The Mountain Mother Cipher (The Arkana Archaeology Mystery Series Book 2)

by N. S. Wikarski

  “Oh, how do you do,” she held out her hand.

  Stefan took it, bowed over it and clicked his heels again. “I am so very, very glad to meet you.”

  “And this is Fred,” Erik added. “He works with Aydin Ozgur.”

  “Yes, of course, the Anatolian trove-keeper,” Stefan remarked, pumping Fred’s hand. “I have met Pan Ozgur many times.”

  “Pan?” Cassie asked.

  “I believe that’s Polish for Mister,” Griffin confided.

  The introductions having been concluded, the five stood uncertainly in the middle of the lobby, eyeing one another.

  “Perhaps we should go somewhere to talk,” Griffin suggested.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Stefan agreed readily. “I have much to discuss with you.”

  “How about over there.” Erik gestured toward a deserted parlor adjoining the lobby.

  The group followed him to the farthest corner where a couch, several chairs and a coffee table were arranged before a large picture window. The seating afforded a panoramic view of the upper slopes of Ida.

  Once they had settled themselves, Erik began. “Last I heard, you were in Kazakhstan.”

  “Yes, that is so,” Stefan bobbed his head in agreement. “My team is still there. We are excavating a large burial mound. Here, I have brought some photos to show you.” He opened his duffle bag and pulled out a thick album. Leafing through it, he selected a page in the middle and spread the book flat on the table in front of them. The first picture showed a grinning Stefan surrounded by a dozen other individuals standing in front of a sand hill in the middle of a treeless landscape.

  “Kazakhstan, that’s a plum assignment,” Erik commented sarcastically. “Who did you tick off to get sent there?”

  “I go where the kurgans are.” Stefan shrugged philosophically. “Who knows? Maybe someday I find a burial mound on the Riviera.”

  “My friend, you are quite the optimist.” Griffin chuckled wryly.

  “Kurgans,” Cassie piped up. “I remember Faye telling me about them. Overlord types, right? Liked to bury their leaders in big funeral mounds called kurgans?”

  The Scrivener looked at her in amazement. “Twice in one day, Cassie? First the Trojan War and now this. I may die of shock.”

  Erik tried to keep a straight face.

  “That’s right. Hell has officially frozen over,” the girl countered defensively. “I actually do remember what people tell me.”

  Stefan looked from one to the next with a perplexed expression.

  “Don’t mind them,” Fred explained. “They like to tease each other.”

  The trove-keeper nodded politely and directed his next comment to Cassie. “The word kurgan is Russian. It means in English something like mound. The name is used for all the tribes who buried their leaders in this way. The people who came before, the old Europeans, their funerals were different. They would burn the bodies or expose them for birds to pick the bones.”

  “Excarnation,” Griffin added helpfully.

  “Da, tochno.” Noticing Cassie’s confusion, the trove-keeper corrected himself. “I am sorry. I spend too many months in Kazakhstan where everybody is speaking Russian. Sometimes I forget. In Russian, I say da, tochno. In English, I say yes, precisely. Excarnation. That is the word.”

  “I think Stefan may hold the record among us for foreign language skills,” Griffin commented. “How many do you speak?”

  Stefan paused to tally up the number in his head. “I believe it is fifteen but I am learning Hindi now.”

  “Why so many?” Cassie asked.

  “Wherever I find a mound, it is better if I can talk to the people who live there in their own language. These Kurgan tribes.” Stefan shook his head. “They move around too much. I find graves everywhere.”

  His listeners laughed.

  The trove-keeper flipped to another page in the album. “Look here. This is a better photo. It shows what is inside the kurgan.”

  Cassie leaned over the table to study the picture. A skeleton of a man with weapons arranged around his body. There were several other snapshots of grave goods. A gold lion brooch. A stone scepter carved into the shape of a horse’s head. “So who were these people exactly?” she asked.

  “They were tribes who inhabited the Eurasian steppes,” Griffin said. “Pastoral nomads originally.”

