The Last Neanderthal

by Claire Cameron

  Under her breath, so Runt couldn’t hear, Girl cursed those breasts and that belly. Her hips and ankles ached. She resented her own body and muttered at it.

  Wildcat’s coat was thick from all the fish he had eaten and he was very proud of it. He spent countless hours grooming and licking it to be just right. When Girl and Runt passed by the rock where he sat, he looked up at them lazily. Girl knew from his glance that he was full of himself, and, yes, he would join them, even though he was so beautiful that he would be welcomed anywhere.

  When they started up the slope, Runt headed in the direction they had come, toward the land of the family. But Girl clicked her tongue, moved ahead of him, and turned to wade across the shallows toward the land of Big Girl’s new family. She hadn’t told him a story about what they would do, or drawn out the plan in the sand, or used ocher to make marks on a flat rock. She knew he would follow where she led. A body needed to be part of a family. And so they would go. They would cross the water where the river was wide and shallow and then follow the trail past where the middle fork climbed into the valley. They would go up to the tree where she had seen the body. Once there, she knew she could pick up the scent of the trail.

  As Girl walked, she could hear Runt’s breath in steady puffs behind her. He followed without question. Soon enough he started chattering, as was his way. He made sounds in his throat, including clicks and chirps, and they reminded her somewhat of Wildcat. He stopped once or twice to point at a flower or a bug he saw on a leaf. She paid little attention because it was time for moving, not for searching for bugs to eat. She glanced around at one point but couldn’t see Wildcat. He liked to keep in the cover of the trees as he walked, but she knew he could smell them. To keep their bodies moving forward, she chanted in time to her steps, “Cu-cu-cling, cu-cu-cling, cu-cu-cling.” My head is a bison.

  Girl kept a good pace. After a hard climb up and one stop for Runt to pee, they gained the ledge where she had seen the body on the perch. Girl settled Runt and gave him something to eat. Wildcat curled up beside him and purred. Girl knew that the cat did this in hopes of scraps, but Runt took it as a gesture of affection. He spent some time running his hand along the cat’s back and ended the pat with a piece of fish. This went to show why affection and scraps were one and the same to the cat. Runt lifted his left leg and let out a fart that was longer than any he’d had before. Delighted, he threw his head back and poked Wildcat to make sure he’d heard. The cat wrinkled his nose and looked unimpressed but didn’t get up or walk away. It was very typical of their exchanges. The cat thought the boy was strange and the boy thought the cat was unnecessarily serious, but each tolerated the other’s peculiarities.

  From the lookout, Girl glanced down at the broad plain of the meeting place, where the water spread like fingers through the knots of rocks. The pool where she had stood when she saw the body was clearly visible. She sidled up to the tree where the body had been and put her nose up to the spot where it had placed its palm. The fresh scent was there, though fading. Her eyes had not been playing tricks. Excitedly, she took it in.

  Girl’s excitement soon turned to confusion. What was it? Though it was fading, the sour scent in the tree was that of a scavenger. They would eat anything and everything they could find. Their breath was a swampy mix of fear and nerves that she associated with a lack of control over the land. She caught some of what this body had consumed, the dry and dusty whiff of a mushroom from land not familiar to her. Maybe the body had crunched on beetles too. This made slightly more sense. Beetles could make the belly feel satisfied and full when not enough meat was available. There was something else too—a hint of marrow? The smells reminded her of hyenas in a way.

  The creature’s smells were different than the families’, and that could mean as many things as there were pricks of light in the sky. The possibilities yawned open around her. Last year at the fish run, Big Girl had shown a shadow story. She made the shape of a body and indicated that it smelled bad, like one that was not of the family. It walked upright and her sister gave it fangs in the shadow to show the terror it held. A deep fear, like vertigo, sank into Girl’s neck and pushed down her spine. The land around her felt too large and too empty.

