The Last Neanderthal Read online

  Girl quivered like a leaf too heavy for its branch. Big Mother was sniffing her like she was checking for the sunbite. Girl pressed her own hand to her forehead. She seemed slightly hotter than usual, but none of the other symptoms were present. She didn’t feel sick; quite the opposite. Her muscles were twitching with want. Maybe more hunger than usual, if that was possible. She didn’t yet sense what Big Mother had already discovered with a sniff.

  Girl found out when she went to squat behind a bush, the final step in getting ready to go. She saw a line of mucus on her thigh. It made her giggle, as it looked more like egg white than something that came from her. She wiped at it with a leaf and found it surprisingly slippery. It wasn’t like the blood that had come in the year before. She didn’t feel pain, only a slight cramp inside her hip. A cold trickle crept down her spine as she realized that this was the heat. It was the first time she had got it. The heat gave out the scent that told others she wanted to mate.

  Girl knew she had to wait until they were at the meeting place for that. Big Mother had given her extra meat over the winter and signaled that this year Girl might be fat enough for the heat to come in time for the fish run. With it, she would be old enough to win a family of her own. Big Mother wanted her daughter to make her proud. Just as Girl’s sister, Big Girl, had done before.

  But even as Girl had eaten the extra meat that winter, she worried. She didn’t want to leave this family as her sister had. Big Girl was quick to laugh. They had played and whispered and picked bugs off each other’s backs. Many had thought the two were the same body, with their broad noses that flared and their shocks of red hair. There was one difference that distinguished them, though. When Big Mother was confused about who was who, she would tell them to smile. Big Girl had had a particularly hard collision with a rock, and she had not managed to keep her front teeth attached to her head. The gap made her smile all the brighter. When Big Girl wanted to make Girl laugh, she would stick her tongue through the gap and hiss like a snake. Girl was scared of snakes. They would duck and weave around the camp, shrieking and laughing until one of them fell. The body who was still standing would fall on the other and start tickling. Or sometimes it was Big Mother’s large foot that would end the game. The gap in the front of Big Girl’s mouth was a source of great fun.

  From Girl’s perspective, Big Girl was the strongest kind of woman because she had won a family at the fish run. But now she was gone. Maybe she lived well with ample meat, but Girl had no way of knowing. With the exception of going to the meeting place, she had never lived away from the family’s land. She did not know what life elsewhere was like. When she tried to imagine Big Girl’s life, all Girl felt was the bite of bugs with no sister to pick them off. That’s also how the idea of leaving felt to Girl, like a flea that her fingers couldn’t reach. And now the heat had come and Girl would change too. What lay ahead was dark and shadowy, like the back of a cave.

  Girl knew this feeling wasn’t useful to the family. Thinking forward was distracting. It left the body vulnerable in the present. All she wanted to do was push it away. But everyone in the family would know. With the heat, the eyes of beasts across the land would take in her snowy skin in a new way. If not immediately, then soon. The sheen of her hair would look deeper, to show the heat that came from between her legs.

  Girl hoped to hide it for now. She quickly found moss to wipe with and lessen the smell. She kept her head low and flicked her eyes to the side, a new fear to stay alert for meat-eaters. She straightened and walked back out to join the others. She took her place at the front of the line, just like she always did. As many in the family had before, she tried to pretend that nothing had changed. She focused on what was the same.

  Dr Pepper

  Why does life exist? I’d been plagued by doubt about my purpose for much of my life. The day I found her, a Neanderthal long buried in the dirt, I was relieved of it. As an archaeologist, I knew that the essential difference between something living and something dead is heat. Only living things are able to capture energy from the land and use it, but somehow, more than forty thousand years after her death, that Neanderthal was able to capture me. I felt as though her big hand reached through time to grab me by my grubby T-shirt and pull my nose to the spot where she lay. When I found her, I finally knew why I was alive. I wanted to learn her secrets.

