The Last Neanderthal Read online

  “Aroo.” Girl let out her fear—deep, guttural, urgent. The cow would sense her fear. And she heard the large beast coming through the narrows like thunder. She didn’t hear Bent or Him. Girl’s ears had room only for the noise of her struggle. Her own gulping breath, the wet, furious heaves from the bison, the sound of sucking mud, all these were so loud that her eyes blurred. She smelled the acrid stink of her own fear. And then she felt the hot huff of bison come into the channel. The beast was so close.

  Girl’s hair stood up on her body all at once. The bison now had her head down and her horns ready to gore. With a muzzle of foam and a pointed horn on each side of her massive head, she brayed and huffed. There was nowhere for Girl to run. It was a moment they all faced, of life or death. There wasn’t time for a conscious decision. She moved on instinct alone. The bison would be on her in three strides. The thick head would crush her chest. Hooves churned, mud flew, and hot, heavy rage thickened the air.

  A long stretch of sky moved in front of Girl’s eyes. Her arm was up and in front of her face. The bison’s broad head tilted. Girl could clearly see her deep, dark eye. A long line of spit dripped from the bison’s muzzle. The great hindquarters of the bison hunched up, bundling, curling. This was the last stride the bison would take before her head connected with Girl’s chest.

  The bison straightened her head to strike. That meant that Girl disappeared from her view. With her eyes on the sides, the bison was built to watch for meat-eaters coming at her from the rear. She could see a spot behind her own tail, but, like a horse, she could not see directly in front of her. Girl vanished in the spread between the cow’s eyes. The enormous head was almost to her chest. Girl felt a last heavy breath on her cheek. With that, the bison hunched and lunged.

  It wasn’t until that moment that Girl saw Bent. He jumped into the channel and onto the cow’s back. With a hand on one horn and the other horn in the crook of his elbow, he twisted her neck to the side. Both bodies fell roughly against the rock wall. Girl was knocked back. She saw hooves and horns and fur and spit and then everything went black.

  Pink Lines

  I’d spent hours on my cell phone assessing my prospects for funding a more substantial dig on the site. I was affiliated with a university, but its trustees were not sufficiently moved to cough up more than a paltry sum. It would cover my pay, Andy’s, the help of one student on rotation, and the most basic tools. With those resources, and taking the weather and working conditions into account, the excavation would be finished in roughly three years. My internal clock was ticking at a far quicker pace.

  Then I had a promising conversation with a trustee, Tim Spalding, at the Ancient History Museum in New York. I’d met him a few times, and he had been following my work for a while; he was interested and said he wanted to discuss the project with me in person. He seemed to share my need to proceed quickly. He talked of how the museum had fallen behind and was merely coasting on its past successes. The trustees needed to reinvigorate the institution by getting behind big discoveries. They had just hired a new director, and he had plans for innovation and ideas for collaboration with other countries. Tim asked me to fly out and meet him the next day. Excited, I agreed and paused to allow him to offer to pay my travel expenses, but all I got was silence. I took a deep breath and said I’d be there.

  When I hung up, I realized the extent of the tricky timing. I’d meant to go home, visit the doctor, and, if it was confirmed, tell Simon about my pregnancy. Then there was the issue of money, or my lack of it. I hesitated for a moment and then decided that credit cards were invented for precisely this sort of circumstance. I called Simon, barely giving him the chance to get the phone to his ear before I said, “I’ve got to go to Manhattan.”

  “Go to Manhattan, or drink one?”

  “Perhaps you can meet me there?”

  “I have classes. My students would wonder where I’d gone.”

  “I’m meeting with people from the Ancient History Museum.”

  “What? It sounds like you and Andy got into the cocktails again.”

  “Ask someone to take over your courses for a few days?”

  Simon paused to think. “There’s been talk of consolidation in the department. Better not.”

  “The museum might fund my project.”

  “You’ll need a few cocktails.”

  “I’d love to have you there,” I said.

  “I wish I could come.”

  “Me too.”

  Andy and I sat in our camping chairs and I told him about the upcoming meeting at the museum. “Can you guard the cave while I’m in New York? Will you be okay?” I worried about someone coming along and attempting to lay claim to the precious remains at the site. “Don’t worry,” Andy said, mistaking the reason for the concern in my voice. “I promise I won’t get lonely.”

  His wife had died two years before and sometimes I was caught off guard by the extent of his grief. I felt terrible when he said this, realizing that I’d been placing the feelings of the ancient dead before those of the living. “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “You’ve been thinking of her?”

  “I haven’t had a spare moment, but I miss her. The warmth of another body at night, you know…” His voice trailed off.

  “That’s an awkward thing to say, given that we share a tent.” I tried to coax a smile out of him.

  “I’d prefer someone who isn’t nauseous each morning. Am I too picky?”

  I gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t let anyone near that cave.” I didn’t want any other treasure hunters nosing around.

  “I’ll bare my teeth and snarl if anyone comes near.”

  I gave him a hug. “Thank you.”