  Girl had to put her hand out and touch the tree to steady her shaking limbs. She knew she had to steady her thoughts and pull them in. To gain control, she fixed her attention in a way that her people had done for eons. She looked at a piece of bark on the tree and observed that it was the same as it had been before. She saw a blade of grass near the trunk. Maybe it had been dormant over the winter, but it had grown again. She focused on what was the same.

  That had the settling effect that it always had on the family. Girl’s thoughts narrowed and she focused on what she knew. She caught the faintest trace of hide near the footprint. Maybe the body had scratched at a bug under the cloak. This body wore hide over its skin in the same way she did. From the handprint, she knew the body was smaller, but from the partial imprint of the foot, she could tell it was an upright and had walked on two feet. With that information, she followed how a leg might step forward, given the terrain. Another step would turn the body and move it toward the clearing. Another few steps, and in the clearing was a patch of mud where a pool had formed in the last heavy rain and later dried up. The sandy area held a precious thing: one clear footprint was pressed into the dirt. She leaped forward and put a hand on either side of it. She put her nose right down and sniffed and felt a flood of relief.

  The footprint was surprisingly small and narrow, and it curved up on the inside. The imprint showed the weight shifting from the back to the front, rather than spreading through the width of the foot. It might have been the footprint of a child. They had funny prints that were more likely to show twists and sways, as they were often caught up in the new things around them. Children were not as concerned with conserving energy or traveling the most efficient path.

  If it was the print of a child, it went some way to explaining why the body had not greeted them or come down from the perch to the river. A child from her sister’s family must have been sent to the lookout to see what was happening at the fish run. The child had not recognized Girl’s scent, especially not with her pregnant. That’s why he or she had not returned the greeting nor come down to say hello.

  If Girl were to send Runt on a scouting trip, she would give him similar cautious instructions. She had no explanation for why the family hadn’t come to the fish run, but she no longer needed one. She had only to follow these tracks back to her sister’s camp. She would be of the family once again.

  Girl began to crave the warm of a family. And she could feel it. Her bones ached for a sound sleep. She began to salivate as well. The fall season brought the crossing of the bison to their winter grounds, the beasts that would sustain the family for the winter. She started in the direction of that feeling.

  Even with their heavy load of fish, the two made good time as Girl traced the scent. Runt was strong enough that he could hop from rock to rock as they followed the gentle slope up the river. For four days, Girl was able to find the tracks of the child and follow them. There had been a light rain since the child had passed by, but Girl had the vivid smell fixed in her mind. She found other things as they went. There was a small turd that had a terrible mix of mushrooms, green stalks, and flowers. One closer whiff and she turned her head in disgust. Another one a little way down had the shells of roaches scattered through it. This was clearly from the same body.

  Maybe the child hadn’t carried enough food on his journey and had turned to scavenging as a means to stay strong? Rather than imagining a small, stinky body, she pictured a resourceful child. By eating things that were usually beneath the family and not worth the effort of gathering, he didn’t have to carry such a heavy load. The compromise meant he could travel farther at a faster pace. Girl felt something like pride, the same feeling she got when she held a large piece of meat in her hand.

  “Eagle-see,” Runt called fr
om behind.

  To get her attention, he had used a rarely spoken family word. At some point in the summer, Runt had asked her for a word and pointed to his own eye. Did he mean that he wanted the word for good eyesight? Girl would have just pointed to her eye and nodded to describe the trait of good vision, rather than having the word scrape along her throat. Aroo was an easier noise to make and the preferable way to get the attention of another. “Eagle-see,” she had said in answer to what she thought his question was.

  He had started to use the word and bend it in different ways. Now, it had become his way of calling to her. “Eagle-see,” he would say when he noticed the bears doing something new. When she looked over at him, he would tap his eye and point at the bears and wait for her to explain. Of course, she never did. Her way was to show him what to do next.

  But Runt was persistent. A child of the family grew slowly and had many needs. His way of surviving, of diverting resources in his direction, was to be demanding. Runt, who as a foundling could easily have been left behind in the dirt, was especially well versed in the art of demanding. It could be argued that this was the very reason he was still alive.

