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Clark shifted to English and relayed the instructions. Suddenly all eyes were on Barbara. Her heart was pounding in her chest, her stomach churning with fear. But still she stepped forward, walked past the keeper, who had finally noticed something was wrong and stopped his sales-patter.
Barbara stopped, standing face to face with—with the living, breathing embodiment of a million yesteryears, a black and hairy creature who stared back at her with eyes that seemed far too wise. She stood so close she felt the australopithecine’s warm breath on her face. What to do? Impulsively, recklessly, she reached out and offered out her hands.
The creature stared at her for a long time, then, hesitantly, wonderingly, offered up her own right hand.
Barbara took the hand in both of hers. The strange flesh felt warm and strong, strangely gentle and familiar.
Barbara stepped back, tugging gently on the creature’s arm, and the creature followed along, most slowly and tentatively. She let her own right hand drop, and held the australopithecine’s right in her left. She fell into step with the poor frightened thing.
Hand in hand, side by side, the two of them walked out of the camp.
Hurriedly, almost furtively, the other visitors followed a respectful step or two behind.
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Dr. Jeffery Grossington stepped, rather unhappily, out onto the stage of Baird Auditorium and looked out into the audience. The Baird was a handsome old auditorium, set neatly into the basement of the Natural History Building, and Grossington had both given and attended many pleasant talks in it over the years. He did not expect today’s little presentation to be pleasant. There was a low trestle table set in the middle of the stage and he carefully set the box holding Ambrose the skull down on it before sitting behind a small forest of microphones.
It had been a bad day already. The wire services had picked up the story, but only a few small, regional papers had run it. The Times had yet to use it, but the Post had run an inside-page piece. Several radio and TV station had run items, mostly funny ha-ha what-a-cockamamie-rumor things. There had been some very odd sidebars here and there already—and some of the people who had called for interviews were just plain strange.
He looked out once again at the audience. Not as much of a crowd as he had expected. Maybe twenty or so reporters, though his office had contacted many more than that. There were a fair number of museum employees present, too. That shouldn’t have surprised him. They were no doubt eager to hear whatever truth there might be behind the rumors that had been flying about the building for days now.
Grossington glanced at his watch and grimaced. Time to begin. Might as well get it over with. He tapped at one of the mikes and cleared his throat. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you could take your seats, perhaps we might get started.”
It took a welcome minute or two for everyone to get settled. Finally, the moment came when he could stall no longer, and there was nothing for it but to plunge right in. “I’d like to thank you all for coming, and also thank the Smithsonian and the Natural History Museum for providing facilities at such short notice. My name, incidentally, is Dr. Jeffery Grossington, and I am the head of the Anthropology Department at the Museum. Before I take any questions, I have a statement to make.
“I am sure that most of you, perhaps all of you, have seen or at least heard about the reports coming out of the town of Gowrie, Mississippi. I suppose that the rather sparse turnout today has something to do with the expectation that I’ve called this press conference simply to deny those reports.
“I’m afraid I can’t fulfill that expectation. Although the news came out sooner than I would have preferred, and long before we have had the time to carefully consider the implications of what we have found, the news is true. Thanks to the determined efforts of Dr. Barbara Marchando, who cannot be with us today, a remarkable discovery has been made.
“But, before I discuss that discovery, I should like to pause a minute and say a word or two about Dr. Marchando. By rights, she should be up here telling you all this. It is her work, her determination, her time, effort, money, drive, and imagination in pursuit of something not only unexpected, but altogether unlikely, that brought to light the remarkable things I am about to discuss. I might add that she went in search of something quite different from what she found—which is the way a lot of good science happens. Had we chosen the time to make this announcement, she would be here to take the credit that is her due. I should also like to mention the signal efforts of Dr. Rupert Maxwell, who has made a great contribution, and also to a young man named Livingston Jones, who uncovered some extremely important facts.
“However, it seems the time has chosen us, instead of the other way around. Therefore, as the only member of the team present, it is incumbent on me to make this announcement and so insure that the discussion of this discovery is based on fact, rather than speculation and rumor.
“Briefly put, Dr. Marchando discovered a burial site, approximately one hundred and thirty-seven years old, in which no less than five extremely well-preserved and complete specimens of the genus Australopithecus were found. Those who have examined the find further believe the specimens are of the species Australopithecus boisei. As most of you should know, this species—and this entire genus—have been thought to be extinct for a million years. Therefore, the discovery of remains that were alive two human lifetimes ago is a most remarkable thing.
“At this time, I should like to present the skull of the first-found and best-preserved of the Gowrie specimens, cataloged as Gowrie Exhumation Project #1, GEP-1, but nicknamed Ambrose.” Grossington gingerly removed the skull from its box, and there was a flurry of flashes going off and the whir of motorized camera winders as the photographers captured the moment. “I should like to note that we managed to recover every single one of Ambrose’s bones. Obviously, it would be impractical to present them all here, but we have them in our possession—a few with traces of skin and fur on them. At the conclusion of the press conference, you will all be welcome to examine and photograph the skull as closely as you like, but needless to say, I must insist you not touch it. Tomorrow at noon I plan to present the entire skeleton, and indeed the entire GEP collection, for the close inspection of scientists and the media.
