After bumping along the caravan route for fifteen kilometers, she arrived at the crossing, a somewhat misleading description since there was neither a crossing nor a stream, only a declivity where water once might have flowed. She knew she was at the right spot, however, because Rob and a wiry, compact, thirty-something man (whom she assumed was Sergei) were waiting for her, along with three saddled horses tied to a trailer. She hopped out of her truck, nodded to Rob, and turned to introduce herself to the Russian, who was leaning against a boulder. She started when she saw Sergei. Instead of the classic Russian with lank blond hair, he was an intellectual-looking young man with wavy brown hair, a sensual mouth, and quick, intense brown eyes that missed nothing, including the fact that Claire had done a double take.
“Not what you were expecting?” he asked with an ironic smile as he shrugged himself away from the boulder and extended a hand. His English was good.
A thin-skinned rock hound? thought Claire. Sergei finished the thought. “Kazakhstan collects misfits, and being a misfit is an ancient and honorable profession.”
Not knowing where he was going with this, Claire said, “Amen!” and shook his hand. “I’m Claire.”
Rob had been watching the scene with slight amusement. He nodded toward the horses. “Let’s get going. It’s going to be a scorcher.” He looked at Claire, “You OK with—how shall I put it—living horses?”
She was mildly annoyed, “Oh, please!”
“Sorry,” said Rob, holding up his hands in surrender.
She slid her field pack into one of the panniers on the chestnut Rob had pointed to and then lightly mounted the saddle. Sergei looked more resigned than enthusiastic about the prospect of a long ride, but he hopped on his horse and they headed off into the desert. Rob turned toward a mesalike formation in the distance, the one bump in the endless horizon. At first the ride was monotonous. Rob seemed content to ride in silence, while Sergei rode up beside Claire and started up a conversation. He asked her about her project, and she described her theory about domestication and horses as well as her frustrations with the lack of results. Sergei was clearly intelligent and a good listener, and she found him easy to talk to.
They stopped to stretch their legs and take a drink. Claire turned to Rob and in a bratty voice whined, “Are we there yet?”
Rob laughed, “We’ve got at least another hour.”
After they remounted, Sergei turned to her again. “Forgive me if I’m being too personal, but often when I’ve encountered an interesting person in a remote place—even if it’s their job to be there—there’s an even more interesting story that they are trying to get as far away from as possible.”
Claire didn’t answer. For a guy who didn’t want to pry, Sergei was remarkably insouciant about boundaries. She glanced at Rob, who was riding ahead, and noticed that he seemed to have cocked an ear. On the one hand, this was a remarkably provocative question, since they had known each other for just a couple of hours. On the other hand, she didn’t want to be rude and reminded herself that things moved fast when expatriates met in remote places. She briefly thought of concocting an amusing story—running from the authorities, relationship with a camel driver—but ultimately decided just to tell the truth. As a scientist, Claire didn’t truck much with guile.
“I’m here by accident. To my misfortune, I’ve turned out to be a too-good utility infielder.”
Sergei looked confused. “You work on telephone lines in fields?”
Claire and Rob both laughed.
“Sorry—your English is so good, I assumed you knew about baseball.” Claire went on to explain how she was called on to fill in for Russell.
Claire stole a look at Sergei. She couldn’t help but smile. He really was very good-looking, and she liked that he was funny. She decided to turn the tables. “And you?”
She could see the hurt flash across Sergei’s face and instantly regretted asking. “Oh, I’m a cliché,” he said softly. “Relationship gone bad. But I was not so much running away as being strapped to a Soyuz against my will and launched, with her family cheering for the rocket to crash.”
Claire had only just met Sergei, but the bitter tone surprised her. She also noted that Rob seemed particularly interested in hearing what Sergei would say. Without looking at either of them, Sergei said, “It’s a long story, and not a good one.”
Claire wanted to know more, but Sergei suddenly brightened and deftly shifted the conversation. “I’m curious. Back at the base we watch American TV a lot. Most shows are about couples, and in the comedies and dramas, everybody is fighting all the time. Is this the way Americans relate to each other—through fights?”
