Levkas Man

by Innes, Hammond;

  ‘What else could he do?’ I asked.

  ‘He could fight.’

  We should have known. We should have known, both of us, that that was just what he was doing. But now that I was at sea again I thought this was the end of my involvement with his affairs. My mind was on other things and it never occurred to me that the voyage would be no more than an interlude.

  Three

  INTERLUDE IN THE AEGEAN

  It was Sonia who gave us the first indication that Holroyd had dug up something of real significance. This was in a letter to Dr Gilmore, dated April 29, which we found waiting for us at the Port Captain’s office at Pythagorion.

  But that was later, after we had had nearly a month of the most perfect sailing, and by then I had almost forgotten about my father. The demands and routine of a boat at sea, particularly in enclosed waters like the Aegean, concentrate the mind to the exclusion of all but the immediate problems of navigation and seamanship. Add to this the world that daily opened before our gaze, a world of islands and little ports and coves where life had hardly changed since the days of Odysseus, and it is little wonder that I became so engrossed in it that for a time I was scarcely conscious even of my own predicament and was able to shut out of my mind the real object of the voyage.

  Once through the Corinth Canal, we seemed to sail into the past. Athens and the Acropolis, then east down the gulf to Sounion. Here, amongst the salt-white columns of Poseidon’s temple high on its promontory, we had our first glimpse of the islands, seeing them as the old Greek sailors saw them, milestones on the voyage to the Turkish coast. We said our own prayers to the god of sea and earthquake, and then we were slanting out in their wake, a full meltemi blowing from the north-east, the boat heeled, the sea hard and white, and Kithnos growing large over the bows. Tinos then and Mykonos, and Delos all to ourselves in the tiny cove of Fourni, with only just room to swing to our anchor, and Mount Cynthus, birthplace of Apollo, with its Sacred Way and the ruins of ancient cities falling to the sea, the fantastic beauty of the lionesses in moonlight. And then down through the 14-foot passage in half a gale to Naxos, the largest of the islands.

  And apart from the ruins and the beauty of the villages, all newly whitewashed and spread across the high flanks of the islands like drifts of snow, and the long walks inland, there was always the sea. As the water got warmer, we were goggle fishing and Bert was diving. Even Dr Gilmore was swimming every day, and in the evenings he talked, endlessly and fascinatingly, about man’s origins, about the Greeks and the people whose ruins we were seeing daily. He was a mine of information and I envied those who had had him for a tutor, he made it all so interesting.

  But after Naxos, it was time to head east to the Dodecanese. And now Samos and the object of the voyage began to loom. As a result, I was keyed-up, already a little tense, when on the afternoon of May 5, we motored into the old harbour of Pythagorion, built by a tyrant named Polycrates some 2,500 years ago. Beyond the town, hillsides climbed in hunched shoulders rising to precipitous heights, the whole island lush with spring growth, the fresh green of fruit trees contrasting with the darker green of the pines that clothed the upper slopes. And away to starboard, where the lower eastern end of the island met the Turkish shore, was the narrow gut of the Straits, a lighthouse on a rocky islet showing as a white pinpoint in the middle. I still did not know how I was to explain a night rendezvous with a Turkish fishing boat to the Barretts. It went against the grain deliberately to mislead them, and Dr Gilmore’s presence aggravated the problem.

  As we entered the kidney-shaped inner harbour the original limestone quays gleamed like polished ivory in the sun. We moored stern-on at the northern end to a bollard that was a stone column taken from Polycrates’ old capital. Fishermen’s nets, hung out to dry on the eastern harbour wall, made bright splashes of blue and purple and orange under the trees. With a feeling almost of reluctance I accompanied Bert to the Harbour Office to find the cable I expected waiting for me.

  But instead of giving me time and date of rendezvous, it announced that ‘my friends’ had been delayed and advised continuing the cruise south to Rhodes. Information and funds available Bank of Greece Rodos May 23.

  My first reaction was one of relief. But it only postponed the moment when I would either have to think up a convincing lie or else take Bert into my confidence.