  Eagle-see very quickly turned into his way of calling Girl to do his bidding. “Eagle-see,” he would say when he wanted her to help him clean the bones from his fish. “Eagle-see,” he would tell her when he wanted help reaching through the prickles to get a ripe berry. So when Girl heard Runt call “Eagle-see” from behind, she assumed it was a call for food or attention of some kind. She sighed wearily and pretended not to hear. The boy kept chattering and she kept walking. Soon she realized that he wasn’t following along as he should.

  Big Mother would never have stood for such disobedience. When Girl was young, the children walked in a line behind the big woman. If one stopped or got distracted, the line of bodies would keep moving and leave that one behind. As a result, the children learned to keep up.

  But as Runt was the lone young one, he had somehow managed to gain more sway with Girl. She turned and saw that he stood with his feet planted near a black mark on a broad, flat rock. She could smell that the scavenger child had been here, but he had left no footprints behind. She looked more closely and realized that it was a strange fire pit. Three sticks stood up over the hearth and came together in a point at the top. The burn marks were shallow. A few unused pieces of firewood sat to the side, as though they had been collected and left. There was a rock ring around the fire and some flat ones built up on the side. It seemed like a lot of effort for a fire that might have been used only once or twice. Runt chattered excitedly, but she held up her hand to silence him. She wanted her ears clear of sound so that she could focus on the smells.

  This hearth had many similarities to the fires she made. The child had used a two-hand spindle for friction to make a flame in the same way she did and had used a small bundle of dried grasses as tinder and left them to the side. He had used the inner strips of birch bark to get the flame licking higher. As there weren’t any birch trees in this area, it meant he had collected the soft bark, kept it dry, and saved it. The family used the same practice when on the move.

  Girl pushed aside the differences in this hearth. The three standing sticks did not mean anything to her, so she noted them and put her mind elsewhere. Runt held up a small sliver of bone and she felt more confused. On one end was a hole, like an eye. Runt smiled wide in recognition. He pretended to clean his teeth with it. Clearly he agreed that it was a tool, though there was skill in its making and it had to be for more than picking teeth. A stick snapped in the right way was good enough for that. He then pretended to poke it into his cloak and pull it back out. She took the tool from him and looked at it closely. One end had a perfect, slim hole through it, and the other end of the bone was shaped into a fine point. It didn’t look immediately useful to Girl, but she could use it to puncture hides. She was interested in what her sister’s family used it for, though that was crowded out by a greater concern: Why had the child dropped it? Her sister would have taught her children the importance of caring for tools. What was going on at the camp that could account for such inattention?

  Girl sniffed long and hard. She climbed a tree and looked out. She started to pick up traces of the heat from meat moving in the leaves, or maybe the memory of it moving. A family had been here. Other beasts had been in the area too and the scents were confused. But the trees helped her see where a family might have gone. She was certain that she and Runt were getting close.

  Conference Call

  I got out of my tent on Monday and waddled up to the site. My presence was met with a few gasps and a confused “Oh, hey, hi!” from Michael. Caitlin shook her head ever so slightly. But no one said anything out loud. I assumed they had been advised to refrain from commenting on my physical state. My willingness to quote New York laws had assured a silence around me, though it was a nest of my own making without any paid maternity leave to line it. I planned to be in on the videoconference with the museum that day. My belly was heavy and my feet were sore, but I would be uncomfortable no matter where I was. I might as well get paid for one more day and keep my mind occupied with what interested me.

  By then lab results and second opinions had confirmed what I’d already felt, that the Neanderthal skeleton was a female. The modern human was male. Now we could see very clearly that her skull sat in an easterly orientation and pointed toward the other one as if she were looking directly into his empty sockets. This suggested eye contact and possibly communication between the bodies. Though I didn’t know anything with certainty yet, I sometimes imagined a kind of scene like Pompeii, where a pyroclastic surge—a mix of hot gas and ash—asphyxiated those who were alive after the volcano erupted. My mind lingered on what I had read about the disaster as I brushed dirt from her skull. Other times, I imagined that the positioning of the two skeletons was deliberate. Maybe they were placed that way by someone else. Looking at them, I found it impossible not to think of myself on my own deathbed. Where would my eyes turn if I were about to die?

