The Lost Forest

by John Francis Kinsella

  Chapter 12

  RETURN TO BATANG AI

  Ennis called Aris Adhianto in Jakarta informing him of his imminent arrival in Singapore and asking for his help urgently on a matter that he could not discuss over the phone. Aris accepted without question, he was an Indonesian, to be precise an ethnic Chinese, a member of a community whose ingrained concept of mutual assistance had helped them to survive the waves of violence and incrimination that swept over them each time their country was confronted with a crisis.

  Ennis briefly told him that he needed equipment for precision mapping by GPS techniques for an urgent problem that had arisen in Sarawak. Aris asked no further questions and proposed meeting him in Singapore at the Mandarin Hotel on Orchard Road, where they could discuss the details before Ennis left for Kuching.

  Aris booked two rooms at the Mandarin, one for the Professor and the other for Carol. Ennis would stay in the immense suite that Aris regularly used at the hotel. A rich industrialist, Aris lavishly spent his money on creature comforts, enjoying service and good food. He had worked hard over many difficult years to build his business empire, twenty hour days were not unusual; building relations, creating bonds with businessmen, government officials, politicians, no person was too small to ignore. He distributed envelopes for services rendered, paid for children’s schooling, holidays for key contacts, medical care and the many other things necessary to facilitate the growth of his business empire in Indonesia.

  What Aris valued most after his business was a collection of rare Chinese ceramics and Asian art, a sign not only of success - that was evident - but a demonstration of his culture, which for like for many self made men had been acquired later in life when he could relax and enjoy the fruits of his long years of hard work. He had become a well know art collector but John Ennis had known him when they were both younger. Ennis had introduced him to the esoteric world of antique Chinese ceramics that had abounded at that time and would later be considered as unbelievable inexpensive prices. Together they had travelled together to distant villages buying heirlooms from tribes’ people in Borneo and Sumatra. Their friendship was founded not only on their common passion for art but also a deep bond of mutual understanding; the serious side of work was mostly avoided, although it was often present when Aris invited him with overseas business friends and acquaintances to his long dinners and carousing in the restaurants and nightclubs of Asia. Managing his business empire left him with little time that could be left exclusively to pleasure.

  ‘So what is all the excitement,’ said Aris with one of his inscrutable grins, blinking through his gold rimed glasses as he did when presented with an unusual situation.

  Lundy and his daughter had checked in and followed the hotel’s executive hostess to their rooms, leaving Ennis alone with Aris in the hotel lobby. The two men, accompanied by the VIP guest manager, took the express lift to the suite on the twenty eighth floor.

  ‘Well it’s something quiet extraordinary and very confidently,’ said Ennis in a low voice and a discrete nod in the direction of the manager who stood politely to one side.

  In the suite they waited whilst the manager went about his task, an act of seeing that all was well, as Aris blinked and smiled patiently, Ennis looking out at the view over the city through the panoramic windows. They settled themselves into the plush armchairs in the main reception room of the suite, where a television was on and Amien Rais, the leader of the Muhammadiyah group with almost thirty million followers, compared Indonesia to the ocean liner Titanic, sinking under the weight of the rupiah turmoil and a debt crisis, Rais said Indonesia’s elite was ‘still drinking, playing cards and gambling while the ship goes down.’

  The anchor man announced that four student protesters had been shot dead at Jakarta’s prestigious Trisakti University. In the last twenty-four hours the killings by security forces had sparked savage riots and an anti-Chinese pogrom that was turning Jakarta into what resembled a war zone.

  Ennis turned his attention away from the TV and spoke to Aris, ‘Have you heard of Java man?’

  Aris looked blank for a moment.

  ‘You know the fossils.’

  ‘Oh! You mean the fossils – at Solo?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course, we went there together once, you remember?’

  ‘Yeah, well a similar skull has been found in Sarawak.’

  ‘Found by who?’ Aris said with a vague though polite interest.

  ‘Me!’

  Aris sat up and looked at him as if he was pulling his leg.

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘Okay, it’s a fossil then, what about it?’