Claire had never thought about it this way, but, reviewing the scarred landscape of her relationship with the utterly unreliable John, she could see how even that on-again, off-again thing met the pattern. “Absolutely,” she said, nodding, “and American couples can fight about anything!”
Sergei lit up, delighted. “Please, give me an example.”
Claire thought a minute. “OK, here’s a doozy.”
Again, Sergei looked confused.
“Doozy,” interjected Rob, riding just ahead of them but clearly listening, “means great example.”
“OK, I get it.” Sergei nodded vigorously. “Please …”
“One of my biggest fights with a boyfriend was about energy conservation.”
At this Rob turned around in his saddle. “Energy conservation? Really?”
Claire nodded. “Yup.”
“Why?”
“Exactly!” said Claire. Now enjoying herself, she turned to Sergei. “Didn’t you and your girlfriend—wife?—fight about energy conservation?”
Sergei shrugged. “Not exactly,” he said with a straight face, “but it was always there, just beneath the surface.”
At this both Rob and Claire laughed.
Claire wanted to keep the conversation going. “What about you, Rob?”
“Me?” Rob clearly wasn’t eager to open up. “Not much to tell except that every time I’ve gotten lucky, I’ve gotten extremely unlucky shortly thereafter.” Claire and Sergei both chuckled.
As they rode on in silence, she savored this easy camaraderie. It was worth the trip, even if the bones turned out to be from a camel that died last year.
After a few miles, the terrain got rougher, and Rob began consulting his GPS as they negotiated a jumble of boulders and outcroppings. Most were dun colored, but here and there strata were visible where formations erupted from the earth in twists and curves, as though they were trying to escape some torment underground. It was an altogether alien landscape, both beautiful and strange. Claire could easily imagine why a geologist might want to investigate the area. Claire looked away from the rocks and shot a quick glance at Sergei. She was curious about his story, but any thought of pursuing the conversation ended when Rob stopped his horse and turned to Claire. “It’s just up ahead. Uh, how do you want to go about this?”
“Carefully,” said Claire. “If it turns out to be something—whatever it is—there may be more bones not yet exposed. Let’s shift to foot, let me get my first impression, and then maybe Sergei could explain the geologic context. OK?”
“Sounds good to me,” said Rob. Sergei smiled at Claire as Rob found a suitable shrub to which he could tie the horses. As they walked through a narrow passage toward an outcropping, Claire took in the desolate landscape, which consisted of a jumble of reddish and dun-colored rock protrusions.
After a few minutes, Rob clambered up one that angled up from the desert and began walking up its back. Claire and Sergei scrambled after him. The mesa was about as long as a football field and sloped upward to about fifty feet above the plain with an apron of scree at the bottom of the bluff, on top of which was a jumble of boulders. As they approached the highest point, Rob stopped.
“We’re here,” he said, gesturing for Claire to go forward. “The edge might be crumbly, so don’t get too close. If you look down, you
can see that big pieces have been falling off.”
Claire shrugged off her day pack, picked up her camera, and slowly walked toward the edge. Though she was facing away from them, Rob and Sergei could see the exact moment that she first saw their find. She first stiffened as though she had hit an invisible wall and then walked forward very slowly. What they couldn’t see was the amazement, confusion, and shock that flashed across her face.
Protruding from the hard-packed ground were the ends of five very large bones arrayed in parallel. The bones extended into the earth, but she instantly recognized the large hook-like ends as the trochlear notches of an ulna, the bone that forms the forearm and elbow of mammals. Such bones were quite suitable as clubs, and her first thought was that she was looking at long-buried weapons. But, staring at the size of the ulnae, she also knew that no human, present-day or past, would have been strong enough to use these bones as a weapon. She felt a flash of anger and whirled to face Rob and Sergei. “OK, guys, if this is some practical joke, now is the time to come clean.”
Both men looked as though they had been slapped. “Do you honestly think I’d risk my job to stage a practical joke?” Rob snapped.
