The Lost Forest

by John Francis Kinsella

  Chapter 28

  THE DIG

  ‘Remember John we’re not looking at a very ancient site, it’s equivalent to looking at a late Neolithic or early Gallo Roman site. It also means exploring all the surrounding caves as well.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We’re tracking a recently extinct creature and not a million year old fossil.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What the site could eventually show us is how erectus lived, if he had evolved culturally and technologically.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘We also have to find his friends.’

  ‘Friends!’

  ‘Well let me explain, it’s like this. There was not just one of them; there were more, certainly many more, that is relatively speaking.’

  ‘Okay, you mean his family!’

  ‘Of course, our friend did not live alone, at least his parents didn’t,’ he said with a small laugh.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Let me enlarge on that,’ he said taking on his professorial tone, ‘As I told you populations of species, whatever kind of species they belong to, don’t exist in single numbers, unless they are the very last surviving member, immediately before them were their parents and grandparents, great grandparents and so on as long as the species existed. Look at orang-utans they are the very proof that small populations of large anthropoids could survive in Borneo, in the same way the total population of early humans may have always been relatively small but not smaller than is necessary for a population to be viable, that is to reproduce itself. Any self respecting anthropologist knows that!’

  Ennis scratched his head trying to extract a meaning.

  ‘Look at it this way, when news is out our self respecting anthropologists will come to the same conclusion as we have just done.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They’ll be on a plane and here before you can say Borneo looking for a skull like yours!’

  ‘It’ll take years to explore all the caves in and around the site and investigate their strategraphic levels, excavating the deposits centimetre by centimetre. Our only hope is to find some rapid indications in caves where we find evidence that the deposits are intact, you know, neither carried there or disturbed by water, the accumulation of material is very slow, built up over a very long period of time.’

  ‘Did other people like Dubois look in caves?’

  ‘Dubois started exploring caves when he was in Sumatra but without luck. It was only when he went to Java that he noticed fossils in river banks where the land was flat. As you know the terrain is very different in Java compared to Borneo, over there volcanic mountains rise very steeply from the plains and any caves would be highly unstable and uninhabitable. The action of the water constantly eroded the river banks and during the dry season when the level was low, sediments of sandstone and volcanic tuff lying under the rice fields were exposed to fossil hunters. The river bends were particularly interesting where gravel and debris accumulated and numerous fossils were carried there by the stream.’

  Most of the specialists assembled by Pierre Ros had arrived on the site, and the team counted physical anthropologists, paleoanthropologists, ethnoarchaeologists, archaeologists, specialists in environmental sciences and many other experts in science, tropical forests, management and logistics.

  Amongst the many techniques employed by the different team members were strategraphic excavation and sediment analysis, the study of lithics, organic remains, radiometric dating methods, archaeozoology, archaeobotany, human osteology and the study of ancient diet and pollen, both within and outside the cave, for vegetation history.

  The trek to and from the camp through the rainforest with its unbearable humidity was the hardest task of the daily routine. Much of the valuable and fragile equipment had to be carried to the cave from the riverside camp every day, then carried back in the evening, together with bags full of samples needed for analysis from the flotation and wet sieving stations. Along the path through the hostile but extraordinarily beautiful rainforest they were constantly worried by an incredible variety of winged and other insects amongst which were huge poisonous black millipedes.

  In spite of the numerous small difficulties the atmosphere in the camp was of enthusiastic cooperation. The dig had settled into a daily routine typical of scientific expeditions when André Etxeberri, an eminent but controversial French anthropologist, arrived in the camp. It was not only his sudden and unannounced appearance but his manner, he had been used to being treated as a star in TV shows and documentaries and expected the other members of the to treat him so. Who exactly had invited him was not clear. Ennis suspected it was the Dominique de Pazowski, the French Ambassador in Jakarta, who distinctly resented the presence of an Anglo-Saxon in what he considered a French expedition.

  Etxeberri had spent most of his life working in parched deserts and though he had made very significant discoveries of man’s ancestors in Africa, where his team discovered a six million year old skull, perhaps the earliest hominid fossil ever found, that some thought could be a direct ancestor of modern humans. However, Etxeberri knew little of the working conditions in an equatorial forest and he spent a considerable time pontifying and recalling his own work to the team members. What was however more disturbing was his insistence in exploring the tunnels of the cave, it was not that they were afraid he would get lost but rather he would cross the border into the Sarawak.

  Professor Nordin had discreetly informed Ennis that Rangers had been posted on their side, and though they had no orders to interfere they would deal strictly with any persons making an unauthorised entry into Malaysia, which would be embarrassing for Indonesia and the French Ambassador.

