Burial Ground (56 page)

PREDATORY
INSTINCT

(An excerpt from the new novel from Delirium
Books.)

June 10, 12:35 PM EDT

Fossil skull DNA identifies new human
ancestor

By RADLEY DUNHILL

Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- Scientists have identified a
previously unknown ancient human through the analysis of
mitochondrial DNA from fragments of skull bones unearthed in a
Siberian cave.

A team of archaeologists investigating the
Seima-Turbino Phenomenon, a spontaneous rapid and massive exodus of
the indigenous peoples of the Altai Mountains into distant parts of
Europe and Asia during the second millennium BCE, exhumed the
fossilized remains from one of twenty-two distinct layers of
strata. Thermoluminescent and radiocarbon dating of the surrounding
sediment suggest that this unclassified hominin (human-like
creature) existed a mere 35,000 years ago at a time when both
primitive humans (
Homo sapiens
) and Neanderthals (
Homo
neanderthalensis
) cohabited this isolated region of Central
Asia, raising the possibility that these three distinctive forms of
human could have met and interacted.

Researchers at the Douglas Caldwell
Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in New York extracted the
mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only through the maternal
line, from the bones and compared the genetic sequence with those
of modern humans and Neanderthals. The analysis revealed that the
three last shared a common ancestor more than one million years
ago, proving that the Altai individual, referred to publicly as the
"Siberian Hominin" and as "Enigman" by the scientists in internal
emails, represents a previously unrecognized African migration.

"Whoever carried this genome out of Africa
is some new creature we never even suspected might exist," said Dr.
Geoffrey Melton of the Caldwell Institute. "The evidence is
convincing. We are dealing with a hitherto unclassified hominin,
and quite possibly a new species entirely."

Without a more complete fossil record,
scientists can only speculate as to what the Siberian Hominin may
have looked like or how it may have behaved or intermingled with
early modern humans. However, based on the size of the skull
fragments, it more closely resembles its larger and more heavily
muscled Neanderthal cousins than its human contemporaries.

"Paleontologists are scouring the northern
region of the Altai Mountains for further evidence of the Siberian
Hominin," Melton said. "While the cold weather helps preserve
ancient DNA, the constant presence of so much snow at the higher
elevations makes it like looking for a needle in a haystack the
size of Texas. We're dealing with thousands of acres of the most
inhospitable terrain in the world, and it's blanketed by snow and
ice year-round. We may never find any sign of this miraculous new
species again."

While archaeologists remain hopeful that
their diligence will be rewarded, for now they can only look down
from the sheer icy peaks like their ancestors must have done tens
of thousands of years ago, and imagine a time when creatures
simultaneously familiar and alien moved through the blizzarding
snow.

What but the wolf's tooth whittled so
fine

The fleet limbs of the antelope?

What but fear winged the birds, and
hunger

Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawk's
head?

---
Robinson Jeffers

Altai Mountain Range

Siberia

Friday, October 5
^th

3:02 p.m. NOVST

(2:02 a.m. PST)

The wind screamed across the sheer granite
face of Mt. Belukha. Its peak hid behind a white shark's fin of
blowing snow, still five hundred meters above them. There was no
sky, only the blizzard that assaulted them from all directions at
once and threatened to sweep them from the ice-coated escarpment,
upon which the new flakes accumulated in a layer as slick as
greased glass. Progress was maddeningly slow as even their crampons
and ice axes hardly secured tenuous purchase. They had passed the
point of no return hours ago. There was no choice but to continue
higher and pray that their ice screws held in the fractured ice.
With the ferocity of the sudden storm, a descent under darkness
would be suicide.

Four days ago, a chunk of ice the size of an
office building had calved from the mountain with the sound of
cannon fire and thundered down the northwestern slope. From their
base camp in the upper Katun Valley to the south, they had watched
in horror as fragments the size of semi trucks lay siege to the
timberline, exploding through the wall of evergreens as though it
were no more substantial than tissue paper. Two kilometers to the
north, and they would have been pulverized to such a degree that
their bodies would have been unrecognizable, if they were even
found at all. But fear metamorphosed into excitement when the
binoculars revealed the mouth of a cave roughly one hundred and
fifty meters below the nearer of the twin summits. Lord only knew
how long it had been sealed behind the ice.