  ‘Good news I hope,’ he said.

  ‘It’s from Borg,’ I told him. ‘Some Turkish friends of his. Wants us to meet them about the end of the month.’

  He didn’t like it. I knew he wouldn’t, for the Arab-Israeli situation was worsening and it was with some difficulty I had persuaded him to sail east to the Turkish coast. But in this I had the support of Dr Gilmore, who had been reading up on the Dodecanese in the books he had bought in Athens and had developed an urgent, almost boyish enthusiasm to see as much as he could of the islands of Ancient Greece.

  We talked it over at length that evening, and I think it was only the knowledge that I had money waiting for me in Rhodes that induced Bert to fall in with Borg’s arrangements. We left two days later, and by then Gilmore had had an answer to a cable he had sent to a friend of his in Cambridge. It confirmed that there was a strong rumour that Holroyd would be making a sensational announcement when he delivered his paper at the Pan-European Prehistoric Congress on May 25.

  Sonia’s letter had not been at all specific. She was still at Port Vathy, living with a Greek family, and her information was based, not on visits to the dig, but on occasional meetings with her brother, and he was sworn to secrecy. All he would tell her was that two packages had been despatched by air to London for dating and that these would almost certainly ‘throw new light on the relationship of Cro-Magnon and Mousterian man.’ It was this which had caused Dr Gilmore to cable Cambridge, and when he had received the reply, he had written to his friend asking for a full report of Holroyd’s paper to be sent to him at Rhodes. ‘I cannot understand it,’ he said to me the night before we left Samos. ‘Pieter must have known the potentialities of that dig, and to leave it to Holroyd just when he’d reached the vital level … it doesn’t make sense.’

  But a force 6 south-westerly soon cleared his mind of such remote speculation. He wanted to visit the monastery of St John the Theologian, which crowns the island of Patmos like a colossal medieval castle, and we were beating into a steep breaking sea for twelve hours. He was not actually seasick, but he found it exhausting, even though he stayed in his bunk and the canvas lee-board was up.

  With time to kill, we visited the islands of Leros, Kalimnos, Pserimos and Kos. Gilmore wanted to see the ruins of the Ionian cities, particularly Budrom, which is ancient Halicarnassus where the tomb of King Mausolus was being excavated, but nothing would induce Bert to put into a Turkish port. ‘It’s not like Greece, you know. You’re treated as though you’re a bloody great cargo ship and you have to get clearance from the Harbour Master, Immigration, Customs, Health and Security Police. This happens at every port and it takes the better part of a day to get in and another day wasted getting out. It’s hell!’ Added to which, the news, picked up sporadically on the radio, was not good. Middle East tension increasing and the Russians reinforcing their fleet through the Dardanelles.

  On May 23 we were in the little crater-like port of Panormittis on the island of Symi, being shown over the monastery and the twelfth-century church with its columns taken from a much older pagan temple to Poseidon. And on May 24 we sailed into Mandraki, between the two arms of the harbour once straddled by the great bronze figure of the Colossus of Rhodes.

  I was thinking of Kotiadis as I went ashore, feeling much more nervous in this big, crowded port, full of tourists, than I had been in the smaller islands. There was an airport here, and if he had checked up on me this would be the place they would pick me up. But the Port Captain’s office showed no more interest in us than in any of the other boats along the quay, and at the Bank of Greece the banker’s order was handed over and changed into drachmas wi
thout comment. They also had a cable for me, which I did not open until I was safely back on board: Friends arriving Samos between June 10–12. It was unsigned.

  That meant we might have to spend three nights fooling about in the straits and what the hell did I tell Bert? ‘Borg wants us to pick up his friends at Samos on June 10.’

  But he had been having a drink with the skipper of a big schooner moored next to us. Israeli planes had attacked Russian missile sites in the Canal Zone and the schooner was pulling out in the morning. ‘Cable him we’ll pick them up at Athens.’

