by Bryan Sykes
Within a week the first reindeer were spotted further up the valley slowly making their way along the gorge. So far so good. They were on the right-hand side, so had to cross the river before they could get through the gorge itself. Helena’s band had selected a spot where the river was flowing across large pebbles. It was about fifty metres across at this point with a rocky island in the middle. This is where they would be stationed, using the rocks for cover and hoping that the deer would choose to make the crossing here as they had done in previous years. There were plenty of places upstream, but the presence of the island and the chance it offered to divide the crossing, coupled with the growing urgency the deer felt to get over to the other side before the river reached the base of the cliffs, made this a better place than most. It was only a hundred metres or so upstream from the cave where Helena and her mother watched as the men took up their positions.
This year Helena’s father was going to try a spear-thrower and detachable point for the first time. They had been around for a long time, but he had always preferred the traditional design of a hefty wooden spear tipped with a bone point. The advantages of the spear-thrower, as his friends never tired of telling him, were greater distance, greater accuracy and – best of all – that you only lost the spear point and not a complete spear if the animal ran off. The spear-thrower itself was a stout piece of wood, which fitted loosely on to the bottom of the spear shaft and acted as a lever. By putting this over your shoulder and bringing it forward quickly, the spear point itself flew off the thrower much faster than the conventional one-piece spear. The point itself was a sharp piece of bone or flint hafted to a short piece of wood. Since it was also weighted with a stone, the impact when it hit the target carried as much force as a full-length wooden spear. Helena’s father had practised with it, but he still wasn’t impressed. He was really only taking it along on this trip to keep his friends quiet. He was tired of being called a reactionary, so he was going to try it, but he made sure he took his ‘proper’ spear with him as well.
Helena watched as her father and brother crouched down behind the rocks on the island in the middle of the river. Suddenly a small group of reindeer appeared three hundred metres upstream on her side of the river. They were obviously nervous, sniffing the air and moving their heads from side to side as they walked slowly along the bank. She lay down flat and peered over the edge of the cliff. If the deer saw her they would panic and run back upstream. They moved slowly past the island. Had they sensed the hunters crouched behind the rocks? They came right up to the point, directly below Helena, where the river cut into the cliff. She peeped over the edge and looked down on them from above. She could see their grey backs and their great spreading antlers. She counted twelve of them. She thought they were probably mostly mothers with their calves, but since both male and female reindeer had antlers it was impossible to be sure. There was no way forward for them on this side of the river because the sheer face of the cliff rose directly out of the water. The current had quickened and the water was fast and deep. They waited for a few minutes, unsure whether to chance their luck; eventually they decided against it, turned and headed slowly back upstream. They reached the point opposite the island where the hunters had positioned themselves. Would they cross here or head further upstream? Helena could see them hesitate; then, at last, one of them plunged into the water and began to swim for the island. The others followed. The hunters tensed. Their hearts pounded and their mouths went dry.
As the first of the deer reached the island, the hunters flew at them. At short range the weighted spear points were lethal and accurate. Two deer fell where they stood, blood pouring from their necks. The others charged straight ahead. Helena’s father managed to drive his spear deep into the flank of a young calf, then followed it into the shallows and finished it off by cutting its throat with his knife. After the first volley from the spear-throwers some injured deer had turned back the way they had come. The men and boys ran into the water after them and tried to drag them down. Helena’s brother foolishly held on to a large adult that had only been slightly hurt. It turned and lashed out with its antlers, catching him with a vicious blow to the side of the head which knocked him unconscious into the river. Watching from above, Helena saw this happen and stood up waving and yelling at her father to attract his attention. He looked up and, realizing something was wrong, scanned the river for his son. By now he was drifting face down towards the fast currents beneath the cliff. His father let go of the calf he had killed and plunged into the river. He reached his son before it was too late and dragged him to the bank, forgetting all about the deer hunt. The boy was soon revived; but the deer were long gone. The dead calf drifted downstream towards the rapids. Nobody was going to get to it in time.
As Helena stared down at it, the river was no longer clear and green but running red with the blood of the slaughter. Judging from the colour of the water coming from upstream, other bands had had a good day; but for Helena’s band it had been a disaster. They had managed to kill only three deer, two calves and one adult. That meant a lean winter ahead unless more reindeer arrived. But no more came that way. Two weeks later, the band could wait no longer. The snow had begun to fall, and the other bands were leaving for their winter camps. They packed up and headed back on their long journey back to the sea. If they survived the winter they would be back again next autumn, hoping for better luck.
The years rolled by, following the same pattern dictated by the seasons. Helena’s brother was killed three years later, trampled to death by a small herd of wild horses he and his young friends were foolishly trying to ambush. Helena’s father lived for another ten years, long enough to see Helena give birth to the first of her three girls. Her mother developed bad arthritis in her fingers, which put an end to her dressmaking, and she died a year later when it spread to her knees and ankles. Helena herself lived until she was forty-two, a very old age in those days and old enough to see her first grandchildren.