Claire’s anger vanished instantly, replaced by embarrassment. “Of course not,” she said, chastened. “Sorry. It’s just that this”—she pointed to the bones—“doesn’t make sense.”
“Agreed,” said Rob mildly. “That’s why we contacted you.”
Claire continued, “I know an elephant ulna when I see one—that’s my real field—and I also know that there haven’t been any elephants here in recorded history.”
Rob was dumbstruck. “Elephant?”
Sergei was dumbstruck, too, Claire noted with satisfaction. “Elephant?” But then he regained his poise. “Ah, elephant,” he said, as though this was another answer that had been on the tip of his tongue.
“Yup, elephant.”
“Could a Neanderthal have used that bone as a weapon?” Rob asked.
That gave Claire pause, but Sergei was shaking his head. “Look around you.”
Claire dutifully looked around but had no idea what Sergei was talking about. She shrugged.
Sergei pointed to the face of an outcropping a few hundred yards away. It looked similar to the one they were standing on, except that its side showed bands of different-colored rock folded almost perfectly into a giant letter C. “Since I first saw the bones, I’ve taken—what is the phrase?—ah yes, a deeper dive into the geology of the area. See that letter C? That’s what we call a recumbent fold. The bottom of the C shows the geology of the area as it was deposited over time, yes?”
Claire nodded, and Sergei continued, “So you see the lowest band is lighter colored than the dark rock that forms the next band, and you also see that as a result of the fold, the lowest band ends up on top?”
Again Claire nodded. Sergei was obviously enjoying himself. “So, the last shall be first, as they say in the Bible. Now, if you studied the stratigraphy of the formation we’re standing on now, you’d see that we are on that same lighter-colored band of sedimentary rock as we’re looking at over there, but while we might think that this was the newest layer to be deposited, it is actually the oldest.”
By this point Claire was so disoriented that she put off asking the obvious question—“How do you know so much about this area?”
But Sergei continued as if she had. “Oh, this is a special place. It’s where the past erupts from the earth and blabs its secrets,” he said, gesturing to the folds and faults in the strata exposed on the sides of the outcrops and mesas around them. “It’s a good place for a geologist to orient himself to the composition and history of the area. That’s why we found these bones, actually. I was up here happily studying the various strata, and I kicked what I thought was a rock. My kick knocked the last bit of soil off what turned out to be that bone,” he said, pointing to one of the ulnae.
The mention of the bones brought her back to the question she’d been dreading. “How old is that strata?”
“I only just completed the dating,” Sergei said brightly. “Five and a half million years!” Now he beamed at the look of utter disbelief that came over Claire’s face.
“Five million years?” said Rob numbly, fulfilling the role of Greek chorus. “Okaaaay, I guess that rules out Neanderthal.”
Claire thought furiously. “It would rule out any hominin—that we know of … Our ancestors were pipsqueaks back then, and probably not smart enough to use a bone weapon anyway, much less arrange the bones in some ritual. Besides, five and a half million years ago was over four million years before any of our ancestors left Africa.” She turned to Sergei. “But what if these bones were buried purposefully rather than deposited? Someone could have dug into that layer?”
“Yes, exactly!” said Sergei with a pleased look that annoyed Claire.
“But …,” she said impatiently.
It dawned on Sergei that she was tired of playing the foil. He sighed and then said simply, “OK, OK, take a closer look at that bone. Do you have a magnifier?”
Claire was confused. “Yeah, sure,” she said, digging a pocket microscope out of her field kit. She knelt down and peered through the lens at the bone. One look and she became completely disoriented. She looked up at Sergei. “Petrified?”
Sergei nodded. “I don’t know that much about mineralization, but it usually takes millions of years, doesn’t it? I do know that sedimentary rocks—like this particular strata—are suited for fossilization. Anyway, it’s a brain twister.” He paused a moment. “That’s why I contacted you.”