  “That’s a fancy way of saying they raised cattle, sheep and goats,” Fred interjected. “They also domesticated the horse.”

  “We don’t know much about their original lifestyle,” the Scrivener added. “They remain something of a mystery until around 4500 BCE.”

  “What’s so important about that date?”

  “That’s when they started moving out of their homeland.” Erik said. “They came from an area north of the Caucasus Mountains in the Russian steppes. Eventually they spread out in every direction. West into Europe, east into Asia, south into India.”

  “Wherever they move, we start finding kurgan burial mounds.” Stefan explained. “And also things we wish not to find in a burial. Like this.” He flipped a page to show more photos. A decapitated horse’s skull. A female body buried in a crouched position at the feet of the male skeleton. The trove-keeper pointed to the lower half of the skeleton. “Her legs have been broken before she was killed and put in the tomb.”

  Cassie laughed bitterly. “I thought Faye was joking. She told me the Kurgans sent their leaders into the afterlife with their wives and favorite horses to keep them company. So these are the original overlord bad guys, right?”

  Erik paused to consider the question. “I guess you could call them that. When they came galloping out of the steppes, they either killed or exploited everything in their path. Yeah, I suppose that’s fair.”

  “What do you mean exploited?” the girl asked. “I thought they just liked to slaughter things.”

  “Not really,” Erik demurred. “They actually liked to set themselves up as the ruling elite in an area. That’s one of the reasons we call them overlords. They would build a hill fort where they could lord it over the locals. They forced the people to work for them, pay tribute, grow crops. Your average protection racket.”

  “Of course it didn’t happen overnight.” Griffin picked up the thread. “It took two thousand years. What began around 4500 BCE was only the first wave of invasions. The third wave wasn’t complete until around 2800 BCE.”

  “And when it was over, the kinder, gentler side of homo sapiens went with it,” Fred added gloomily. “The matristic cultures were erased from history.”

  Cassie remained still, puzzling over the photo of the broken female skeleton. She briefly flashed on her telemetric experience at Catal Huyuk when she was immersed in the burial of the child. She remembered the attitude of the mourners. The death of a toddler held as much significance to them as the death of a warlord did to the Kurgans. There were no weapons in the child’s grave. No strangled birds to keep it company in heaven. Only a prayer that the mother of all creation would give new life to the little one who had been lost. From what Faye had told her earlier, cultures all over the world would have treated their dead the same way. Why were these Kurgans different? She wondered what sorts of prayers they would have said over the body of their slain leader. Did they ask their sky gods to give the warlord new worlds to conquer? New people to slaughter and enslave?

  Breaking out of her reverie, she asked, “How did they get to be so violent? I mean if everybody around the world up til that time was matristic, it’s not like these guys rode out of the steppes with a completely new social agenda of mayhem and destruction. It didn’t come out of thin air. There had to be some kind of trigger that changed them.”

  The men remained silent, pondering the question.

  Stefan sighed. “That is, how you say, the crux of the matter. At the Kurgan trove, we are not only collecting artifacts of these tribes. We are seeking to trace all the way back to when they were like the rest of the world. Peaceful and not all the time
killing.”

  “Good luck,” Cassie said ruefully. “That’s got to be one heck of a riddle to solve.”

  “It isn’t as hopeless as all that,” Griffin observed. “While we still lack a good deal of concrete evidence, we do have some fairly plausible theories as to why they became overlords.”

  “I’m all ears.” Cassie sat back on the couch and folded her arms, ready for a long lecture.

  Just at that moment, a young Turkish woman in an apron walked up to the group and asked in English if they would like something from the bar.

  “Bar? What bar?” Fred turned to look around the parlor.

  The waitress gestured toward the opposite end of the room. None of them had noticed the bar tucked away in a dark corner. At this hour of the afternoon, it was completely empty.

  The group ordered various soft drinks and the woman walked off to fetch their refreshments.