It had taken several days to plot their
ascent to coincide with the ideal weather forecast, which hadn't
predicted the freak storm that swept up the valley three hours ago
like a tsunami of blowing flakes.

Dr. Ramsey Ladd, Director of the Center for
the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology, had to pause to summon
the last of his failing strength. His arms and legs trembled as he
clung to his axe handle and rope, balanced on his toes. The ledge
beneath him couldn't have been more than four inches wide, but it
was the largest he had encountered in quite some time. The wind
whipped the fur fringe of his parka hood into his face, which felt
as though it had frozen solid even with the full neoprene balaclava
facemask. Ice accumulated in the corners of his goggles, narrowing
his already constricted field of view. It was hard to imagine
feeling claustrophobic so exposed on the mountain, and yet his
chest tightened to the point that he had to concentrate to keep
from hyperventilating the already thin air. He didn't dare risk
shifting his weight to glance over his shoulder to confirm that the
others were still behind him.

Just fifty more meters, he assured himself,
and again forced his trembling body upward.

He nearly sobbed when he hooked his axe over
the precipice and hauled himself up into the cave. Every muscle in
his body ached. His throat was stripped raw. Ice knotted his lashes
and beard, and clung to his chapped nostrils. He crawled deeper
into the darkness, away from the blizzard shrieking past the
orifice. When he could crawl no more, he collapsed to the granite
floor, rolled out of his rucksack, and desperately drank the water
from his thermal hydration bladder. His breathing eventually
slowed, and he listened from the darkness as the others clambered
up with the clamor of axes and crampons and performed the same
exhausted ritual.

Saved from the elements, the cave had to be
at least twenty degrees warmer. The echo of their slowing
exhalations gave some indication of its size, which was far larger
than he would have guessed from the valley below. He removed his
flashlight from his pack and clicked it on. The beam shoved back
the shadows and limned the granite walls.

"My God," Ladd whispered. He stood and
turned a complete circle, watching in awe as the beam spotlighted
ancient pictographs distorted by a layer of glimmering ice. There
were angular lines and abstract representations of stick men and
beasts he couldn't immediately identify. "Can you guys see
this?"

He heard the clatter of spiked cleats behind
him, but couldn't tear his eyes from the wall. The state of
preservation was miraculous. He couldn't begin to fathom how old
these finger-painted images were.

"Judy?" he whispered.

"The designs are different than any I've
seen at the other proto-human sites we've discovered," Dr. Judith
Rivale, Professor of Anthropology at The George Washington
University, said. She shed her goggles and her mask to more clearly
see. Her chestnut bangs were crisp with ice and hung in front of
her brown eyes and wind-chafed brow. "I hesitate to even speculate
until we're able to accurately date the strata. The level of
preservation is so staggering, thanks to the ice, that this could
just as easily be a hundred thousand years old as twenty."

She glanced back at the man behind her,
whose parka was lined with so much fur he appeared more animal than
man.

"Don't look at me," Dr. Carlos Pascual said.
As Head of Paleoarchaeology at the Smithsonian National Museum of
Natural History, he had been called upon to authenticate and
evaluate discoveries predating the Upper Pleistocene Era on every
continent. Were it possible to be an expert on the inexplicable, he
was as close as one could get. "This is all positively modern to
me. Whoever painted these did so long after all of the other
hominin branches died off."  

"Wait a second," Rivale said. She stepped
closer to one of the walls and carefully chiseled away a section of
the ice with her axe blade. "This can't be right. These markings
almost look Sumerian, like an early form of cuneiform."

"Take pictures," Ladd said. "Maybe our
Kyrgyz guide has seen more like this elsewhere in these
mountains."

