Neanderthal

by John Darnton

  To be honest, Matt had been a little hurt that Kellicut hadn’t been in touch. Now he was in some kind of trouble—that much was clear. But what danger? What was the project and what was his message? Matt had heard of the Institute for Prehistoric Research, a new but well-endowed outfit on the cutting edge of re­search in related fields, but he didn’t know much about it. What project was Kellicut on? How did this Eagleton know where Matt was, and how could he assume that he would come just like that?

  He glanced up at Van, now smoking and taking pains to exhale the smoke through the screened flap.

  “Van, what’s all this about?”

  “Sorry. Like I said, I can’t tell you.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Believe me, if I could add anything to what’s in that letter, I would. Kellicut is missing on a dig in Tajikistan and we need you to help us find him.”

  “You hand me this letter and expect me to just drop everything and come?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “Because his life may be in danger.” Van unzipped the tent flap and spat out a large globule of saliva.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s a dangerous place. He’s supposed to keep in touch. And like the letter says, we haven’t heard from him in months.”

  They were silent a moment. Then Van spoke up. “So you’ll come.”

  Matt felt a thickening in his throat. “How soon are we talking about?”

  “I’m leaving today. You can come in two days.” Matt protested. “But how about the dig? I can’t just walk off and leave it. These kids are depending on me.”

  “It’s been taken care of. We have somebody to run it. A guy from Columbia. He’ll be out here tomorrow, Thursday at the latest.”

  “You seem to have thought of everything,” Matt said.

  “We can’t be sure of that. That’s why we need you.”

  “Why me?”

  “You know Kellicut. You know the field. You’re the only one— practically the only one—who does.”

  Along with alarm, Matt noticed something else, a feeling he rec­ognized. It was a little buzz of excitement in the ear, a tingling of the extremities, that old sensation he got when an adventure was in the offing.

  They made the arrangements. Van stayed only half an hour more. When Matt walked him over to the Land Rover, Van roused the dozing driver, who shook his head, jumped up, and got into the car.

  Matt looked into Van’s dark glasses again. “One more thing. Your name is familiar but I can’t place your work. What’s your area?”

  “Me? I began in psychology, then paleoanthropology. Now I’m involved in psycholingualism.”

  “Of course. Van Steeds. I’ve read some of your stuff—it’s fasci­nating, all that new research about communication without lan­guage. Forgive me.”

  “Quite all right. I’m impressed that someone of your stature bothers to read the obscure publications that feature my work.” Van smiled toothily and slid into the back seat without another word, and the car pulled away, trailing another cloud of dust.

  Later on when Matt went back into his tent he looked out the flap. There on the ground was Van’s globule of spit. He couldn’t believe it. It was green. Son of a bitch, he thought. The bastard was chewing khat.

  Susan raised the pointer to tickle the Neanderthal’s chin.

  “Here he is. You know what people say about him: ‘Nature’s practical joke’; ‘Evolution’s dead end.’ Our poor apelike cousin, a shuffling moronic figure who frittered away his hour upon the stage.

  “Well, nothing could be further from the truth. We have learned a lot in the past ten or fifteen years, and everything we know now contradicts that slanderous stereotype.”

  An old photograph flashed onto the screen, of an eminent-looking man with a bow tie, a trim white goatee, narrow eyes, and a mouth slightly parted in a self-satisfied smile. He looked a bit like Sigmund Freud.

  “Here’s the villain, Marcellin Boule, renowned French paleontologist. More than anyone else he is responsible for the gross misconception of the Neanderthal that perseveres to this day, in every­thing from literature to cartoons.”

  Susan sketched in Boule’s background, his desire for fame, his obsession to keep human lineage pure by rejecting primitive ancestors; and the fateful day in 1908 when a skeleton from a small cave near La Chapelie-aux-Saints fell into his hands. She clicked on a slide of his reconstruction of the skeleton—a faulty job in­tended to make it look as apelike as possible with neck vertebrae sticking up like a gorilla’s and the bone of the big toe splitting off to form an opposable thumb.