  Picking up the thread of their conversation, Griffin said, “It’s highly likely that in the beginning, the Kurgan tribes weren’t very different from the rest of the world. They were most certainly goddess-worshipping and traced their family tree through the female line. The sexes would have been more or less equal. They moved about from place to place pasturing their flocks on lush grasslands. This state of affairs would have continued for a few thousand years until the climate shifted and the steppes began to dry out. It may have taken several centuries to notice a significant change but eventually there would have been less land suitable either for farming or for grazing. Water became scarce.”

  “A harsh landscape produces harsh people,” Cassie observed. “Didn’t you tell me that once?”

  “I may have done,” Griffin replied. “At any rate, it’s true. Life on the steppes became more difficult. Resources dwindled. When such conditions occur rapidly enough, they foster a mental attitude of desperation and competition. To these nomads, taking by force what was needed may have seemed a reasonable option.”

  Erik continued the narration. “There’s only one problem with stealing from the neighbors. They don’t like it very much and they tend to retaliate. This sets up a pattern where tribes are constantly skirmishing with each other either to defend their own stuff or to steal somebody else’s. All of a sudden, battle skills start to get real important. You’ve got a bunch of people who spend most of their time practicing with weapons or actually using them to clean each other out.”

  “Dog eat dog. Sounds like a great way to live,” the girl commented.

  “And it wasn’t only the men who were trained in battle,” Griffin added. He turned toward the Kurgan trove-keeper. “Tell her, Stefan.”

  “That is so,” Stefan agreed. “In the Kurgan homeland in southern Russian, many women warriors are buried with weapons. Their bones show battle injuries.”

  “Really?” Cassie sat forward, intrigued.

  “Most certainly,” Stefan continued. “Here is a very interesting picture.” He hastily flipped through his photo album to a page at the front. The image showed a faceless mannequin dressed in leggings and a jacket embroidered with hundreds of small squares of beaten golden. The figure wore a tall conical hat. It stood in a museum display case.

  Cassie looked up at Stefan quizzically. “I don’t get it.”

  The trove-keeper laughed. “This costume came from a rich kurgan grave in Kazakhstan that the tomb robbers missed. It is now in a national museum. Archaeologists have long called it ‘The Golden Man’.”

  “OK, so?” Cassie asked warily, sensing there was more to the story.

  Griffin leaned toward the girl and gave her a hint. “Remember the so-called Prince Of Lilies on Crete?”

  “Wow! You’re kidding. You mean this is a woman?”

  The trove-keeper nodded energetically. “We are most sure it is. The grave contained weapons and it used to be that whenever archaeologists found a grave with weapons they automatically said it was a man buried there. Nobody bothered to look at the skeleton.”

  “Remember what I told you when I first showed you the vault?” Griffin interjected. “Mainstream archaeologists make assumptions about what they’re seeing and those assumptions are steeped in overlord cultural values.”

  Cassie studied the photo. “But how can you be sure this costume belonged to a woman? Did anybody examine the body?”

  “The government does not allow us to look.” Stefan sighed. “We were not there at the time the digging was done and now it was too late.” He brightened. “But the grave goods, they tell us the story. The earrings and jewelry that men do not wear. The polished mirror that is always found in the graves of shaman priestesses. The tall hat that is a sign of women of rank among the steppe peoples. No male grave has been found anywhere with these objects along with the weapons.”

  “It’s very likely that she wasn’t merely a priestess. She may have been one of the royals of her tribe,” Griffin added. “This is a Saka costume and the Saka culture had many queens. The Scythians and the Sarmatians, who were related to them, did also.”

  “Yes, the Sarmatians I know well,” Stefan added eagerly. “They left their homeland north of the Black Sea and the legend tells that they settled in my country of Poland a very long time ago. The women were very warlike. The tribe had a custom that a girl would not be allowed to marry until she had killed a man in battle.”

  “That’s my kind of gal.” Cassie laughed.