Over successive generations the clan that began with Helena became easily the most successful in Europe, reaching every part of the continent. The reference sequence with which all mitochondrial mutations are compared is Helena’s sequence. Forty-seven per cent of modern Europeans are members of her clan. We do not know whether this remarkable success is because her mitochondrial DNA possesses some special quality that gives its holders a biological advantage, or whether it is just chance that makes so many Europeans trace their direct maternal ancestry back to Helena and the freezing winters of the last Ice Age.
18
VELDA
Three thousand years after Helena lived and died, the Great Ice Age had tightened its grip still further. Seventeen thousand years ago the plains of northern Europe were completely deserted; all life, animal and human, was compressed into the Ukraine, southern France, Italy and the Iberian peninsula. Velda, the fourth of the seven daughters, lived in northern Spain in the mountains of Cantabria, a few miles behind what is now the port of Santander. The ocean floor falls away steeply here, so the line of the ancient coast is not very different from today, even though the sea level was over a hundred metres lower than it is now. Like so many others before and since, Velda’s family depended on the herds of bison and other animals which spent the summer on the high plateaux to the south, but they also hunted in the thick forests which covered the coastal plain. Being positioned between the two resources meant that Velda and her band could maintain a permanent base in and around the area. There was a lot of competition for the best sites, and that gave Velda and her companions an incentive to maintain a year-round occupation. Had they abandoned it for a seasonal migration to the coast or inland to follow the bison, the chances were that they would return to find it occupied by another band. This was not only inconvenient, it was also potentially dangerous. People had been killed more than once in the past trying either to defend or to reclaim a prime cave site.
With most of the caves occupied all year, it was much easier to establis
h a convincing residence claim; so forced evictions, though they did happen, were largely a thing of the past. However, this did mean that the men were away from the camp in hunting parties for long periods. Velda’s man was a good hunter, and even during those times when game was scarce he would always return with something for her and their three daughters. While he was away she would search for food in the woods close to the camp. Her mother, an old woman of thirty-seven, looked after the children when they were too small to come with her. It was hard work tramping the same territory day after day. She knew it like the back of her hand. She knew which streams held small fish, which ponds were favoured by frogs and toads, and where the oak trees with the best acorns were to be found.
Velda was a striking woman, taller than most at five feet four inches, with sparkling deep brown eyes and dark flowing hair which brushed her shoulders as she walked. Her skin was a soft pale brown in winter, but she tanned easily and in the summer her face turned a deep ebony. It may have been cold but the sun shone just as brightly then as it does now. Though a lot of her time was taken up with gathering food, it was not all work and there were bright summer days when she would find a sheltered spot and just lie in the sun for a few hours and reflect on her life. She was close to the other women of her age in the band, most of whom were related to her one way or another, and they spent time together talking about their lives. She was content, even if bringing up three children was a struggle without a man around for a lot of the time. She got a lot of support from the other women and she supported them. Her mother and her elder sister had helped at the birth of all three of her children, just as she had helped her sister and other friends. The men had nothing to do with the births. They were often not around when their own children were born, and it would have been inconceivable for a man to be present at the birth of his child. Thus it was that the women of the band maintained complete control of the process and the mystery of birth. In their hands, they held the future of the band. In exchange, the men supported them by providing food and protection against the wild animals that were a constant threat. Velda’s husband was kind and attentive when he was in camp, and it was always good to see him safely back from the hunt, especially if he returned loaded down with meat for the larder. On longer trips he might be away for two or three weeks at a time, depending on how successful he had been. When he had caught as much as he could carry, he came home.
During these weeks when he was away, particularly if all the men in the band had gone hunting together, Velda felt distinctly vulnerable. The greatest fear was a nocturnal raid by a leopard. She knew of several instances where children had been snatched where they slept. As darkness approached she lit a fire at the cave entrance and withdrew with her children into a natural crevice just to one side, where she settled them on to their beds of soft skins. Her mother had come to live there too, which theoretically provided additional security – though her mother’s nerves were not what they were and she snored loudly. Velda slept lightly, waking up every hour or so and making sure the fire was still alight. Only when her man was home could she share the watch and get a good night’s sleep.
On some nights she would become aware of animals moving outside in the darkness. It wasn’t that she heard them, for they moved without noise; it was more that she sensed their presence. Once she saw two green eyes shining in the pitch-black night only a few feet away as they reflected back the light of the fire. She tensed and clutched the spear she always kept close by, then tossed another branch into the flames. As the sparks flew up, the eyes disappeared as the animal turned its head away. She was counting on the leopard not knowing how few people were in the cave and calculating that an attack was not worth the risk.
Children were rarely killed in a straightforward direct attack. They usually disappeared when carelessness or exhaustion had allowed the fire to go out. It was often done so swiftly and so silently that no-one was aware that anything had happened until the next morning. That was the worst kind of disappearance, because you did not know for sure whether the child had been taken or had just wandered out of the cave. This had happened to one of Velda’s cousins, who had spent days searching for her only child. Was it still alive somewhere out there in the woods? The answer, of course, was no. The leopard had grasped the sleeping girl by the throat, its jaws clamping down with an irresistible force on her windpipe. She could neither breathe nor cry out as the big cat turned and walked effortlessly and silently out of the cave with the child hanging from its jaw. The fear of the night was very real.