  “No wonder generations looked down on him as a dumb oaf. Well, look what happens when you correct Monsieur Boule’s dis­tortions.” The screen changed and the skeleton stood up erect. “Look at that. A bit more majestic. He’s not quite as tall as we are, but he’s not really that different. Certainly he doesn’t look sim­ian. Today people are fond of saying that if you gave him a shave and dressed him in a suit and tie, you could lose him on Madison Avenue. Perhaps. But the moment you were introduced, you would know. When he shook your hand he would probably break every bone in it.”

  Susan saw a square of light in the back of the hall, and against it a darkened figure slipped inside the auditorium. She thought she saw it stoop to sit down in a back row as the door closed and the light dimmed. Again she felt that free-floating anxiety.

  She forced herself to concentrate on the lecture and crossed the stage, grasping the pointer tightly. “We know that the Neanderthal had fire. Fire had been used for tens of thousands of years, and without it he could not have survived the last glaciation. He was a fire producer, not just a fire conserver. He used iron pyrites and flint to ignite it and perhaps dried fungus as tinder. In fact, he was downright homey in keeping his hearth.”

  Susan was sure there was an interloper sitting in the back row, a man. Who could it be? Who would enter in the middle of a lecture like that?

  “He buried his dead. Interestingly, many of the burial sites we’ve discovered have been children’s. One particularly well-preserved site is at Teshik-Tash, a cave in the Gissar range south of Samar­kand. It’s a whole chamber and it contains six pairs of horns of the Siberian mountain goat. One pair is slightly charred. Everything points to an elaborate ritual, perhaps to bring the child back to life in the future. Death was very special to the Neanderthal. In fact, I believe he built a cult around it.

  “At the very least we can hypothesize that he practiced religion, although of course we haven’t an inkling about what kind of reli­gion it was. Fire was almost certainly part of his worship. Some caves have what appear to be fire chambers, either for practical reasons—to keep the fire going at all times—or for ritualistic pur­poses. Perhaps in borrowing fire from lightning storms, when the skies opened up and pelted his poor universe, the Neanderthal, like Sisyphus, was reaching beyond his station. Perhaps he was usurping the power of his gods, and perhaps they, like the Greek gods and even Jehovah, demanded expiation through some form of sacrifice. Do these bones of children speak to us of Abraham and Isaac? We don’t know and we may never know.” She paused a moment.

  “So let’s stick with what we do know. We know the Neanderthal lived in groups and cared for the aged and infirm. We have discov­ered skeletons with recovered fractures and incapacitating illnesses that prove this beyond a doubt.” On the screen appeared a with­ered skeleton. “Here we have the find by Ralph Solecki in the great Shanidar cave in Iraq. Our prehistoric man here was killed by a rock fall. He was old, perhaps forty, which in Neanderthal years makes him ancient. See that damage to the skull? It probably comes from the cave-in. But look at his right arm. It was amputated some years before—see?—just above the elbow. He had arthritis. Now look at the left side of the face. See that bone scar tissue? He was blind in the left eye. There’s no way someone like this could have survived on his own. Others kept him alive. The tribe supported its weaker members, tho
se who could not hunt or work. In this sense, Neanderthals were human—maybe even more human than we are. Those of you who have been inside a nursing home lately will know what I mean.

  “Here’s something else for those of you who think of Neanderthals as submoronic cartoon characters. Monsieur Boule took an endocranial cast of the La Chapelle skull and thought its owner simpleminded. Today, of course, we know that brain size is not an indicator of intelligence. Anatole France, the French philosopher, had a brain only two thirds as large as the average adult Nean­derthal.

  “But we also know more about Neanderthal skulls, and from measurements of craniums it is indisputable that their brains were not smaller than ours. Quite the opposite: They were nearly ten percent larger. What’s more, some say the ratio of brain size to body size—the so-called cephalization, which is a more accurate measurement of intelligence than mere brain size when projected across an entire species—is also more optimal by a factor of point twelve.” A table showing the cephalization for twenty species was displayed. The highest was Neanderthal, the lowest was labeled MODERN COW. “There is no way to reconcile these data without ad­mitting the likelihood that the Neanderthal was our equal in brainpower—or perhaps even our superior.”

