Erik shook his head. “That wouldn’t have mattered. They had a technological advantage. When Cortez conquered the Aztecs, who numbered in the millions, he did it with six hundred men, twenty horses, and ten cannons.”
“Yikes!” Cassie exclaimed. “So basically a pack of testosterone-crazed punks with fast horses and pointy weapons were turned loose on a bunch of lettuce farmers.”
“Grim but accurate,” Griffin concurred.
Boisterous laughter coming from the lobby caused them all to turn and look up. A party of German tourists had just arrived to check in. Their luggage carts were filled with hiking equipment. One of their number wandered into the parlor carrying a heavy backpack. He looked briefly around the room. Smiling and nodding toward the Arkana team, he strolled back into the lobby.
They paused in their conversation to see if any more sightseers would straggle in.
When the noise in the adjoining room quieted down, Stefan broke the silence. “There is one more interesting fact. It is very possible that not all the warrior bands who left the homeland were males.”
“Huh?” Cassie stared at him uncomprehendingly.
“He’s talking about the Amazons, toots,” Erik prompted.
But that’s just a myth, right?” Cassie turned to the Security Coordinator for confirmation.
“Nope.”
“Actually, the theory that female warrior bands also migrated would go a long way toward explaining the Amazon stories,” Griffin said. “Ancient chronicles described tribes of warrior women in the Ukraine, northern Greece, Bulgaria and even as far away as Libya in northern Africa. Conventional historians dismiss the Amazons as fanciful legends but it’s far more likely that they really existed and that they weren’t a single tribe but many bands of female warriors migrating out of the steppes at various times.”
“It is important to remember that all these things happened long before they were written down,” Stefan added. “The first men who recorded stories of such women were living three thousand years later.”
Cassie frowned at a troubling thought. “But why wouldn’t the boy Kurgans and the girl Kurgans all migrate together? Didn’t they believe in co-ed conquest?”
Griffin hesitated, seemingly to consider the question. “This is all speculation on my part you understand, but I believe that the female migrants represented a second wave. The males would have been the first group to leave a tribe whose supplies were already strained to the limit. Males are more biologically expendable. The survival of the tribe as a whole depends on the existence of females capable of giving birth to the next generation. A far smaller number of males are needed for procreation. However, let us suppose that a particular tribe is in such dire straits that even adolescent females represent a drain on its resources. If the males have already departed, then that leaves young women as the most likely group to migrate away from the homeland.”
Cassie nodded, satisfied with the explanation. “I suppose that would be the reason why there were fewer female bands roving around looking for new territory and why they weren’t traveling with males. They left as a last ditch effort. But if that’s true then what happened to all of them? We know all about the male Kurgans but it’s like all the female warrior tribes went extinct.”
Griffin smiled broadly. “That is an excellent question and one that brings us to the very brink of explaining the origins of patriarchy.”
Stefan grinned. “This is where we are getting excited, yes?”
Cassie gave him an odd look.
Fred leaned over and whispered, “He means that this is the exciting part. The missing link.”
Cassie nodded and smiled encouragingly at Stefan. “Yes, very exciting,” she concurred.
Griffin was about to speak but he cut himself short when the waitress re-entered the parlor to ask if they needed anything. Everyone politely declined and waited in silence until the echo of her footsteps faded across the lobby floor.
Cassie emptied the last of her cola into a glass. Then she turned to Griffin and raised a quizzical eyebrow. “You can start any time now.”
“Very well. There is one distinct difference in the behavior of male overlords versus female overlords.” He paused. “Females don’t need to acquire females.”
Cassie tipped her head and eyed him dubiously.
He continued. “Female overlords are already the means of their own reproduction. If they wish to have children to inherit their property, they can mate with any passing male and go on their way. They retain the children and have indisputable proof of lineage since they gave birth to them. Their matrilineal kinship system and inheritance remain intact. Unfortunately, their male overlord brethren aren’t so fortunate. With no women in their band, they could no longer trace their descent through their mothers. Property would have to pass through the male line. If they wanted their children to inherit the wealth they acquired through conquest, they needed to be sure those children were theirs.”