  ‘It’s an incredible discovery,’ Ennis told him explaining briefly the significance to the scientific world of such a discovery and the impact it would have on the news media.

  ‘The most puzzling point is that it does not appear to be a fossil. That’s why Professor Lundy is here, he’s one of the world’s leading paleoanthropolgist.’

  ‘Oh! I thought he was from the ceramics museum, what’s it called?’ Aris tittered.

  ‘No, I’m serious,’ said Ennis ignoring his question.

  ‘Sorry, start from the beginning, tell me your story.’

  Ennis described the whole sequence of events to him and the problems as they had appeared. He told him it was necessary to collect more evidence to determine the exact nature of the creature. Lundy would be the laughing stock of the scientific world if it turned out to be some kind of rare great ape, or some other unknown animal.

  ‘I see, the Professor wouldn’t be here if it was something ordinary,’ Aris conceded.

  ‘Right!’

  ‘Okay, so how can I help?’

  ‘Well we need GPS equipment to pinpoint the exact location on the map.’

  ‘That’s done, everything is ready.’

  ‘Good, we also need a speleologist, to help us explore and map the cave.’

  ‘Okay, that’ll take a couple days but I can arrange that. The only thing is how we can do it and remain discrete?’

  ‘We’ll have to think about that.’

  ‘You know if what you say is true, you will have to inform the authorities sooner or later. I can help you in Indonesia but you know the Malaysians are very touchy.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right. But first we have to get some facts straight before we go talking to authorities or we’ll be shut out in the blink of an eye. Once the politicians get involved it could take years’

  ‘Sure, you could even create a diplomatic crisis and get thrown out of the country – or into jail.’

  ‘Let’s discuss it with Lundy, I suggest we have dinner in the suite…what do you think?’ Ennis said nodding to the dinning room through a door behind, there was a table that could seat at least ten people.

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll call Lundy.’

  ‘She’s quite nice,’ said Aris with a broad grin, ‘looks innocent.’

  Ennis gave him a look as if to say be serious.

  ‘Oh, one other thing, do you mind if I come with you…I mean to Sarawak?’

  ‘Of course, you can help us with the translations.’

  ‘Good I’ll call our agent in Kuching to lay on the transport. I’ll tell him you’re studying the Ibans,’ he laughed.

  An excellent Chinese dinner was served in the suite with an Australian Chablis and a Cabernet chosen by Aris from the wine list. He knew his wines though he was not a connoisseur, simply partaking in a modest glass of each, though encouraging the others to help themselves and enjoy the wine.

  At first Lundy appeared a little jet lagged, even first class was not enough to overcome the fatigue of the long flight, though it had guaranteed fatigue in comfort. At first he was a little quiet but after a glass or two of wine he perked up and launched into an enthusiastic summary of the history of Homo erectus and Java Man before coming back to the Sarawak Man as he had dubbed him.

  ‘The problem is that there is so much that we do
n’t know, every new find reminds us of that. At this point our Mystery Man is yet another problem because we are not even sure who or what he is, we need to examine the cave and material in which the skull cap was buried, there are probably more bones and clues waiting to be discovered.’

  ‘Tell me a little about your work professor, paleo…sorry, normally it’s not in my line of business’, Aris said making a funny kind of sniffing noise, which may have been an embarrassed giggle.

  ‘What is Palaeoanthropology?’ he said taking on a professorial air. ‘It’s the science of studying our ancestors, to be precise prehistoric ancestors.’

  ‘And archaeology?’

  ‘Paleoarchaeology, that’s the science that studies the artefacts made by prehistoric man,’ he paused looking at Aris for a reaction. ‘These artefacts are not the same as those we know in historic times, like in Egypt where there are monuments, you know temples like Borobudur or pyramids,’ he smiled a little condescendingly as Aris looked at him imperturbable, ‘or pottery, like your ceramics.’

  ‘I see,’ said Aris getting a reference point with the mention of Borobudur and ceramics. ‘By the way I remember now our Indonesian specialist in prehistoric man is Professor Teuku Murtopo, I know him, not too well, I met him a couple of times at Archaeological Association meetings, he’s not a specialist in ceramics.’