Velda and the other women did what they could to console her cousin, but she never really recovered from losing her only child in this terrible way. She sank into a deep lethargy, refusing to eat, and would sit alone on the hilltop staring down at the dark woods below and calling out for her lost daughter. Other women who had lost a child to a wild animal very often had another one almost immediately, so that the grievous blow was cushioned by the new arrival. But Velda’s cousin, tortured by the sense that her girl might still be alive, could not take that route. She became far too weak to get pregnant; her man, eventually despairing of her ever recovering, left the band for good. She took to walking through the woods, crying out softly and looking into every bush and behind every tree. Velda and her friends took her into their caves at night, but still she would not eat properly and could not sleep. One day, as winter drew closer, she did not return from the woods until after dark. She did not need to be warned of the dangers, and her friends insisted she must always come back while there was plenty of light. She followed their instructions for a week and seemed to be getting better. Then, one day, she never returned. They never found her body. They did not know what had happened, but they suspected the truth. The same leopard that killed her child had tracked her as well, and pounced from behind as she threaded her way back through the trees. She did not have any strength left to struggle. Soon she was being fed to the same litter of cubs that had devoured her own child.
Velda had a strong artistic streak. Her grandfather had been one of the men who painted the ceremonial caves and she had even tried to reproduce their wonderful images on the walls of her own cave. Her great wish was to be allowed to do something in one of the big caves which were used only for the ceremonies before the hunt. This was a jealously guarded privilege. Not only did you have to be able to paint, you also had to have a convincingly supernatural gift for magic. Since this was virtually impossible to demonstrate, the aspiring artists tended to exaggerate their eccentric behaviour or claim descent from a long line of magicians. Velda expressed her talents as a delicate craftswoman by carving ornaments from bone and, if she could get it, mammoth ivory. The designs she carved were both symbolic and naturalistic, and she would take weeks or even months to finish a piece, often working late into the night by the light of the fire as her children slept. Her most ambitious project was a highly decorated spear-thrower that she was making out of a piece of juniper wood as a present for her man. This was not meant to be used on the hunt itself, but for the cave ceremonies only. Lately, people had taken to having ceremonial weapons rather than the real thing with them to incite the sympathetic magic. It seemed to be much more appropriate and arguably more effective to wave a special weapon on these occasions. Velda worked on this particular piece for the three months of the summer. She wanted to have it ready for the ceremony in the coming autumn. When her man was away hunting she could work openly, but when he was at home she hid her gift in a crevice at the back of the cave. She wanted to keep it as a surprise.
The finished object was utterly beautiful. Along its whole length Velda had carved a group of three bison. You had to rotate the shaft to see the full picture, and yet the proportions were exactly right. One of the animals had its head turned back, licking its flank with its tongue. She paid particular attention to the heads, carefully etching a series of lines to represent the hair standing out on their backs. Bulging lids encircled the large eyes, and the nostrils flared just as they did in
life. Night after night she would add an extra detail until, at last, she was satisfied and hid it away for the day her man returned.
He never did. When his friends came back from the hills, they expected him to be back at camp already. After killing a bison, he had left them early, eager to get home. He had taken the best meat from the carcass and set off on the three-day march back to the cave. His companions had waved him goodbye as he headed off down the valley that would take him home. That was the last time anyone saw him alive. When his friends returned to the camp themselves a few days later and realized he was missing, they set off at once back to the hills to look for him. It was very unlikely that he had got lost, for he knew the land as well as anyone. The weather had been good; it was not too cold, so he would not have frozen to death. Occasionally young men might join up with another band they met on a hunt, but never if they had a woman and children waiting behind at camp. He was not feeling unwell when he left his friends. It was a complete mystery. After four days searching the route he would have taken to get home, checking all the rock shelters that were traditionally used as bivouacs, they found no trace of him. On the fifth day they went higher into the mountains to check a large cavern that was sometimes used by hunting parties who were after ibex. It was very unlikely that he would have taken this diversion, especially since he was returning from a successful hunt, but they climbed up to make sure.
About a hundred metres below the cave entrance they came across his body, or what remained of it. Fur clothing lay in a crumpled heap encasing a disarticulated heap of bones and flesh. All the internal organs – heart, liver, stomach and lungs – were gone. The ribcage, stripped of skin and muscle, was still held together by bloodied ligaments. They turned away. They knew it was him. His face was torn off and his skull crushed, but his broken spear lay close to the body. It was certainly his. About fifty yards away lay another body: not human this time, but a large hyena with another spear buried in its chest. That was how he died. Alone and surrounded by a voracious pack of these repulsive beasts he had struck out at his attackers, mortally wounding one and probably injuring others. But there had been too many of them for one man on his own, and eventually he had been overwhelmed and torn to pieces.
