into a small room where they were presented with their baggage.

  ‘Is this your baggage Sir?’ a customs officer asked, high ranking judging from the bars on his shoulder.

  ‘Yes,’ Lundy replied surprised to see his baggage so soon again.

  The officer addressed the same question to Ennis pointing to the other two suite cases.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you kindly open them?’

  ‘Is there some problem?’

  ‘Just routine,’ the officer replied with a stiff face.

  The contents were inspected carefully and then re-inspected. Could you please open your hand baggage?

  The opened their hand baggage, which was examined with equal thoroughness.

  ‘Could you please step over here Sir,’ the officer said pointing to a space between the counter and the wall.

  ‘Please empty your pockets.’

  They obeyed and were searched by a uniformed assistant wearing white gloves.

  ‘You have no other baggage.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What is your business?’ he asked inspecting their passport control and departure cards, which he had placed to one side on the counter.

  Lundy replied that he was a scientist, in a government organisation. Ennis replied he was an art dealer.

  ‘Have you bought any items of art in Singapore or Malaysia?’

  ‘No,’ they truthfully replied.

  ‘Thank you gentleman, you may continue to the departure lounge.’

  They left a little shaken by the experience. On arrival in the first class lounge the hostess invited them to help themselves at the bar; they poured a couple of good shots of whisky and sat down.

  ‘What was all that about?’ asked Ennis.

  ‘Let’s go to the toilets.’

  They entered into the toilets and Ennis went to a wash basin and turned on the taps. Lundy looked around and followed suit.

  ‘You can guess what’s going on as well as I,’ Lundy said in a low voice. ‘The sooner we’re on the plane the better. I think it’s better if we keep quiet until were on board, we don’t know if we’re being watched or eavesdropped.’

  They boarded the Air France long distance Airbus and settled into the broad comfortable seats of the First Class cabin. The hostess offered them a glass of Champagne which they readily accepted and anxiously waited as the doors of the aircraft were closed and it commenced its taxi towards the runway.

  The plane was on time and very soon they were airborne over the Straits of Malacca for the twelve hour flight to Paris. As the aircraft climbed into the night sky they finally relaxed and started to speak with ease for the first time since they had left the customs office.

  ‘Thank God we’re on our way.’

  ‘What was that all about with the customs?’

  ‘I think it’s evident somebody suspects we have found something but they don’t know what, they probably think that we have some valuable objects, I don’t know, valuable artefacts or the like.’

  ‘When they know who you are maybe they’ll put two and two together. There’s no record of treasure being found in the caves of that region and there’s no reason to suspect an anthropological find where none have previously existed.’

  ‘You wouldn’t remember the skull called SM-3?’

  ‘No…,” he said hesitating, “Ah yes, I vaguely remember that now.’

  ‘It was originally found in Indonesia in 1977, near the towns of Poloya and Sambungmacan in central Java, by dredgers on the Solo River.’

  ‘The famous Solo River.’

  ‘Well it disappeared more than twenty years ago, illegally exported from Indonesia after appearing on the antiquities market.’

  ‘What happened to it?’

  ‘Nobody knows!’

  ‘Lucky we didn’t get caught.’

  ‘Yes, you are guilty on two counts of illegally exporting antiquities, and dissimulating an important archaeological discovery, we could end up in prison, that would look good for me, Head of Paleo-anthropology at the Museum of Natural History in Paris! We were dam lucky that Carol left yesterday with the bones.’

  ‘You’re not kidding.’

  ‘It was probably one of the Iban boatmen who spoke with the antique dealers in Kuching or something like that.’

  ‘I’ll call Aris when we get back to warn him.’

  That ate their dinner and then settled down to sleep for the rest of the flight.

  The facial bones fragments belonged to the skullcap and the femur corresponded with the estimated age of the same individual. It was clear to Lundy that they had a single specimen and that the specimen had been alive less than three thousand years previously.

  It was a stunning discovery that would turn the whole science of anthropology and the history of modern man upside down. There were many things to verify and tests to be
carried out on the rock and soil samples taken from the site.

  It was impossible with the little information they possessed on the site to deduct any further information. Perhaps there were other remains or other individuals in the ground of the cave; perhaps it had been a primitive camp of some kind.

  Sarawak Man appeared to be an incredible Dodo, who had existed in isolation in the vast mountain range that ran from east to west across the island of Borneo.

  Lundy knew little of the history of that part of the world. He knew that the Chinese had traded along the coast of the huge island for more than a thousand years, exchanging there wares against exotic wood, spices, animals and bird feathers. Huge junks laden with many thousands of pieces of porcelain and earthen ware jars had visited the coast, as the wreckage of the junk off Tanjong Lumut witnessed.

  In the jungle tigers and rhinoceros had roamed and few people had every penetrated very far into the interior until the end of the nineteenth century. The local tribe’s peoples had lived on the coast and on the banks of rivers not far from the coastal regions. Who had lived in the interior, in the dense jungle covered mountains, only the nomadic Punans could say.

  As a scientist Lundy knew it was time to set up a research team with specialists in all the fields of anthropology and archaeology but also he also needed specialists in Late Neolithic history, an uncommon need for a branch science which studied fossilised bones, the most recent of which were older than the history of civilisation itself and its near prehistory.