  Susan walked across the stage, paused for dramatic effect, and raised her fist. “Consider modern man.”

  On the screen popped a grainy picture of a handsome man in his sixties. He was resting in a khaki safari suit against a tomb of some sort. Balding, with a peppery beard, a roguish glint, and a slight smile, he had a jaunty air, and though he was relaxed, leaning back against an ancient crumbling wall with a piece of straw between his teeth, he seemed ready to pounce at the camera. His eyes were dark and penetrating. It was hard not to look at them.

  “Here’s the paradox. If Neanderthal is so intelligent, what hap­pened? How did this guy behind me get to be top dog? What happened to our man of the valley of the alpine flowers? Why are we here and why is he gone? To quote Jack Nicholson in Prizzi’s Honor, ‘If he’s so fucking sMatt, how come he’s so fucking dead?’ ” There was tittering at the profanity.

  “Why did Neanderthals appear some two hundred thirty thousand years ago, flourish for millennia after millennia, ranging from western Europe to central Asia and the Middle East, extending their reach into different flora and fauna, only to drop from sight all at once?” Susan tapped the pointer against the screen so hard it began to shudder. “You see here one of the most eminent thinkers and paleoanthropologists of our time”—there was a reverential pause—“Dr. Jerome Kellicut. Simply put, his work has revolution­ized the field we study.”

  She looked up at him. She had always liked the photo. She took it herself, on Crete, years ago. Perhaps I’m laying it on a bit thick, she thought. Recently she had caught herself questioning some of Kellicut’s achievements, demythologizing the man. It was bound to happen. He had been such a glamorous character, the sort of pro­fessor who changed the lives of his graduate students. Who wouldn’t worship a man who thought in terms of eons?

  “Through a unique method of dating stones called thermolu­minescence—I won’t bore you with the details of how it works— Dr. Kellicut has examined flint from Neanderthal caves in southern France and has been able to fix their age more accu­rately by far than anyone before him. His astounding conclusion is that the Neanderthals lived much later than we had thought—up until thirty thousand years ago. Previously their extinction had been placed at forty thousand years. The difference is only ten thousand years, but these aren’t just any ten thousand years, for it was precisely at this time that modern man appeared on the scene, rising up in Africa and migrating through the Middle East to Eu­rope. In other words, Kellicut was able to prove conclusively that modern human beings—Homo sapiens sapiens—and Homo sapiens neanderthalensis coexisted. Coexisted!

  “Think of the possibilities.” Susan’s voice was rising now. “Was there commerce between these two members of the same species, so close in so many ways? Did they exchange ideas? Did they trade tools? Hunt together? Breed together? Did they wage war?

  “Now maybe at last we have at least the beginnings of a solution to the great enigma: What happened to Homo sapiens nean­derthalensis? For now we know that his exit more or less corre­sponded in time with the entrance of Homo sapiens sapiens, a subspecies that is uncannily similar to Neanderthal but different in some critical way that allowed us to survive and become Earth’s chosen child.

  “We need to find the key to unlock the riddle. If it wasn’t a mat­ter of straightforward intelligence—and we have no reason to think it was, given our best estimates of cranial capacity—what was it? If we could find the answer to that single question, we would know everything. We would know exactly what it is that makes us different from other animals. What it is that makes us, of all creatures, special: set apart, aware, endowed with history, con­scious of mortality. What it is that makes us sapiens. We would fi­nally reach the hidden chambers that have concealed the secret of our existence.”

  The lights went on quickly. There was a loud round of applause, a blur of voices, and the sound of seat bottoms snapping up and books slapped together as the room began to empty.

  Susan gathered up her papers, walked down a few steps, paused and talked with a circle of students, and then started to the back of the auditorium. She was halfway up the aisle when she noticed the figure sitting in the last row.

  Her heart raced. He was a peculiar-looking man, round and mus­cular, with an ill-fitting jacket and black wraparound sunglasses dangling from a cord around his neck. He remained hunched down in his seat until she stood before him.