  ‘Professor Murtopo is no lightweight in physical anthropology,” said Lundy. “He’s getting on now, a few years older then me, seventy-five, I think. He’s the Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Chief Palaeontologist at Gadjah Mada University.’

  ‘The best university in Indonesia,’ said Aris proudly as he had studied business there many years before. ‘If I remember rightly the Professor studied in the USA.’

  ‘This is highly confidential and we shouldn’t talk to anyone for the moment.’ Ennis quickly interjected.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Lundy then going back to his subject. ‘Our ancient prehistoric ancestors left quite a lot of things behind them, if you know where and how to look for them, evidence that requires a serious scientific approach,’ continued Lundy.

  ‘You mean stone axes for example?’

  ‘Ah, I see you have been studying the question.’

  ‘Not exactly, but I’ve been many times to Irian Jaya, where there are many tribes that still live in the Stone Age.’

  ‘Of course, but as you’ve probably seen most of these tools are from wood and other vegetable or animal materials, which is a problem for us in these hot humid climates as they perish very quickly or are lost in the forest. On the other hand the hard non-organic objects have survived the test of time such as those made of stone. It’s very rare that wooden tools survive, though there are very unusual cases of such objects coming down to us, in Germany for example a couple of throwing spears turned up, in a mine and were dated to being around 400,000 years old!’

  ‘That’s pretty old, everything found in Java has been in stone up to now.’

  ‘Yes, what’s important about stone tools is their so called ‘modes’.

  ‘Modes!’

  ‘Yes, palaeoarchaeologists have classified stone tools into five modes, each of which is comprised of set of tools in an industry that corresponded with a specific level of technological and cultural development, and in a given time period, on a given site. This enables us to determine how industrial technology migrated from its point of origin to another.’

  ‘That’s a little complicated.’

  ‘Never mind, what’s interesting is that these modes show how early human and even relatively recent populations migrated across the planet. Technology advanced very very slowly, if we look at Pebble Culture for example…’

  ‘Pebble culture?’

  ‘Yes, this the most basic of the modes, when tools were literally pebbles or pebbles deliberately broken by very early man to be used as rudimentary tools, it remained virtually unchanged for a million years as did bifacial tools, another mode, which however progressed in style and according to some specialists was even a primitive art form.’

  ‘What about Sarawak then?’

  ‘When we examine your site, John, there’s a good chance there won’t be any tools! You may ask why? There’s several explanations, the first and most obvious is that the skull was found in a place that was not the camp of its owner, that is to say his usual dwelling place. Like all humans and their early ancestors Homo erectus was a social animal, which means they lived in family groups. Our specimen was probably out foraging or had had an accident or had died and his body had been abandoned by his group, there are endless possibilities.’

  ‘So there must be more of them?’

  ‘Without doubt.’

  ‘Why haven’t we found any of their remains?’

  ‘Why haven’t we found any other specimens, for the simple reason we haven’t looked! Nobody had even suspected that such men existed in Borneo! Another problem we shall face is the tendency to brush off such discoveries as happened in the past, when certain scientists and specialists were quick to say that strange newly discovered bones belonged to some poor deformed individual - perhaps it is the case - I don’t know. What I do know is that first this skull cap is almost a perfect twin of Trinnil Man in Java and secondly it neither belongs genetically speaking to Homo sapiens or a known ape…that is those we know at present. It does of course have similarities, just as we have similarities, with the great apes.’

  ‘So Professor we are cousins to the orang-utans?’

  ‘Yes, in a manner of speaking you could say we are very distant cousins. However, we are much closer to the African great apes than to their Asian cousin. And we should not forget that we share 99% of our genes with certain of the great apes.’

  ‘So this could be an ape or some kind of a Bigfoot?’

  ‘Perhaps, I doubt it though, in any case it’s not one that we have ever encountered up to this point in time. You should know that there’s a wealth of stories about strange manlike creatures in the forests.’

  ‘Bigfoot!’ laughed Ennis.

  ‘Well, strange manlike creatures have been regularly reported from this region, since 1855 by travellers and adventurers.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Me? Well it’s necessary to have an open mind, to a certain degree that is. For example there’s the Orang Pendek which has been described as a powerful bipedal ape-like creature which been seen in Sumatra recently by a photographer called Debbie Martyr.’