  A few weeks before, I had uncovered a delicate object using a fine-tipped paintbrush and became convinced that it was a bead because of a hole that seemed deliberately punched through the top. It was shaped like a shell. Given that it was situated in the dirt by the vertebrae, I guessed that it had fallen by her neck under her chin. Perhaps it was a bead on a string that the Neanderthal was wearing when she died. Andy and others agreed with my theory, especially as it appeared that there was a hole in the appropriate place. The excitement on the site grew, as everyone acknowledged that finding ornamentation on a Neanderthal would help lend support to my theory that they were cognitively as capable as modern humans. Those who disagreed with that hypothesis often pointed to the lack of Neanderthal jewelry and painting to make the case that they didn’t engage in abstract thought. We had sent the object to the museum for the opinion of a few experts. The videoconference that day would be about their conclusions.

  Until the time came for the call, I wanted to continue to work on the layer around the vertebrae to see if I could find more artifacts. In more usual circumstances I would have lain down on my tummy to work, but as I was nearly due, that option was out. Andy and I had rigged a contraption so I could continue to be productive. We had made a kind of stretcher out of two long planks and raised them on short legs to the height of my belly. Straps tied between the planks allowed me to lie facedown where I was working; the one under my forehead was cushioned with a towel. My belly hung down, but it rested in a crate and was cradled in a blanket to protect it while I worked. When perfectly positioned, I was able to hover over the spot where I brushed while my baby was comfortably supported.

  I knew I looked ridiculous like this and didn’t try to argue otherwise. When we got the stretcher into position, Andy could barely stop laughing long enough to help me get situated. Caitlin merely rolled her eyes and pressed her dry lips together even tighter. But soon the laughter died away as I got to work. It seemed like only
a few minutes had passed when I realized that it was time for the videoconference, but I was stuck in place. I would need help getting up.

  “Should I go rent a hoist?” Andy said with a sigh as he came over to help me.

  A few minutes later, under the shade of a tree, I sat on the bench of the picnic table beside Caitlin, the laptop propped up in front of us. My ample hind end spread far enough that she had to squish a bony hip into me to stay on camera.

  I didn’t have my usual confidence going into the videoconference. The screen showed people gathering in a boardroom at the museum. I could see Tim shaking people’s hands and Guy leaning back, legs crossed and watching. There was a small square in the corner of the screen showing Caitlin and me. My puffy cheeks made me look as though I were storing nuts for the winter. I tried to take pride in a healthy appearance, but it is hard to get used to your own reflection when it changes as abruptly as it does in pregnancy. I was careful to keep the screen tilted so that my breasts and belly were off-camera. No one said a word about the fact that I was supposed to be on leave. Caitlin had obviously reported in before the call. I gave her a slight nudge with my rump. I’m sure she had to dig her toes into the ground to keep her place in the frame.

  Dr. Lawton was an expert on dating carbon found in the bones of early hominids. His field was fast-moving, and techniques were constantly being refined, but he had been able to date the two skeletons to the same period by measuring traces of carbon-14, a radioactive isotope that decays at a steady rate. I had had no doubt that the two had lived at the same time, but there had been some talk about how the Neanderthal bones could have been found and positioned with a newer skeleton in a kind of ritual. This idea defied any kind of logic. Archaeological finds that don’t fit neatly within a theory are always explained away as a “ritual,” but I knew it would be impossible to prove that a ritual didn’t exist. It was good to hear the confirmation of dates from Dr. Lawton. While he could give only a wide range because we can’t assume that the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is constant, he did assure us with certainty that the bones of the Neanderthal and the modern human were from the same period. Concrete dates gave me the kind of evidence that people of our time need in order to believe.