  By that time, I had already discovered one male skeleton in the cave. The remains belonged to a modern human, one of the Homo sapiens (meaning “wise man” in Latin), who are the only surviving species of the genus Homo. One of us. Some kind of geological activity had resulted in his bones fossilizing. Based on his pristine condition, I felt it was worth draining my savings to extend my teaching leave and assess the potential of the site. Andy, my assistant, and I camped at the cave, carefully staked the area inside, and started the slow process of excavating one thin layer at time. Soon after we began, I brushed aside a coat of sediment and uncovered a rounded fragment of skull.

  “Andy?”

  He pushed through the thick plastic that we had hung to protect the entrance from outside contaminants. “Rose?”

  “I found her,” I said, my voice shaking.

  “Who?”

  The soft hiss of carbonation came from behind me. Andy carried a can of Dr Pepper most places he went. I had forbidden him to bring it into the cave, assuming that one splash had sufficient corrosive power to instantly dissolve the artifacts that had survived all other threats. But Andy had developed a survival strategy of his own over forty-odd years of marriage to his wife, recently deceased: his hearing was highly selective.

  “It’s a second set of remains,” I said.

  “Really?” Andy sighed and took a big slug. “I see a tiny piece of bone.”

  We were in a small cavern that was attached to a cave network not far from the Gorges de l’Ardèche near Vallon-Pont-d’Arc in France. It was part of a larger system that had become well known thanks to the Chauvet caves, where spectacular paintings made by modern humans had been discovered in 1994.

  “We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves,” Andy said as he tapped his watch. “I’ll get your notebook, but remember, it’s quitting time. We’ll come back to work on it tomorrow.”

  “Her,” I said instinctively.

  “We’ll come back to her first thing in the morning,” he teased. “Does she have a name yet?”

  “I need to keep working, Andy.”

  “My vote is Patricia, but we’ll have to firm up the christening details tomorrow. You made me promise that I’d force you to stop working at five. Remember?”

  “Andy?”

  “Rose?”

  “There is no way in hell I’m leaving the site right now.”

  Andy let out a longer sigh. “Is Jane too plain?” He took another big swig from his can.

  I leaned back to look at Andy and noticed that weariness had settled about his kind face. Perhaps I was driving him to his carbonated addiction? But he smiled his big, wide Oregonian smile to let me know he was fine. I did the same by giving the slight round of my belly a pat.

  “Get yourself a fresh can,” I said. “And my notebook and the camera.”

  “Does this mean we aren’t stopping?”

  “I’m pregnant, not deranged.”

  “Hum.” Andy shrugged and pushed back through the plastic.

  “Andy?” I called after him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Jane is far too plain.”

  I waited until Andy was gone to rub the sore spot in my lower back. I was well into the third month of my pregnancy. I wasn’t showing, but I hadn’t needed a test to know my condition. I’d had to tell Andy. You can’t hide the fact that you’re experiencing morning sickness when you’re sharing a tent with someone. My plan was to visit my doctor when I got back to London in two weeks. Then, after I had confirmation, I would break the news to Simon, my partner. He was holding down our fort in London, since the courses he was teaching went through the spring. Part of
me wanted to grab the phone and shout the news to him, but another part of me felt it was premature. Simon had wanted a baby for a long time. I was thirty-nine and I knew that on some level, he had given up hope. Quietly, I’d watched him resign himself to a different kind of life than the one he’d imagined. If I was going to shift his life view again, I wanted to be completely sure.

  At sixty-two, Andy had decided that life was short and had taken early retirement from a financial firm in order to pursue a PhD in archaeology—a late bloomer, he’d called himself. When I e-mailed around for help on a scouting expedition, he was the first to respond. He had been studying at Stony Brook University with a good friend of mine, Dr. Conn Bray, who specialized in Paleolithic technologies. I had been reluctant to take Andy on, as I’d assumed he was the sort of student who’d anticipate Indiana Jones–type adventures in snake pits and wouldn’t be happy with the usual slow-moving nonaction of archaeological dirt pits. Conn tended to make paleoarchaeology look like a great adventure and was prone to carving up goats with stone tools in class. But the more Andy and I had worked together, the more I realized that he was the best kind of student—one who listened and learned but had much to add. He quickly became my willing coconspirator in all things archaeology as well as a good friend. I didn’t know what I would do without him.