  At that moment, the waitress returned bearing a tray of glasses and cans. She set it down on the table and the group helped her pass around the order. They busied themselves with flipping tabs on cans and pouring the contents into glasses while they waited for her to retreat back into the lobby. When she was out of earshot, Griffin turned to Cassie and said, “Your kind of gal? I had no idea you were so bloodthirsty.” He pretended to sound shocked. “Really, I’m appalled.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” the girl rolled her eyes. “Get on with the story.”

  The Scrivener complied. “Stefan’s evidence suggests that the steppe nomads were not rigidly male-dominated early in their history. They maintained many of the matristic customs of the cultures that surrounded them. While it’s certainly true that the steppes were a harsh land that brought out the fiercest and most aggressive tendencies in humans, it would be safe to assume that those combative traits were not limited to the male sex.”

  “OK, I get the picture,” Cassie said. “These tribes are hungry and thirsty which makes them mean and desperate. They get horses which makes them mobile so they all mount up, charge out of the steppes and start whacking everybody else.”

  The men exchanged looks.

  “Well, not exactly,” Fred hedged.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not all of them left. In fact, most of them stayed right where they were, raiding and pillaging each other.”

  “But what about the flood of barbarians sweeping across Europe and killing everything in their path?” Cassie felt confused.

  “You’re thinking of Genghis Khan,” Erik corrected. “That was thousands of years later.”

  “It wasn’t a massive flood,” Griffin added. “More like a slow trickle.”

  “Well somebody trickled out of those steppes and changed history,” Cassie challenged. “So who were they?”

  The Scrivener paused and considered a moment. “Do you know the story of Hengest and Horsa?”

  Cassie gave him a withering look. “Excuse me. Have we met? Do I look like the sort of person who would know a thing like that?”

  Griffin smiled. “You were doing so well today I thought you’d like to try for three right answers.”

  “Nope, two’s my limit. Besides, I don’t want to take away your job. Go ahead and tell me about the Hungry Horse.”

  “Ahem,” the Scrivener pointedly cleared his throat. “Hengest and Horsa were two brothers who belonged to the Anglo-Saxon tribes of Germany. They came to Britain in the fifth century to offer their services as mercenaries to King Vortigern who was having some difficulties with the Pic
ts at the time. When the king asked them why they had left their homeland, Hengest answered that it was a custom among his people that when the tribe became too numerous the leaders would summon all the fittest and bravest youths in the land. These would draw lots to determine who would have to leave the community in order not to become a burden on the resources of the rest. Those who were selected by the lottery would be expected to pack up their weapons, mount their horses and seek their fortune out in the world from that day forward.”

  “So were these guys Kurgans?” Cassie asked doubtfully.

  “Very, very distant descendents of them, yes,” Griffin replied. “A legend of twin brothers with equine names goes all the way back to the proto Indo-Europeans. The story is important because it establishes a historic precedent for the custom. It’s quite likely something similar occurred among the steppe tribes. When faced with the problem of dwindling resources, the most able of them would be expected to leave. They would have chosen youths who had proven battle skills so that they could take care of themselves when faced with difficulties.”

  “But weren’t they afraid of leaving themselves defenseless?” the girl objected. “I mean if they were surrounded by enemies, why would they send off their best fighters?”

  “They didn’t necessarily send their best fighters away,” Erik weighed in. “The older, more experienced ones would have stayed at home. They sent away their most expendable fighters. Adolescent males mainly.”

  “Teenagers?” Cassie was shocked.

  Fred joined the discussion. “Not teenagers in the way we think of them today. Life expectancy back then was a lot shorter so kids had to grow up fast. These boys would have started training with weapons around the age of seven. By the time they were fourteen they would have been on active raids. They were hardly defenseless.”

  “Almost like street gangs.” Cassie was chilled by the parallel.

  “And think about where they were headed,” Erik added. “They had a huge advantage over the matristic tribes who didn’t have horses or lots of experience with weaponry. It was all easy pickings.”

  “But the Kurgans must have been seriously outnumbered,” Cassie objected.