“Not so easy for the Kurgan boys,” Cassie speculated. “Since they were all bachelors when they shipped out, they had to get wives from the local population.”
“Precisely,” Griffin nodded. “We’re back to bride abduction which we discussed earlier.”
“It may go a long way toward explaining the kind of misogyny that’s typical of patriarchal cultures,” Fred observed. “After all, if you slaughter a girl’s family and then expect her to cozy up to you, you’re always going to be sleeping with the enemy.”
“Not to mention the laborious problem of having to control a wife’s sexual activity in order to prove the offspring belonged to a particular overlord male,” Griffin added. “Most matristic cultures were sexually free. Even those that practiced monogamy often allowed for other sexual attachments. How could a Kurgan male know his own progeny except by forcing his wife, or wives, to remain sexually exclusive? A virtually impossible task which the overlords solved by severely curtailing the freedom of women to move about in society. Females were restricted to living in harems or under house arrest.”
“That’s pretty grim but what’s it got to do with the extinct female overlords?” Cassie asked.
“Simple biology,” Fred answered. “A female warrior gives birth to maybe five children over the course of her lifetime. A male warrior who practices polygamy can father fifty to a hundred children over the course of his.”
“And don’t forget the gender bias that is beginning to form among the male overlords,” Griffin offered. “They are surrounded by foreign women who belong to the race of the conquered. These women are considered inferior and need to be controlled to guarantee paternity. Overlord men want sons to inherit their riches because sons can be taught to fight. Even though Kurgan women were good at defending themselves, the overlord men certainly aren’t going to teach their indigenous brides battle skills or they might turn around and kill their husbands. As a consequence, females become sexual commodities, lineage is traced through the father and we’re well on our way to patriarchal cultural norms. These male overlord cultures would eventually outnumber the overlord female territories and conquer them.”
“But didn’t they recognize they came from the same tribes as these female warriors?” Cassie objected.
Erik shrugged. “How could they know? It took thousands of years for all this to play out. In a space of three hundred years, how many African-Americans know what tribe their ancestors came from?”
“I see your point,” the girl conceded.
“The new world order simply engulfed and eradicated everything that came before it,” Griffin said. “The current DNA evidence seems to bear out our theory. Mitochondrial DNA, which is obtained only from the mother, shows that the vast majority of female DNA in Europe is old European while a large amount of male DNA is Kurgan.”
“So the mothers were mainly from the conquered people and the fathers were overlords?” Cassie asked uncertainly. “How’s that possible?”
Erik laughed sardonically. “Simple. You kill a
ll the men in a town you conquer and you horde the available women. In a couple of generations, your DNA signature is all over the place.”
“So ten guys on horseback could do all this?” Cassie still couldn’t wrap her mind around the possibility.
“Think of them as prehistoric Hell’s Angels,” Erik commented. “Just like the modern version, those guys could tear up a small town in a matter of hours.”
“And the rest, as they say, is history,” Griffin summed up.
The group was silent for several minutes contemplating the implications until Stefan spoke up. “But that is why we are here, is it not? To tell the story that has been lost? I know that is why I am here.”
Erik swiveled in his seat to regard the trove-keeper. “Which brings us full circle. Just exactly why are you here?”
“Poka| ci, nie?” With a gleam in his eye, Stefan reached into his duffle bag and withdrew an object wrapped in cloth. “You will see now.” He furtively looked over his shoulder toward the lobby to make sure nobody else was around and then undid the wrapping to reveal a black stone knife with an antler handle.
Cassie had never seen anything like it before. She leaned over the table to study it for a moment. “What is that thing?”
Stefan grinned at her. With an arch look he replied, “Miss Cassie, I think maybe that is for you to tell me.”