  Andy pushed back in through the plastic. Holding my notebook, my camera, and a fresh can of soda, he twisted a wrist in an attempt to glance at his watch. “And Simon wants you to call when you’re back in camp. Your mother called too.”

  I was listening, but not really. Andy knew. He tried again. “I’ll take a photo, plot it, do a sketch, and we’ll call it a wrap?”

  “Who’s the boss of this site?” I lifted my chin teasingly.

  “That’s a touchy subject.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Dr. Rosamund Gale, sir!” He tipped his Dr Pepper in a salute.

  “And what time is it, Andrew?”

  “Five thirteen p.m.”

  “Take photos. Mark this find.”

  “My boss will have me axed!”

  “Andy?”

  “Rose?”

  “As your boss, I say put that damn Dr Pepper outside.” I burst out laughing.

  I’d taken a leave of absence from teaching to follow up on a few interesting features I’d noticed while caving in this area with a surveying team in previous years. With Andy working as support and paid with the last of the money from my savings, I retraced the route that I’d taken. But this time, in the silence, with no pressure from the group, I found a vent. A cave vents air like a body. When the pressure changes, the less dense, cooler night air is drawn in, like an inhale. When the sun heats the air, the cave seeks equilibrium and exhales. I’d found the vent when I stopped to take a water break. I felt it first, like someone blowing gently on my cheek. It took two days to find a channel that led to this previously unmapped cavern.

  Maybe I’d suspected then that I was pregnant, but I had managed to delay my internal discovery of it for a few weeks—a time-tested way of ensuring that plans are easier to hatch.

  When I first accessed the cavern, it was through a narrow channel of rock. I had to wriggle like a snake to make it through. The cavern on the other end had remained undetected for years, possibly because the narrow channel prevented men of even average girth from entering.

  After I’d wriggled through and dropped down, it was only an hour or two before I uncovered the edge of a stone hand ax. I later identified it as an example of the Châtelperronian industry, part of a toolmaking culture that I believed was shared by modern humans and Neanderthals. Andy and I were able to punch through a wall of the cavern to expose the outside wall and make the site more accessible. The cave soon became more like a proper dig site, though the money and glamour of Indiana Jones was missing. Andy said he provided the good looks.

  Within a month, Andy and I had found the first set of bones; they belonged to an ancient male who was a modern human.

  The moment I’d uncovered the fragment of a second skull, I had a hunch we had found something big. I couldn’t just put down tools because it was precisely five o’clock. We kept working, quietly and carefully brushing and plotting.

  “Okay?” Andy asked.

  “Yes, thank you.” I forced a smile to mask my exhaustion.

  “Nice mustache.” He chuckled. I had an unfortunate habit of running my dusty arm along my face to wipe at the sweat. The result was that each day, I collected a thick line of dirt on my top lip. At least it kept Andy entertained.

  Late afternoon stretched to evening. Before I knew it, it was dark outside the cave. Andy measured and charted while I slowly brushed away more layers of dirt. We had some nuts and granola bars on-site to keep us going. Somehow I found myself coaxed into taking a slug of Dr Pepper. I admit it gave me a little pep. As more of the skull appeared in the dirt, I saw that she seemed to be lying on her side with her head turned toward the modern human. They were clearly in the same stratum, or layer, of dirt.

  I began to see that the skull was longer than expected. There was a distinct ridge of bone above the eye orbit. I looked up at Andy to see if he noticed too, but he continued to act like it was any other day.

  “Should I switch?” he asked.

  I realized that Andy had been talking while we worked, but about what? I was too absorbed by the visible bone to know. He easily decoded the confused look on my face.

  “To diet,” he said.

  “Dieting doesn’t work,” I answered. “Our bodies evolve much more slowly than our eating habits.”

  “I mean to Diet Dr Pepper. I might switch to that.”

  “Diet cola is for fat people, Andy.”

  “I’m fat.” He patted his gut.