  I took him ashore and filled him up with ouzo. But Florrie was more difficult to deal with. She sensed there was something odd. ‘Why Samos?’ she demanded. ‘Why not here or at Athens, where there’s a good air service?’ She wanted to leave with the schooner in the morning.

  But by now Dr Gilmore’s mind had switched from Ancient Greece to Holroyd and the dig on Meganisi. He could not possibly leave, he said, until he had heard from his friend, Professor Stefan Reitmayer. That settled it, for Florrie regarded him as a very distinguished visitor, treating him with a strange mixture of awe and maternal affection. The schooner left without us and we stayed until the letter arrived two days later. It was just before lunch when Bert came in with it. We were all in the saloon having a drink, and I can remember now the eagerness with which Dr Gilmore slit it open, the expression of concentration on his face as he read it, the way he murmured, ‘Good Heavens!’ And when he had finished, he looked up facing us, his expression grave. ‘I am afraid I have to leave you and return to Cambridge. Congress have called for an investigation into Professor Holroyd’s discoveries and I have been asked to give evidence.’

  This letter is now in my possession. It is in two parts, and though it is a rather long letter and somewhat technical, the information in it is so important to an understanding of what happened later that I give it in full:

  King’s College,

  Cambridge

  May 25

  Dear Adrian:

  You asked me to let you have the fullest possible account of the paper Holroyd read to Congress this morning, also his answer to the questions you asked me to put to him publicly. I am writing this a few hours after the event, while everything is still clear in my mind, but I shall not post it until I can give you the reactions of the Organizing Committee of which, as you know, I am a member. They are by no means satisfied.

  This was the second day of Congress and as Holroyd had let it be known that the subject of his paper was both sensational and controversial, we had allocated the first hour of the morning session to him. There was a certain air of excitement in the Great Hall as our chairman introduced him, for on entering to take our seats we had all passed the side table on which he had arranged a small collection of exhibits. There were the usual artefacts—but of obsidian, not flint, and they were in two groups, one being considerably more advanced than the other (which had similarities with the Levalloisian industries of North Africa and the Levant). There was also a display of fossil bones that included deer. But what caught and held the attention of all of us were fragments of three skulls neatly pieced together. One of them appeared to belong to Cro-Magnon man. The other two showed distinct traces of brow ridges and appeared to belong to Neanderthaloids. Both of these were somewhat blackened by fire, but the brain cases were almost complete, except that each had a fearful hole in the top of it, with splintering cracks running out in all directions. No question, both had been subject to a terrific blow from a sharp-pointed weapon. One was instantly reminded of the baboon skulls Dart found in such profusion at Matapan and his assumption that Australopithecus had had a partiality for brains. The stage was thus set for Holroyd’s sensational revelation.

  Holroyd is, of course, at his best on the platform, and he can, I suppose, be forgiven a certain elation, knowing the sensation he was going to cause. However, I must admit to a feeling of hostility at the cocky way he walked to the lectern, the smug smile with which he surveyed his captive audience. Since I will be sending you a copy of the paper as soon as it is printed, I will confine myself here to the main points of his discovery and the conclusions he drew.

  During the first ten minutes he confined himself to setting the scene—largely a description of the dig and its position on the island of Meganisi facing Levkas. He also outlined the object of the expedition. No mention was made of Van der Voort, either then or later. The geophysical nature of the site he described as Mesozoic limestone with a volcanic overlay. He then took us down through the dig, layer by layer, to demonstrate that, under the rock overhang at any rate, water had not disturbed the orderly levels of man’s occupation of the site. At about 10.30 he reached the major discovery—the skulls.

  I should say at this point that his presentation of the facts was extraordinarily effective, that flat North Country accent of his giving it a down-to-earth quality that almost lulled one into accepting without query everything he said. The skulls had been found at a depth of about 12 feet below the present surface level of the shelter in association with obsidian weapons and animal bones. He showed us blow-ups of pictures he had taken of some of the weapons and I think you would have agreed that they could be categorized as belonging to a Levalloiso-Mousterian culture, though he used only the more general term Mousterian. He also showed us blow-ups of other artefacts that were undoubtedly of a later period, animal bones, too, all of them demonstrably Magdalenian. Yet the three skulls, both types of artefacts and the animal bones had all been found at the same level. What he was saying, in fact, was that a species of advanced Cro-Magnon type man had occupied the cave shelter contemporaneously with the more primitive Neanderthal type Mousterian man.