Chapter 21 – Hope In Ruins
Daniel stood on a windswept hillside and gazed off into the distance. To his left he saw the two peaks curved inward toward one another like a pair of horns. He was back at Karfi. This time it was mid-afternoon on a bright, hot day. Not a cloud marred the endless blue of a Mediterranean summer sky. The hill sloped downward to his right. Mounds of bleached rock jutted out of the scrubby undergrowth. The tholos tombs of the Minoans.
Leroy Hunt was seated with his back resting against one of them. He had tipped his cowboy hat over his eyes and was indulging in a mid-day nap. He called it a siesta. Though he had insisted on accompanying Daniel up to the mountain refuge, he had no intention of aiding him in any other capacity than as a lackadaisical bodyguard. Daniel was on his own.
The son of the Diviner had asked Nikos to remain behind. The young Cretan convert had not been part of the expedition on their last visit to Karfi and was unaware of the events that had happened there. Daniel saw no reason for involving him now. The Scion wished that he, too, were as blissfully ignorant of what lay beneath the earth on this seemingly peaceful mountainside.
He cast a furtive look toward Hunt who was already snoring quietly. Scanning the area around the ruined tombs, he attempted to identify the one he needed. It was hard to tell. The last time they’d been here it was pitch dark on a moonless night with only two flashlights to guide their way. They had depended on the lights of the strangers to lead them to their destination.
Daniel wandered around the cemetery, trying to find the right crypt. He remembered Hunt forcing the three strangers to climb inside the tomb. The ramp that led down to it had been choked with rock. Only the top half of the entrance had been open and that was later buried completely by the earthquake that struck so unexpectedly. He remembered Hunt’s joke following the quake that Mother Nature had finished the job of killing the trio for him. At the time, Daniel had been appalled by Hunt’s callous behavior bur in retrospect he was more appalled by his own. He was the one who had stood by and allowed it to happen. Allowed three innocent people to be buried alive. It must have been a terrible way to die. He suppressed a shudder.
He skirted another tholos. Something about it looked familiar. He paused and walked back to the dromos—the ramp that led to the door of the underground crypt. It was filled with rock. The entrance was entirely blocked. He thought this might be the right one. How different everything looked in daylight. The spot itself was serene. His thoughts, unfortunately, were not.
Daniel directed a sidelong glance down the hill. Hunt was still dozing. How could he sleep so easily here, within fifty yards of the place where he had tried to commit murder? How could the man sleep at all given the things he had done in his life? No doubt, to a mercenary, it was all in the line of duty.
The Scion felt a twinge as his own conscience reminded him what he, himself, had done in the line of duty. He was still carrying out his father’s orders. Still engaged in this relic hunt which was tainted with the blood of at least four people—possibly more. Daniel distracted himself from going further down that road. He circled the tomb. The dome was intact. All the others surrounding this one had begun to crumble, leaving gaps open to the sky. He was sure the tomb he was looking for had been sealed. He walked back to the front again. There it was. The upright boulder with the strange markings. A lily carved at the top followed by two lines of pictograms and a niche in the middle of the stone.
He sat down on the grass in front of the stele and unpacked the computer he had brought with him. Unlike the British man who had done the translating on that terrible night, he was not going to rely on books. Daniel had learned a great deal about computers since he began this project for his father. David, the librarian who taught him, said he was a natural at it. The Scion carefully fed the pictograms into a translation program. It took a few moments for him to copy them all. Now he would see for himself what sort of clues they provided. The translation came back in a matter of seconds: “You will find the first of five you seek, when the soul of the lady rises with the sun.”
Daniel frowned in perplexity. The message was identical to what the British man had decrypted. Perhaps the third line would be different. He reached into his computer case and drew out the granite key. Once he fitted it correctly into the niche in the stele, another line of pictograms was revealed. He copied these into his software and hit the command button. The result gave him no consolation. The output read, “At the home of the Mountain Mother.”