  “Be thankful it’s not a baby,” I muttered and turned back to my brushing.

  “You ever wonder if we could excavate—”

  “Have you ever tried cherry Dr Pepper? Isn’t that a thing?”

  “—your sense of humor.”

  “Or go crazy and switch to Fanta—do you like that? Maybe you just need a change.”

  “I was fishing, Rose.”

  “What, you want to take up fishing for exercise?”

  “For compliments.”

  There was no need to bother trying to cover up my lack of attention since it was so readily apparent. I reached over and gave Andy’s belly a nice pat, which pleased him immensely. I was his favorite person to tease and vice versa, but he was no longer looking at me. He was staring at my breasts.

  “Really, Andy.” I put a finger under his chin to lift it. “You are just like the rest of them.”

  “Did you spill water?”

  Andy had a confident enthusiasm that usually rippled all around him. It was part of what made me agree to take him on. This might have been the first time I had ever heard him sound unsure. “Ah, you’re leaking.”

  I looked down. He was right. I had a wet stain on my T-shirt over my left breast. “Shit,” I muttered.

  “Nope,” Andy said, regaining his swagger. “I’m pretty sure it’s milk.”

  “Colostrum.” The word came out of my mouth as a wail. “It’s too early, isn’t it? How could I have already turned into a cow?”

  “You’ll make a good cow.”

  “I’m an angry cow.”

  “Did I mention that you told me to make sure you stopped working at five p.m.?”

  “Oh, wait.” I shone my headlamp on the spot on my shirt to take a closer look. “It’s only a drop of Dr Pepper. Phew.”

  “Wow, you are jumpy, huh?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Well, quit spilling the good stuff or I’ll start panicking too.”

  A few more sips of Dr Pepper kept me going. I would not have stopped for anything. This was the culmination of years and years of painstaking work; I’d sacrificed teaching money and time with Simon to explore this area. It was potentially the first big find that I could claim as my own. While I was
considered old to be a first-time mother, I was too young to have made a significant mark on my field yet. Andy was right. I was jumpy.

  As we worked, I let my mind run over the idea of having a baby. I had seen what happened to the women in my field who came before me. Most who had kids got sidelined, or sidelined themselves. Men who chose to be involved with their children tended to do the same. I had no reason to expect that my experience would be different. And if this was indeed an important find, timing was crucial. In archaeology, the discovery is important, but the person who interprets the find and publishes is the one who gets the credit. I knew that any absence from the dig could result in my name getting bumped to the end of the line of authors or, worse, dropped entirely. The list of female scientists whose contribution had been diminished or forgotten was depressingly long.

  And then, with a few more strokes of my brush, in the dirt before my eyes, the story started to come together. It must have been about two in the morning when I uncovered enough of the skull to see the outline.

  “Look.” The word came out in a choke. I pointed to show Andy the profile of a prominent brow, a larger nasal cavity, and a receding forehead. “What do you see?”

  “One ugly dude.” He whistled.

  “Andy?”

  “Rose?”

  “It’s Neanderthal.”

  Andy let his breath out of his lungs then. The length of the exhale spoke of just how unsure he had felt about my theories of where and how we might find artifacts. There were no jokes or fresh cans cracked. We were both too stunned. Andy grabbed my arm, mouth agape. Neither of us could talk. We sat in silence and stared.

  As we looked, the implications of this find slowly registered. Maybe on some level, I had begun to doubt myself too. We knew well from the recent advent of DNA testing that many modern humans had inherited genes from Neanderthals and vice versa, but beyond the obvious method of transfer, we knew little about the relations between them. In my quieter moments, I doubted we ever would.

  But in the cave, the remains of a Neanderthal lay with those of a modern human. It looked like they had died together, maybe in a volcanic event, as there were records of those in the area. Perhaps they had been placed in this position by someone who thought they would want to face each other in death. They might well have lived together. Whatever the case, their position was evidence of more complex communication between the two, something that I had always assumed would be lost to time. Now it was found. A relationship, a feeling, or a glance—it’s the things that don’t fossilize that matter most.