  They could not avoid the risk of crossing the border, sticking strictly to work on the Indonesian side. The GPS readings had been clear enough, though it could be contested as the border was undefined, a dozen metres to one side or the other in the jungle covered hills would have, under normal circumstances, been of little consequence, the border survey markers were far and few between. The maps were out of date and satellites photos did not come marked with borders.

  Since they had already decided, following the Singapore airport incident, the idea of working with the Malaysians would be fraught with complications, as their government would never accept a foreign team having a key role in the investigations of what could be seen as a sensational historical discovery, the ownership of which could be disputed by their Indonesian neighbours, in the throes of a deep political crisis.

  When Aris and the governor’s representative from Pontianak examined the satellite maps of the border area between Sarawak and West Kalimantan, Ennis had imagined that they would be familiar with the region but he quickly discovered that their knowledge was very scant. The maps showed almost nothing but rivers, lakes and mountains and sparsely spaced dots that indicated longhouses. They had marked the GPS reading of the discovery site with a cross, on the Sarawak side it was just two hundred kilometres as the crow flies from the capital Kuching, and not that much less from Sibu, the second or third town of the state, in fact the only other large town was Bintulu four hundred kilometres to the north. The State of Sarawak was an almost empty mountainous jungle covered land the size of England and its population less that two million.

  To the south was West Kalimantan, almost one hundred and fifty thousand square kilometres and a population of four million, the vast majority of whom lived on the coastal region adjacent to Pontianak. The other half of the province in the Upper Kapuas basin was the home to barely ten percent of the total population; one person per square kilometre compared thirty in western half of the province and one thousand in Java. The Upper Kapuas outside of the small towns and villages was in practical terms empty.

  The nearest towns of relative importance to the discovery site were Sintang or Putissibau, towns with populations of 20,000 and 10,000 respectively.

  It gradually became evident that the discovery cave had no signific
ant sequence of human occupation and it would be necessary to extend the exploration to the surrounding area. It was logical since the presence of Homo erectus had spanned a great period of time between some hundreds of thousands of years ago until historic times, therefore a possibility existed that evidence of the contempories of borneensis could be found in the surrounding hills.

  Like at Niah, any human presence in the caves would have been that of Stone Age hunter gatherers but until that moment the expedition had turned up no further evidence of a sequence of prehistoric occupation. The paradox was that the borneensis skull was considerably younger that the Deep Skull that Harrisson had uncovered.

  Etxeberri had started a rumour that the skull had been a plant and a wave of suspicion and discouragement had started to make its rounds. Pierre Ros voiced his discontent to Ennis and they were on the verge of confronting Etxeberri when in one of the adjoining caves, referenced C2, the archaeologists identified a complex stratigraphy of dark brown soils made up of numerous sediments.

  It was clear that the deposits in the cave corresponded to the Neolithic and Holocene period, the later commencing around 10,000 years ago, continuing to the present day.

  At the outset the work consisted of excavation in areas that had potential interest, preparing excavation sections, plotting and identifying the stratigraphy of the caves. The work was difficult and identifying the different sediments was hampered by the poor lighting. Under the supervision of senior archaeologists, assistants, archaeology students from Gadjah Mada University, worked slowly with trowels scraping at the surface of the deposits centimetre by centimetre and millimetre by millimetre, brushing carefully around any unusual hard objects, such as the tiny bones or teeth of small animals regurgitated by birds. At the same time some were at work preparing plans of the section whilst others with a laser camera mapped the entire structure of the cave

  Over time the floor of the cave had changed with collapsing walls and ceilings, flooding and slippage, complicating their analyse of the deposits. They were looking for bones, charcoal and tools. All items of interest were packed into plastic bags for more detailed inspection; the rest was put into buckets for sieving. Anything that looked like charcoal was given special attention to avoid accidental contamination that could influence the carbon dating.

  The work was carefully recorded with detailed descriptions of the deposits, the exact positions of any small find was plotted and samples of soil and sand taken. Near the surface the sedimentary layers were a deep brown colour, beneath that the layers changed colour, ranging from light-grey to dark yellow, and were mixed with ancient guano.

  The lack of results made Pierre Ros decided to accelerate things, and taking a calculated risk he instructed his men to make a deeper exploratory cut. Then, as they carefully cleared away the loose earth, several small stone flakes appeared, evidence of knapping by a Stone Age tool maker. A significant find, made even more important by the traces of charcoal surrounding the flakes.

  At a rough guess, based on the strategraphic level, they estimated the date at about 3,000 years BP. But the find was of great importance and Pierre Ros decreed that an absolute date was necessary so as to decide how to pursue the work and they agreed that samples of the charcoal be sent the next day with Professor Murtopo to Gadjah Mada University in Jakarta. They also decided that news of the discovery be keep secret to avoid leakage of information.

  It was not the only good news that evening Etxeberri peeved by what he perceived as a kind of jealousy towards him, the discoverer of fossils of great scientific value in Africa, announced his departure for Jakarta the next day.

