The Lost Forest
Page 56
Chapter 55
AN OASIS
Fint, an oasis accessed by a trail across a vast undulating reg, was a village that lived as it had lived for centuries, in almost complete autarchy, the oasis provided onions, carrots, beans, wheat, barley, aubergines, tomatoes and of course dates. There were chickens, goats, sheep, camels and donkies. Only recently a water pump and tower had been installed and a diesel generator to supply the basic needs of the village in electricity. There were no shops, roads or other services.
Abdel told them that in Berber, Fint meant ‘hidden village’ and hidden it was. After crossing an almost endless reg they had suddenly dropped into a valley, invisible until the last moment, then from nowhere and to the surprise of their senses, dulled by the unchanging desert, a scene of surprising contrast burst open, displaying a fresh green splash across the landscape, a almost dry oued and a dense oasis that lined its banks.
The old sheik, the head of the small village, was standing there to greet them in front of the first house; he had been alerted by a signal from a young boy who had obviously spent the afternoon watching into the distance for the telltale plume of dust thrown up by the small convoy.
The sheik guided them to his house, past a small group of women washing clothes in the river, then and past small gardens where seeds were planted ready for repicking as soon as the shoots were viable.
They arrived at a largish house in the centre of the village, it was built of mud bricks with its roof constructed of thick palm tree planks and fronds, the sheik indicated that it was to be their quarters during their stay in his village.
They were then invited for refreshments in the tradition of Berber hospitality, the sheik personally preparing the tea ceremony, pouring the tea backwards and forwards from the teapot into the glasses until he judged the mix was right as he generously sweetened it with thick lumps broken from a large loaf of raw sugar. Gallettes of bread hot from the pan were placed on a small copper table with saucers of olive oil spiced by herbs, the sheik showed them how to deftly break off pieces of bread between his forefingers and thumb then dipping them into the olive oil.
They installed themselves in the small bed rooms off the main area of the house; they were furnished with simple camp beds and a basin of water for basic ablutions. The carried in their baggage, organising themselves in the house that was to be their home for the following few days.
After sunset they were joined for dinner by the sheik, served by his women folk who had prepared a copious meal of couscous and vegetables, a lamb tagine with a desert of dried apricots and dates.
‘The problem is that detailed maps of Morocco are somewhat confusing, they patchy and incomplete and available scales vary according to location.’
‘We’re using information supplied by the Ministry of Energy and Mines of Morocco who had carried out an earlier geophysical survey of the Anti- and High-Atlas Mountains from the air.’
‘This formation is called the Chenini Formation.’
‘It says here that the beast was described by a couple named Deperet and Savorin in 1927. It lived during, the Cretaceous periods, Aptian, Albian and Cenomanian. It was christened with the unwieldy name Carcharodontosaurus Saharicus.’
‘You’re wrong there!’
‘How come?’
‘How could it be christened, they’re Muslims here.’
‘Don’t be stupid. To be precise it’s classified as Saurischia Theropoda Tetanurae Carnosauria Carcharodontosaurida, a carnivore, thirteen and a half metres long and weighing about eight tonnes, actually it was an ancestor of Tyrannosaurus Rex.’
‘By the way, it’s quite risky near the frontiers with Algeria and especially south of here in the Western Sahara.’
‘You mean it’s mined?’
‘Yes, the Royal Moroccan Army has carried out mine clearance in Western Sahara after the Polisario independence movement signed agreements with Morocco committing both parties to cooperate by exchanging information, marking, and the destruction of landmines.
‘Quite a large number of sites have been cleared and thousands of mines destroyed, supposedly the areas marked are unpopulated like here,’ he said slowly looking around.
‘My God isn’t that dangerous?’
‘Sure, the local people know and if people like us need to travel or work in these areas, they’re informed about the possible presence of landmines and take the necessary precautions.’
‘Do any people ever get hurt?’
‘Absolutely, recently the Moroccan authorities registered fifty-one victims of anti-vehicle mines and explosions in the Western Sahara. Seven people were killed, another nineteen were severely injured as well as twenty-five were slightly injured.’
‘Christ!’
‘I don’t want to worry you but don’t wander off by yourself, as a warning a Portuguese support car driver in the Paris-Dakar lost a foot when he drove over an anti-vehicle mine in Mauritania near the border with Western Sahara.’
The Institute Scientifique was founded in 1920, it was then called the Institute Cherifien. Its activities were basically fundamental research, but mostly in Natural science with the objective of completing the inventory of the natural resources in our country.
With all the fossil evidence found in East Africa, it seemed evident that our ancestors evolved there and then spread to other parts of the continent. The rule in palaeoanthropology seemed to be that each new fossil find modifies the theory and in 1996 the rule proved once again to be true. In Koro Toro in Chad, more than 2,500 kilometres away, one of the the supposed cradles of humanity, the fossil remains of a three and a half million years old Australopithecus were discovered. The Frenchman Michel Brunet who made the discovery naturally placed them in a new species: Australopithecus bahrelghazali though they great resembled Australopithecus Afarensis.
‘Is there any evidence of such tools here in Morocco?’
‘Not for the moment, we don’t have a specialist. It’s a problem, if you look at other sites such as Olduvai the tools consist mostly of pieces of lava and quartz, which were brought to the site from as they didn’t exist naturally nearby. Here the rock is mostly limestone and you can’t make tools from that!’
‘So what did they use?’
‘Mostly crude rounded pebble tools called choppers, but there were more sophisticated tools for example engraving-gouging tools, quadrilateral chisels, large and small scrapers, and other special purpose tools.’
‘In limestone?’
‘No, limestone is soft and friable, you need lavas and
quartz to make solid cutting tools in this region.’
‘It is commonly accepted that when Java and Peking men were around there was what we call a pebble-tool culture.’
‘Lundy said there’s evidence of that in France.’
‘Yes, there’s a site in France on the Riviera which has been dated at about one million years where evidence of pebble culture was found.’
‘What about fire? Did they have fire?’
‘Not on the Riviera site, but other sites in Europe are dated at about 750,000 BC also in the Mediterranean region, not far from Marseilles.’
‘There seems to be a lot of remains in France.’
‘You’re right there are hearths of charcoal and ash caves and tools from between 750,000 and one million years ago.’
“What about here?’
“No, not up to now, but the earliest evidence of the human use of fire is about 500,000 BC at Zhoukoudian near Beijing.”
‘There is a big difference between Borneo and more northern regions such as China and Europe, above all the climate. On the equator there were no seasons, so in a certain manner of speaking life was easier. Which probably explains why there was little evolutionary pressure, the region was also isolated during long periods when the sea level were higher like today.
‘Normally in caves or shelters there are tools and food residues you know bones of deer, boar, rhinoceros, small mammals, marine shells, fish
and the like, and perhaps the remains of hearths. Like in Tunisia at a place called El Guetter where there are mounds constructed by Mousterian at an artesian spring.’