Nelson Spears, a doctoral candidate from the
University of Pennsylvania who had insinuated himself onto their
expedition team, due in large measure to his father's company's
financial backing and political connections, removed his digital
camera from his backpack and began the process of
documentation.

Ladd wandered deeper into the cave. The
strobe of the flash distorted the shape of the granite walls,
making them appear to alternately expand and contract, and throwing
shifting shadows across the smooth stone. At the furthest reaches
of his vision, he glimpsed a pyramidal stack of stones. As he
neared, it drew contrast and resolved from the darkness. They
weren't rocks. Vacant-eyed skulls of all shapes and sizes stared
back at him from the column of light. There had to be at least
fifty of them. All of their faces were turned outward, so that no
matter where he stood, they always seemed to be looking at him. He
stepped closer. His beam spotlighted fossilized bones long since
absolved of their flesh and aged to the color of rust. Fracture
lines coursed through their sloped, elongated craniums like spider
webs.

"Get a shot of this," he said.

Once Nelson had taken several pictures from
various angles, Ladd carefully tried to lift the uppermost skull,
but it wouldn't budge. The pyramid had petrified in that form.

"These are the most remarkably preserved
remains I've ever encountered," Pascual said. "Look at this. The
flat frontal bone, the prominent brow ridge, the protuberance of
the occipital bun, the suprainiac fossa. Some of these are
undeniably Neanderthal. And the rest? My God. A combination of
archaic and modern human traits? Astounding. Do you realize what
we're looking at here? This could be the most important
paleontological discovery of our lifetimes."

Another flash illuminated two more pyramids
against the rear wall, between which a fissure split the granite.
The shadows receded from his beam. As he approached, he realized
that it was more than a mere alcove.

The crevice was barely wide enough to allow
him passage. His jacket rubbed on the walls with the repeated sound
of a quickly drawn zipper. Five meters in, the ceiling lowered and
he had to duck. The circle of his beam reached a flat surface
ahead, and focused smaller and smaller as he advanced. He felt the
subtle movement of air against his face and smelled the damp breath
of the planet: the aged scents of crumbling stone, dust, and
possibly the trace residues of smoke and something unpleasantly
organic. Before he reached the terminus, a hole opened in the
ground. He knelt and shined his light down into a smooth chute that
descended beyond the light's reach. One side had evenly spaced
half-circles of shadow. He had seen similar markings before. They
were handholds, chiseled into the stone, smoothed by time and
frequent use.

"What do you see?" Rivale asked.

Ladd shrugged in response.

"I'm going down," he said, and swung his
legs over the edge.

"Let us belay you. If you fall and hurt
yourself, we'll never be able to get you back down the
mountain."

Ladd was in no mood to argue. The moment his
toes found the grooves, he tucked his flashlight into his coat
pocket and started down. Rivale did her best to shine her light
onto the primitive rungs. It barely provided enough illumination to
navigate the small ledges, which had been carved in a zigzagging
fashion. He realized he should have been counting the handholds,
but it was too late now. All he could do was continue until he
stepped down onto solid ground. Rivale's flashlight was the
pinprick of a distant star high above him when he finally stepped
away from the wall and into the waiting blackness.

*         
*          *

"Are you all right down there?" Pascual
called. His voice echoed around Ladd, who turned and directed his
light into the darkness.

"Yeah," he said in little more than a
whisper. The cavern was so large that his beam was about as
effective as a candle's flame. It diffused to nothingness before it
encountered the far wall.

"Ramsey! Is everything okay?" Pascual
shouted, louder this time.

Ladd could only nod as he started forward
with the clacking sound of his cleats. The cool breeze followed
from the tunnel at his back. It waned as he pressed deeper into
darkness that grew warmer with each step. Water dripped unseen
around him with discordant plipping and plinking sounds, beneath
which he heard faint scritching that immediately brought rats to
mind. A vile stench permeated his balaclava, forcing him to take
several deep breaths through his mouth to keep from retching.
Something must have crawled in here to die. He imagined a festering
bear carcass crawling with rodents and felt his stomach clench.