  ‘So there’s a photo?’

  ‘I’m not sure, from what I’ve read it’s supposed to be something like an orang-utan. Similar stories abound in the area where we are heading to the mountains between Sarawak and Kalimantan, it has even been observed to break river snails using a rock to eat them.’

  ‘So it’s an intelligent ape.’

  ‘In any case it’s supposed to be very fast on its feet.’

  ‘The significant point is not whether such a creature is linked to Homo erectus, who is very very similar to ourselves, but that unknown animals have remained undetected from men for a very long time, surviving in the deep forest. So why is it unreasonable to think that Homo erectus, a very intelligent early human, had not survived until historic times?’ said Lundy.

  ‘The survival of different species in isolated habitats is easily demonstrated,’ Carol added, ‘if for example you take orang-utans, there are two types, one in Borneo and the other in Sumatra. These are so similar in appearance and behaviour that only experts can tell them apart. But their DNA variation shows that these types diverged nearly three million years ago.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The orang-utan races are similar physically and behaviourally because the rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo are so alike that they select for the same traits. Thus natural selection is stabilizing and rejecting deviations.’

  ‘I suppose it’s because we have become used to the idea that prehistoric men lived tens or hundreds of thousand years ago,’ said Ennis. ‘The
re’s plenty of legends on the islands here, reports of little hairy people seen on the Sunda Islands regularly until Dutch settlers arrived. They could have been a form of archaic human, Homo erectus.’

  ‘They could have survived for much longer until recent times.’”

  ‘Yes, they could have done, as Aris said, they could have still been living until the Dutch arrived.’

  ‘In some places the story goes that villagers left gourds with food for them to eat, they were said to be guests from hell and they’d eat everything, even the gourds.’

  ‘Were they cannibals?’

  ‘Why not, perhaps it was they who were eaten by modern humans,’ said Carol.

  ‘So maybe we’ll find bones from a cannibal feast.’

  ‘Well let’s keep to the bones of our man for the moment.’

  ‘How can we find out then?’

  ‘As I said the first thing we should look for are other bones, a lower jaw bone, or some facial bones even a tibia or a femur, that would be wonderful. We should also look for animal bones.’

  ‘Animal bones? Why?’ asked Aris.

  ‘This would enable us to identify the kind of environment our friend’s lived in and his habits. Maybe there are some stones, pebbles, that is to say tools.’

  ‘What about his age Professor.’

  ‘I take that to mean the age of the fossil? How long ago he died?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s the mystery, if it was an ordinary, straight forward, fossil, like those found in Java we could announce another Java Man and then try to date it with more precision. But unfortunately there is something we don’t understand, a mystery. That means we have to look very carefully at the conditions in the cave, perhaps there is something that we have never encountered before, though personally I would be surprised.’

  Aris pushed him to go further and announce his ideas.

  ‘Let me see, if we go by process of elimination we could possibly arrive at some kind of hypothesis. It is not a man, it is not an ape or monkey, it is not a fossil. The radiocarbon dating tests show it is only a couple or more thousand years old….’

  There was a silence, nobody dared to speak, the Professor took advantage of the pause to take a piece of crispy pork with his chopsticks from the back of a roast suckling pig. He crunched it noisily and smacked his lips.

  ‘Delicious Monsieur Aris.’

  He let them come to their own conclusion.

  ‘Then he was alive a couple of thousand years ago?’ Aris asked.

  ‘Who knows, I certainly don’t,’ said the Professor.

  ‘But it looks like that?’ said Ennis.

  The Professor looked at his daughter, ‘What do you think my dear?’

  ‘You’re the expert Papa,’ Carol replied ducking the question.

  ‘So I am. But it looks like it doesn’t it?’

  Aris became very serious: ‘If you’re right Professor then I imagine the news would have a huge effect on the scientific world.’

  ‘Yes! An earthquake of great proportions.’

  ‘And create a diplomatic crisis between Malaysia and Indonesia not to speak of France!’