  Once Etxeberri had left work settled back into a leisurely routine as they waited news from Jakarta. On the site a troop of monkeys had become regular spectators at the dig, watching attentively the work through the dense foliage of the forest that ran right up to the karst on the edge of the platform. As the team arrived each morning the monkeys treated them to loud hoots throwing threw fruit and twigs at them as they made their way to over the board walk to the cave.

  Work in Cave C4 was put on hold as the waited news from Jakarta and they turned their efforts to work in the next cave, C5. There they uncovered more signs of human inhabitation with stone artefacts and charcoal. Then an isolated unmineralised premolar was discovered. To Pierre Ros and all other palaeontologists teeth were the most important remains of any animal, whatever its species, “give me a tooth and I will describe the creature to you, what it looked like, how it lived and what it ate”, he told them.

  The tooth was unusually robust and the question was, did it belong to the skull Ennis had found, or did it belong to one of his contempories? Judging from the depth in the cave floor it was within the time frame that corresponded with the datings made in Paris. The atmosphere in the camp became electric as the news spread; they knew for certain that they their efforts would not be in vain, and one tooth could lead to others.

  They were now certain that Homo borneensis would not be surrounded by the kind of controversy that the Niah skull had known. At the time of Harrisson’s work, science had been less exact and in addition Harrisson was not a trained scientist, leading to doubts as to the exact position of the skull in the ground and the surrounding material that had been used to corroborate its dating.

  Pierre explained that sediments which show signs of human presence were often darker, composed of decayed organic matter mixed with the charcoal from the rests of their fires.

  A second diesel generator was brought up to the caves providing lighting for the other caves being explored by two of the team’s potholers.

  Collin Williams assisted in the interpretation of the strategraphic levels together with a specialist in geomorphology who deciphered the sequence and accumulation of material that formed the sediments, helping to understand when and in what manner the caves had been inhabited.

  The earth brought from the cave was dry sieved and bone, stones and organic material was sifted out, the remainder was carried to the wet sieving station on the edge of the worksite, where a stream of clear water diverted from the a small cascade off the cliff face was used to sift for smaller pieces of evidence.

  It was at the sieving station they discovered more of the tiny pieces of stone flakes confirming that stone artefacts had been made or rehoned. It clearly showed the presence of Palaeolithic technology in the cave or what palaeoarchaeologists call debitage.

  It was exciting because there had been little evidence of stone tools at Niah. Certain archaeologists had suggested that this had been due to the of use tools made from wood or perishable materials and the fact that such caves had only been used as brief shelters by hunters at night, during storms and in the rainy season.

  They sat drinking beer as darkness fell in the relative cool of the evening. Cigarette smoke mixed with the smoke that rose up from the anti-mosquito coils seemed to work for once as there were fewer mosquitoes than usual. They were beginning to feel the effect of two weeks in the jungle, looking a little worse for wear.

  It was a good team backed with solid experience, they understood the kinds of difficulties associated with excavating caves, the problems of access, safety hazards and lighting linked to confined working conditions. They took special care to avoid destroying evidence that could throw light on vital questions of dating in their search for minute clues to the distant past.

  It would have been rare to work on an undisturbed site in many other countries where caves had been frequented by men in modern times. Their search concerned very recent material in terms of human history and when they reached calcareous coatings under the upper levels they decided not to break through leaving that work for future excavations.

  Samples of the cave sediments and all other relevant materials were carefully packed for expedition to Jakarta for detailed laboratory analyses by specialists in sedimentology, archaeology, and biology. The material associated with the teeth and stone from the charcoal layer would be dated by Elect
ron Spin Resonance (ESR) dating and thermal ionization mass spectrometry at Gadjah Mada University in Jakarta and the CNRS facilities in France.

  Late the following morning Pierre Ros was called to an adjoining gallery where one of the assistants had uncovered what at first looked to be small flat stones. Taking a piece in his hand he turned it over examining it under the light of a small pocket torch.

  ‘It’s a shard. Probably an earthen ware jar.’

  ‘Impossible erectus didn’t have jars!’

  They passed the small fragments around.

  ‘The erectus known to anthropologists up until a few months ago did not have jars,” said Pierre, “but our friend here was much much younger. He was a contemporary of those who lived in the Niah caves and they had plenty of jars.’

  ‘You mean those people know each other?’

  ‘I would think so and if this is the case maybe there were exchanges.’

  ‘Is that possible, could they communicate?’

  ‘Don’t forget the adaptability, intelligence, and ability of erectus to use tools. Yes, he had the capacity to communicate and though he did not invent jars his neighbours certainly did.

  ‘He couldn’t have spent two million years without evolving, just think for a moment what other higher mammal did not evolve over such a period of time?’