“There is clear and compelling evidence that the creature who owned this skull was buried no earlier than the latter half of 1851, probably in the summer of that year. As I have said, since his species was supposed to be extinct as of a million years ago, this is certainly a remarkable discovery. But I should like to dispose of several other supposed mysteries before I take questions on that and other aspects of the discovery.
“Chief among these alleged mysteries is that the creature was found in America, in Mississippi, and was deliberately buried. The announcement of their existence is less than thirty-six hours old, and I have already heard speculations to the effect that a band of australopithecines ventured to these shores across some sort of land bridge from Asia, or constructed some sort of vessel and crossed the ocean, and that the australopithecines then survived in America while becoming extinct in Africa. In fact, several rather enthusiastic theorists have already called me, asking to confirm what they regard as obvious: that the legendary Sasquatch, or Yeti, the abominable snowman allegedly seen from time to time in this country, were in fact members of this remnant population of australopithecines.
“Furthermore, the fact of deliberate burial for Ambrose and friends has been embroidered into the invention of a whole sophisticated culture for these creatures. More foolishly still, several people, especially in the Deep South, have already reported seeing strange man-like creatures since the discovery of these bones. None of this is supported by the evidence we have found, and I will state flatly that none of these reports has any basis in fact. They are nonsense. What is more, the people reporting those stories know they are nonsense, and will, no doubt, continue to report them anyway, even when confronted with the evidence that destroys their the
ories. I mention these reports only in the hope that the more rational members of the press will know they are false.
“As I have noted, we did not choose the moment to make this announcement. For that reason, we are not as yet prepared to release all our evidence, as we have not completed our analysis yet. But from our preliminary work, I can state with absolute confidence that these creatures were brought to these shores by perfectly ordinary human means, not by australopithecine sailors. I can further state with perfect confidence that human beings, and not their fellow-creatures, buried these australopithecines, not out of religious necessity, but out of fear of contagion. In short, the presence of these creatures in America, instead of Africa, can be wholly and satisfactorily accounted for by the actions of humans, without recourse to wild surmises or lost civilizations of ape-men. I would venture to say that the truth is fantastic enough in this case that the invention of scurrilous stories is quite unnecessary. And, I am grieved to say, I deny these false reports now in the full expectation that others will follow. I would therefore urge all of you who will be following this story to be most cautious, to examine all claims and statements as thoroughly as possible. This is a complicated topic whose implications could be tremendous. It requires thoughtful and responsible reporting. I’ll take the first question now.”
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Pete Ardley wriggled down deeper into his chair and grinned. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Grossington was doing his best to hide exactly the stuff Pete had left out of the first article, no doubt for the same reason: If he released the text of the old newspaper ad, the clues in it would have everyone and his cousin chasing the story in Gabon. Since Pete had already paid a visit to the Gabonese Embassy, the precaution wasn’t going to do Grossington much good. He checked his watch. His follow-up story should be hitting the wire in about an hour if Teems kept on schedule.
A reporter in the first row stood up. “Dr. Grossington, Cindy Hogan, Los Angeles Times. This skull here, this hundred-odd year old skull, if I understand this, you’re saying that it’s an ancestor of mankind. How could that possibly be?”
DR. GROSSINGTON: Very simple: It couldn’t possibly be. (Laughter.) Things are more complicated than that, and maybe I should go back a step or two. Australopithecus boisei was last seen about ten thousand centuries ago, at which point it vanished without a trace. Now he pops up again. What this amounts to is a million-year gap in the fossil record. Any paleontologist will tell you that is not at all uncommon. Look up the coelacanth when you get back to the office. That’s C-O-E-L-A-C-A-N-T-H. But what makes this case so unusual is that the gap happens to end so recently, and that it involves a species closely related to our own. But there is no great mystery about the gap.
“The odds against a given creature dying in such a way that it leaves a fossil, and then the odds against that fossil later being found, are astronomical. If there was only a small population of these creatures, and if they happened to live in a climate where it was unlikely for their remains to fossilize, then all that is required to explain the gap is that we simply haven’t found any of the very small number of fossils left by that small population.
“However, there is another point I need to clear up. Australopithecus boisei is not considered an ancestral species to mankind, and has not been for decades. The human and australopithecine line do share a comparatively recent common ancestor. As was noted in the first news story, Ambrose is our cousin, not our grandparent. The chimp and gorilla are also living species with which we share a fairly recent ancestor species. Ambrose here stands in a similar, though closer, relationship to us. Having said that, I must fog the issue a bit more by pointing out that there is no particular reason ancestor and descendant can’t coexist—it probably happens all the time. A parent species splits off a descendant species, which comes to occupy a slightly different niche in the environment, leaving the parent species and its unchanged niche undisturbed. In such circumstances, both species, parent and child, can live side-by-side indefinitely. However, that isn’t the present case.
“Yes, you in the back.”
