Saturday, September 10, 2016
Friday, September 2, 2016
For the past 200,000 years man has learned more and more about the world he lives on. He has forgotten much also. This is to be expected. Roaming the highlands of Russia or flat plains of Africa, he has developed ways and means to survive in many different climates. Civilizations of old left behind clues to their identity. Bits and pieces of their tools can be found with some effort. Each find, a tantalizing hint at who they were and what they did when they lived.
Buried all over the world, clues to ancient civilizations can be found.
Jason Catmull picked up the steel pick-ax and swung at the rock, half covered with thick green grass. The University dig was in its second week. Several finds had been made, a few bottles of champagne popped open.
Jason was anticipating his coming glory. Soon, he knew or wished, that he would make an incredible find that really put him on the map, archeology-wise.
Sweat ran down his nose under the mid-day Sun. Swing! Clunk! A little piece of basalt broke off the main rock he had his mind set on.
Sally Kirk, a three-year veteran of these digs, was 100 feet away sifting clay, looking for pottery bits. She was 23, lesbian, and driven to learn everything she could about the people that once inhabited this remote hillside in Utah.
Another swing of the pickax and more pieces broke away from the main body with a crumble. Sally heard his activity and stopped sifting for a moment.
"We looked there yesterday", she shouted so he could hear. "Wrong epoch"
She was right, he thought. This volcanic rock predated the sight by 5 million years. There would not be any human-made artifacts inside. He swung the pickax again and connected solidly in the center of the rock. A large piece cleaved off and splintered into five or six smaller pieces. There inside the rock was a cavity; a dark hollow within the rock's center. Something red glistened inside.
He bent down to have a closer look. The whole inside of the hollow was lined with red berryl.
"Wow!", he heard himself say. "Sally! Come look at this! I got some berryl!"
"No friggin' way!", she said running around the edge of the sifter and up the slight rise to where he was. "Holy shit! There's a lot of it", she said. "Nice find Jace"
She patted him on the shoulder and looked around for their supervisor, Doctor Villinoir. He was standing over a hole nearby directing a new volunteer who was busy scraping around a small bone fragment with a fine tipped tool.
"Doctor! Jason found berryl", Sally called to him.
The grey bearded main in the khaki pants and button down, pocketed linen shirt raised a hand to her and shushed her.
"Measure, Document, Report", was all he said. He had seen many false alarms in his day. Random berryl deposits in the middle of human habitation sites was not one of them. He was overly cautious in his middle age. Seven more years he could retire. But he wouldn't. Not in a million years.
Buried all over the world, clues to ancient civilizations can be found.
Jason Catmull picked up the steel pick-ax and swung at the rock, half covered with thick green grass. The University dig was in its second week. Several finds had been made, a few bottles of champagne popped open.
Jason was anticipating his coming glory. Soon, he knew or wished, that he would make an incredible find that really put him on the map, archeology-wise.
Sweat ran down his nose under the mid-day Sun. Swing! Clunk! A little piece of basalt broke off the main rock he had his mind set on.
Sally Kirk, a three-year veteran of these digs, was 100 feet away sifting clay, looking for pottery bits. She was 23, lesbian, and driven to learn everything she could about the people that once inhabited this remote hillside in Utah.
Another swing of the pickax and more pieces broke away from the main body with a crumble. Sally heard his activity and stopped sifting for a moment.
"We looked there yesterday", she shouted so he could hear. "Wrong epoch"
She was right, he thought. This volcanic rock predated the sight by 5 million years. There would not be any human-made artifacts inside. He swung the pickax again and connected solidly in the center of the rock. A large piece cleaved off and splintered into five or six smaller pieces. There inside the rock was a cavity; a dark hollow within the rock's center. Something red glistened inside.
He bent down to have a closer look. The whole inside of the hollow was lined with red berryl.
"Wow!", he heard himself say. "Sally! Come look at this! I got some berryl!"
"No friggin' way!", she said running around the edge of the sifter and up the slight rise to where he was. "Holy shit! There's a lot of it", she said. "Nice find Jace"
She patted him on the shoulder and looked around for their supervisor, Doctor Villinoir. He was standing over a hole nearby directing a new volunteer who was busy scraping around a small bone fragment with a fine tipped tool.
"Doctor! Jason found berryl", Sally called to him.
The grey bearded main in the khaki pants and button down, pocketed linen shirt raised a hand to her and shushed her.
"Measure, Document, Report", was all he said. He had seen many false alarms in his day. Random berryl deposits in the middle of human habitation sites was not one of them. He was overly cautious in his middle age. Seven more years he could retire. But he wouldn't. Not in a million years.
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