  The last quarter of an hour was devoted entirely to the skulls, particularly the two with the brain cases broken open. Both these skulls were of the earlier, more ape-like Mousterian species of man, whilst the third was unquestionably of the much more highly developed Cro-Magnon type. The fact that they were found at the same level, together with artefacts of both species, is undoubtedly a serious blow to all those who subscribed to the view that homo sapiens sapiens, as exemplified by Cro-Magnon man, evolved from Mousterian man with the evolutionary impetus of the Würm Glaciation. But Holroyd claimed much more than that. Pointing to the holes in the two Mousterian skulls, he said, ‘The theory that Mousterian man died out naturally because he could not compete against the new post-glacial species of man cannot now be supported. Here in my hands I hold the evidence—this poor, backward, ape-like creature was murdered. And not because he was hostile to the new species. He was murdered because Cro-Magnon man—hunter, artist, our own homo sapiens sapiens in embryo—was, like so many of our early ancestors, a cannibal. He ate the flesh of the earlier species he killed and he drove in the cranium with an obsidian hand-axe to get at the brain. And the marks of fire on these fragments of skull suggest that he cooked the head over a fire before scooping out the most delicate part of his meal.’ And on this he sat down.

  Pretty sensational stuff! The mystery of the decline of Mousterian man at the emergence of a true hom sap Cro-Magnon species solved and in a way that branded Cro-Magnon man as a murderer and a cannibal. There were questions, of course, but Holroyd dealt with them all most efficiently and convincingly. I left it until the very end to put your queries. It took him by surprise and for a moment he seemed at a loss. There was a long silence and I could sense the reaction of the hall to the mention of Van der Voort’s name. There was hardly a person there who did not remember that extraordinary hoax.

  Finally, Holroyd found his voice. He admitted that Dr Van der Voort had been associated with the expedition in its early stages and that he had done some preliminary work in Greece the previous year. ‘I can assure you, however,’ he added, ‘that Dr Van der Voort had nothing whatsoever to do with this discovery. Indeed, at the time I unearthed the skulls he was ill and had severed all connection with the expedition.’

  I then asked him whether it was true that his examin
ation of the site had been due to information given him by Dr Van der Voort. He replied, ‘No, sir. The information which led us to this particular site came from another source entirely—a Greek source.’

  I was reluctant to call him a liar in public, but I have requested that the Committee meet briefly before tomorrow’s session when I will lay your information before them.

  May 26.

  The Organizing Committee were greatly disturbed by the contents of your letter, which I read out to them at the meeting this morning. They felt that Holroyd’s discovery, and the conclusions he had drawn from them, were of such vital significance that the questions raised in your letter must be investigated before Congress could publicly credit Holroyd with the discovery by publishing his paper in the form in which it was read. I could not of course substantiate the claims you made on Van der Voort’s behalf, but inevitably a parallel was drawn with the case of Marais, also a South African. Moreover, as Grauers pointed out, the suggestion that Van der Voort was involved made it doubly important that Congress ascertain with absolute certainty that the skulls are what they purport to be before giving this discovery the stamp of their approval by publication of the paper.

  In the end, it was decided to set up an investigating committee to look into the whole question and to report back as soon as possible. Grauers was appointed chairman and he has already requested Holroyd to submit all his evidence for examination. If I know Grauers, you can rest assured that he will be most Swedishly thorough, and also impartial. Naturally, he requires your personal attendance before the Committee. Can you fly back at once? It is very urgent, since Holroyd’s reputation is at stake and Grauers insists that he be given the opportunity of cross-examining you on the information and charges made in your letter. We are trying to keep this ‘within the family’ at this stage, so please do not discuss it with anyone until you have appeared before the committee.