QUESTION: Dr. Grossington, given Darwin’s theory of evolution, how can you account for this, ah, Australpithcoos boyse surviving unchanged for a million years? Aren’t all species supposed to be slowly evolving all the time?
DR. GROSSINGTON: I’d suggest you work on your pronunciation, young man. (Laughter.) You’ve hit another misconception square on the head. There is a growing body of evidence that most species remain largely unchanged over long periods of time, so long as environments remain stable. They have no reason to change. But when, for whatever reason, the environment shifts, there is a greater chance for a mutation to be better adapted to the change. Many scientists—including myself—now believe that most evolution occurs in short bursts during these periods of environmental upheaval. For the record, the idea is called punctuated equilibrium. There is a series of interesting correlations between the dates of major shifts in the environment and the key speciations that eventually resulted in human beings.
QUESTION: Do you mean to say that these creatures are exactly like animals that lived a million years ago?
DR. GROSSINGTON: No, no more than you are exactly like the other people in this room. Human beings are widely variable, as we all know, coming in all shapes, sizes, and colors—but we are all one species. There are some differences between Ambrose and the remains we’ve seen from a million years ago, but they are fairly minor ones, not enough to warrant the naming of a new species. In fact, I would go so far as to say this discovery will improve the standing of Australopithecus boisei as an independent species. The most notable change is that the creatures we found would appear to be a bit larger than the million-year-old boisei remains we have seen heretofore. Ambrose probably stood about 172 centimeters tall—say, five foot seven or eight—several inches taller than his ancestors. He is also somewhat more lightly built, as best we can tell.
QUESTION: I understand the meaning of most of the other species names in hominid evolution, but what does boisei mean?
DR. GROSSINGTON: It means that the species was discovered and named by Louis Leakey, who received research money from a gentleman named Charles Boise. (Laughter). Yes, in the third row.
QUESTION: Dr. Grossington, if these animals did not evolve into humans, why is this discovery so important?
DR. GROSSINGTON: When most people sit down to ask what it is about human beings that makes us different, what it is that lets us build buildings and write books and create a civilization, they come up with a very short list of things that distinguish us from other species. Our hands, our upright posture—and our brain. The average size human brain is about 1,500 cubic centimeters, though it ranges between 1,000 and 1,800 cc’s—with no correlation between brain size and intelligence of a healthy individual, I might add. Now the average chimp brain is about 380 cc’s, and the earliest generally accepted fossil member of our own genus Homo, a skull called KNM-ER-1470 had a 775 cc brain. Ambrose here had a 560 cubic centimeter brain. There are other issues of brain function, of course—his brain was different from ours, not just smaller—but in a very real way, Ambrose was teetering just on the edge of the human range, a range his kind never crossed in the millions of years since his line divided from ours. They did just fine with a smaller brain. It’s fascinating to wonder what life was like in that sort of twilight world, in between animal and human. We may be able to learn a lot about ourselves by looking at someone so similar, and yet so different.
QUESTION: I don’t know any better way to ask this, but what were the australopithecines like? How smart were they? Could they use tools? Could they talk? Did they walk on two feet or four?
DR. GROSSINGTON: Taking those in order—we don’t know, we don’t know, we don’t know, and on two feet, just as well as you can. Chimps are smart enough to use tools, which suggests that the australopithecines were capable of it—but we can’t prove it. There is some evidence that the structures in our mouth and throat
that make speech possible did not develop until very late in the game, so my guess would be that they could not talk in the way we do. Certainly they must have made cries and calls of one sort or another—every animal does.
QUESTION: If they could speak, Doctor, and there was one here to ask, what would be the first question you’d put to an australopithecine?
DR. GROSSINGTON: I’d ask the same question my entire science has been asking since it was founded: What is a human being? That is the central question of anthropology, and in a way, the central question of all religion and philosophy as well. What is it that makes us what we are? What is it that makes a man? Over and over again, we have asked that question—but always of ourselves. We have given ourselves some fascinating answers, but I’d be most interested to know what someone else thinks. What perspective would another kind of mind have? Yes, over there in the brown dress.
QUESTION: Dr. Grossington, couldn’t a case be made that this discovery actually puts the lie to the whole theory of evolution? Wouldn’t Creation Science better explain the appearance of a species in what evolution theory says is the wrong place at the wrong time?
DR. GROSSINGTON: I see a Creationist got in. Normally, madam, I am polite about such things, tolerant of your point of view—inaccurate, misleading, self-serving, self-contradictory, and anti-thought though it might be. But not here, not today. This is my house, and my work, my career, and you are here at my invitation, and I will not stand here and let you call my whole life’s effort a lie. What we have found in no way contradicts a single particle of the fact of evolution. That life does evolve, no scientist with a shred of integrity or objectivity could deny. How it works, what the processes are that cause that evolution—that is what is still under legitimate debate. I might add that this discovery doesn’t affect that debate either. It neither proves nor disproves anything, but is simply a dramatic event that nonetheless fits quite comfortably inside evolution as we understand it. So go peddle it somewhere else.
Orphan of Creation Page 25