He sat back on his heels to consider. The results were identical in every particular to the information he already possessed. “You will find the first of five you seek, when the soul of the lady rises with the sun, at the home of the Mountain Mother.”
Daniel rubbed his eyes. They were very tired from trying to see around corners. He blinked a few times and then something caught his attention. He stared at the base of the stele. It was almost imperceptible but there was a tiny gap between the stone that rested at the bottom of the boulder and the standing rock itself. Almost as if it had been moved recently. He couldn’t be sure if the ground around the stone had been disturbed or not. There had been too many people moving about that night and yet…
He crawled toward the stele on all fours. Keeping his face low to the ground, he examined the edges of the flat stone that rested in front of it. The seam of dirt that should have been piled up against the stele was missing. Someone had indeed moved this rock. Daniel began to formulate a theory.
He jumped up eagerly and circled the perimeter of the tomb again, searching. He shifted his attention briefly toward Hunt to make sure he was still sleeping. Halfway around the back of the dome he thought he saw something. Crouching down he examined some cracks in the structure. Missing mortar. Rocks that might have been fitted back into place. His heart felt lighter than it had for months. A loose pile of brush had been stacked against the dome around this spot. Why? How did it get here? He began to smile to himself. They were alive. Somehow they had managed to escape.
The smile froze on his lips as a far more disturbing thought occurred to him. If they had moved the flat stone in front of the stele after their escape, that meant they were still hunting for the relics too. In all likelihood, they were several steps ahead of him by now.
He raced back to the front of the tomb. “Mr. Hunt!” he shouted.
Leroy snorted and sat up. “Huh?” He tipped his hat to the back of his forehead, looking around in confusion.
“Mr. Hunt! I need your help!”
Hunt sprang to his feet. Reaching for his shoulder holster, he ran up the hill toward Daniel. “What you hollerin’ about, boy?�
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“Come here, please,” the young man said excitedly. “I believe I’ve found something.”
Relaxing his grip on the gun, Leroy sank down on the ground beside the Diviner’s son.
Daniel had already begun tugging at a corner of the flat rock in front of the stele. “Help me,” he grunted with the effort. “I need to move this rock aside.”
“Well, why didn’t you just say so instead of scarin’ a body half to death.” Leroy wrapped his meaty paws around the other side of the stone and, with one jerk, slid it away from the base of the boulder.
“There! There it is!” Daniel pointed excitedly at the dirt-filled markings etched into the front of the rock.
“Well, I’ll be.” Hunt scratched his head in surprise. “Don’t that beat all!”
Daniel barely heard him. He was busy copying the pictograms from the stone into his computer. He pressed the Translate button and when the results appeared, his face lit up with a smile. “Ah ha,” he said with satisfaction.
Hunt positioned himself behind Daniel so he could read the output on the screen. “’Where flows the River Skamandros’? What the hell is that? Skamandros. Sounds like a disease if you ask me.”
“Let’s find out.” Daniel opened another piece of software and began searching for references to the term. He read the data out loud. “Skamandros. Ancient name of the River Karamenderes which flows from Kazdagi (formerly Mount Ida) in Turkey.”
The implications of the geography lesson weren’t lost on even someone as obtuse as Leroy Hunt. “Oh hell no!” he exclaimed. “You mean we been lookin’ for this doodad in the wrong damn country?” He regarded Daniel with amazement.
The Scion matter-of-factly began packing up his computer. “Apparently so. I’ll contact my father immediately and let him know we’re moving our search to Turkey.”
When he rose to go, Daniel deliberately steered Hunt away from the back of the tomb. He didn’t want his bodyguard to notice anything out of the ordinary. The fact that the three strangers were probably still alive wasn’t something Daniel intended to share with the mercenary, or with the Diviner for that matter. If they were still engaged in the relic quest, then so be it. If they were destined to retrieve the artifacts first, then that would be for God, and not his father, to decide.
The Mountain Mother Cipher (The Arkana Archaeology Mystery Series Book 2) Page 13