Claire was speechless. Elephant bones where elephants didn’t exist, arrayed by some creature at a time when humans probably didn’t use weapons and wouldn’t have been able to wield these enormous bones if they did. Possible alternative explanations raced through her mind—were they the treasured artifacts of some ancient trader that were subsequently discarded by a raiding party going for a caravan’s gold? That was more likely than what was staring her in the face.
There was always the possibility that there was some prosaic explanation for the array, but if the simple story that someone—some creature?—purposefully arranged those bones five million years ago held up, the possible explanations were nothing short of surreal, overturning basic postulates of paleontology and the evolution of thought and civilization as well.
She photographed the array from every angle, while Sergei documented the geology of the area. She debated how best to pursue this find systematically. Ideally, she would have left them in place until they could devise a plan for the excavation of the area, but she knew that was a nonstarter. The implications of the find were so explosive that the confirmation of the age of the array, once known, would unleash forces far, far beyond her ability to control. Claire was well aware of the bizarre tug-of-war that resulted from the discovery of the so-called hobbits, a mysterious miniature group of people given the scientific name Homo floresiensis, because Indonesian and Australian researchers found their bones in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. The discovery of the three-foot-tall skeletons with Homo erectus features produced a furor because the bones dated to fifty thousand years ago—more than fifty thousand years past the official expiration date of Homo erectus. At one point an Indonesian scientist absconded with the hobbit bones and held them for many months while the Australian researchers were denied access to their own find.
The age of Sergei’s discovery made the implications so much more revolutionary than the hobbits that Claire couldn’t begin to find the words to describe the scale of the scientific upheaval that would result. And Kazakhstan made Indonesia look like a Trappist monastery in terms of corruption. Claire knew that the Kazakhs had a right to share in the discovery and the exploration of the site. But she had to find a way to pursue the find to the point where it was sufficiently documented and confirmed that it could not be swept under the rug. She also knew that if there was no simple explanation for the bones, her life w
as going to change forever. And, finally, she knew that she couldn’t do this alone, even if Rob and Sergei gave her the bones as Rob had earlier intimated. She needed to find a partner or partners with the scientific expertise to study the bones, but first off she needed to put together a team to dig. She needed people she could trust and who, at least for the time being, would be willing to do the work in secret. She couldn’t begin to envision the reaction of her team when Claire, an interim leader who had promised not to rock the boat, told them that the dig was going to go in a completely different direction and that it was also going to proceed in secrecy.
That thought brought her back to the two men who had actually found the array: Rob, with a background in security and the military, and Sergei with his scientific chops. She had an idea.
“So, guys,” she said, standing up and stretching, “all I can say is thank you for bringing me in on this.”
“Glad it’s not a wild goose chase,” said Rob. Sergei gave a brief “you’re welcome” nod.
“Well,” said Claire, “it’s probably not a wild goose chase. But we’ve got to be sure …” She was struggling to get out the words. When she could resume speaking, her voice was wheezy. “Because,” she said softly, “if these bones were actually arrayed five million years ago, this will rank as the greatest paleontological find of all time.”
In the silence that followed, Sergei just stared at Claire, stunned. After a moment, Claire continued, “There, I’ve said it, and don’t even try to imagine what’s going to come down on us once this gets out.” She paused. “Now, we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but if this turns out to be what it looks like, I promise you that I will make sure that you two are credited with the discovery.”
“And you, too,” blurted Rob. Sergei seemed distracted but finally nodded.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Claire said with obvious relief. That was a question that had been hanging in the air from the very second she realized what Sergei had stumbled on. She added, “So now that you know what we’re dealing with, I think you’d agree that we’ve got to be extremely careful about what we do next. Here’s the problem: if we simply took the bones, spirited them out of the country and did an analysis, no reputable foundation would support the work and no reputable scientific journal would publish the findings. We’d have the discovery—whatever it turned out to be—but no credibility. Credibility is everything in science. You could find the cure for cancer, but if there’s a taint of scandal or weirdness about it, it will just sit on a shelf. It’s not what you know in science, it’s who believes that it is actually worthwhile. We’ve gotta go about this the right way.”
Deep Past Page 3