  “Dr. Arnot?” A half smile. “My name is Van Steeds.”

  Susan smiled back and bowed her head almost imperceptibly. Her hands felt cold. He was holding something toward her, a long brown envelope.

  3

  Susan’s plane descended toward the Washington Monument, then the Ellipse and the Lincoln Memorial. Tiny cars rolled with precise, miniaturized movements.

  She detested Washington. She had lived there for a year on a Smithsonian grant after graduate school at Harvard. She still shuddered at the memory of those hot afternoons, cataloguing bones in a basement and daydreaming about faraway countries. Also, of course, “nursing a broken heart,” as her friends unkindly said behind her back.

  She retrieved her battered suitcase and was met at the curb by a limousine driver with a DR. ARNOT sign. They drove to a residential neighborhood of two- and three-story frame houses and squat brick ranchers. Children played outside.

  It reminded her of the small logging town in Oregon where she grew up, unforgiving country she could not wait to leave. Her childhood had been miserable. She was the daughter of an alcoholic father who deserted his frail, thin-blooded wife and ran off to captain a ferryboat. Religion had been a comfort; Susan’s only warm memory was of the white clapboard church on a hilltop.

  She drew her strength from her grandmother, a great Hungarian beauty from whom she had inherited her dark skin, high cheek­bones, and long legs. It was her grandmother who had left Budapest at the age of twenty-three to make a long trek across Canada and down to Oregon. Susan inherited that independent streak from her—it had skipped over her poor mother. When she was starting out on a dig or an adventure like this one, she liked to think that she was a pioneer too.

  She had received Van’s message only two days ago, but she was feeling guilty that it had taken her that long to get her affairs in order. Visconti, the department chairman, had not been gracious. Still, he had let her go. He did manage to prick her curiosity about the Institute for Prehistoric Research by raising an eyebrow and insisting that most scientists would kill for the honor of speaking there. She found many references to it in the library—all since 1987—and wondered how it was she didn’t know more about the place.

  Van had not been a communicative messenger. He volunteered lit­tle about himself or Kellicut or what kind of research expedition he had been on, an
d he hadn’t told her what to expect here other than “a second-rate academic grilling.” He also seemed to know a great deal about her—not so much from what he said but from what he didn’t say, questions he didn’t ask and assumptions he made.

  Soon a college campus cropped up on the right and a sign pointed to the Institute for Prehistoric Research. Inside, busy at their desks, were two secretaries. Susan was nodded through to another, smaller room, where Van was waiting. He rose slowly from an easy chair and bowed slightly. “Welcome,” he said.

  “Thank you.” She looked around. The room was furnished with comfortable and understated antiques. “What kind of place is this, a college?”

  “Part of it. We find it makes for helpful synergy.” He led the way through another room and yet another corridor. When they came to a set of double oak doors, he opened them and stepped to one side to let her pass.

  Disoriented, feeling almost dizzy, Susan stepped into a small conference room with plush carpeting and thickly cushioned seats in which a dozen or so dim figures sat. They turned to look at her with interest but no surprise. But sitting right in the center, she saw someone who took her breath away. There, big as life, was Matt.

  Eagleton spun his wheelchair around to face the bank of video screens and checked to make sure the tape was recording. This mo­ment was important. He wanted to be sure to capture his expres­sion and hers, their eyes at the precise moment when surprise lifts the curtain to reveal truth. He could analyze them later at his leisure. He always prided himself on his ability to spot telltale clues, “the heart’s clumsy spies” as he called them, which were missed by less-observant analysts.

  Mattison knew she was coming, which meant of course that he had prepared himself. Old Schwartzbaum had seen to that, the idiot, by blurting it out earlier this morning. Eagleton could have killed him. Still, what could he have done differently? He had wanted the senior staffers and consultants to meet the two of them and question them in person. Interrogation by experts was best for extracting scientific information that could turn out to be valu­able, he had discovered. Even if the experts themselves had no idea what the information was to be used for. He knew the virtue of compartmentalizing subordinates and keeping them in the dark. It was second nature by now—first nature, to be exact.