  “You’ll be great.” He returned my squeeze, then made a show of looking up to the sky. “Please, God, let Rose be successful so that I can get my own tent.”

  My flight left from Avignon in the early hours. In the airport, I bought a pregnancy test. I would have to fit the visit to the doctor into my schedule later. When the plane was in the air, I shut myself into the small bathroom, opened the package, and peed on the felt tip of the stick, which looked oddly like a clear marker pen. I sat on the toilet, shut my eyes, and slowly counted to sixty. Vapor from blue chemicals in the toilet drifted up, the airplane engine vibrated, and the noise of a sudden flush of the toilet next door made me wonder if I might get flushed out myself. I imagined getting sucked down the drain and dropped into the cold air outside the plane. Somewhere over the steely waters of the Atlantic, I’d fly and soar above the clouds for a few moments…until I fell.

  My stomach lurched as I reached the count of sixty. I opened my eyes and looked. The pregnancy stick had a small plastic window in the middle with two sharp pink lines. Why pink? It was the most patronizing of all the lady colors. And what did two lines mean? I fumbled for the instructions in the box, only to realize that I’d thrown them out. With a deep breath, I pushed my hand through the round hole that held the garbage. Luckily, the piece of paper with the instructions was at the top of a garbage mountain inside. I scanned and saw that two lines meant a positive result. That stopped me for a moment—positive that I wasn’t pregnant, or positive that I was?

  Of course, in a way I already knew. Scientists work more within the realm of the hunch than we will ever admit, but it’s the hard evidence that turns an idea into something concrete. That’s when, as Andy might say, the shit gets real. My hands started to shake, but I couldn’t afford to let my emotions take over. It wasn’t like the baby was about to pop out at any moment. I could figure out what it all meant when I got in touch with Simon. For now, I wanted to focus on the meeting. I stood up, threw out the test, and smoothed my shirt. I pushed out of the stall, thought of ordering a shot of brandy, then caught myself with a laugh. I’d have to find new ways to be strong.

  One last trip to the bathroom before we landed; I combed my hair and put on lipstick. Soon I found myself in the customs line,
smiling sweetly. I swept past the luggage carousel. If I was adamant about anything in my life, it was that I didn’t travel with more than I could carry. There was a driver with my name on a sign waiting to pick me up. I switched into low heels as we drove.

  I felt satisfied with my choice of footwear as I followed an assistant, my heels clicking down the polished stone floor of the museum. He turned and showed me into a room, where I was surprised to find four people sitting at one side of a long table, a polished glass of water in front of each. One more spot, presumably for me, was set across from them; it looked like I would be facing a firing line. They were talking among themselves, and they stood when they saw me enter. The only person I recognized was Tim Spalding, the trustee I’d spoken with on the phone.

  “Dr. Gale, wonderful to see you again. Thank you for coming.”

  “Nice to see you again, Mr. Spalding,” I said.

  “Tim, please.”

  His palm was dry and his grip firm. I pulled my hand back with a glance down. I still had dirt under the edges of my nails. I had given them a scrub earlier, but I hadn’t worried about it too much. Every archaeologist in the field suffers the same. But then, under the grandly arched ceiling of the museum conference room, all that digging and dirt felt very far away.

  Tim didn’t seem to notice my hands. “You’ll be sitting here,” he said, motioning toward the chair that faced the other side of the long table. I put down my laptop bag. I had expected to sit in an office and talk. The last time I’d been in this intimidating configuration was when I’d defended my doctoral dissertation. The same kind of nerves crawled under my skin now.

  “Dr. Gale, I took the liberty of assembling the committee. We all rearranged our schedules to come.” Tim went on to introduce the others. There was a paleoarchaeologist named Maya Patel, whom I’d met when we were on a panel together a few years back. A woman named Caitlin Alfonso, whom I had heard of but never met, a fairly well-known primatologist. She looked the part, with her Jane Goodall hair—a gray ponytail held back in a loose band. The last person introduced had stood to the side as the formalities were under way. Now he took a crisp step forward as Tim said, “And this is Guy Henri.”

  The man held out his hand. I grasped it and felt the callus from my digging trowel bite into the edge of his palm. A slight flinch from him; I looked down. His thumb stretched across the top of mine. The skin was pink and fresh, and the thumbnail was a buffed and perfect oval. I caught a whiff of lemon with a hint of something spicy, a scent far too tasteful to be called cologne. He also glanced at our mismatched hands.

  “Rosamund Gale.” I pulled my hand back.

  “Your reputation precedes you.”

  “You’re French.” I smiled, realizing that on the phone Tim had Anglicized his name so it sounded like it belonged to a part-time fitness instructor who insisted his beer gut was muscle. But this was Guy Henri, the well-known Parisian curator. I’d never paid much attention to museum politics, but even I had heard of Guy. He had built an extension on the museum in Arles, a shard of glass fixed onto the older, dour modernist concrete building there. It had put the museum on the map and it drew tourists in numbers that Arles had never seen, but the addition had come at a cost. With a conservative French government pulling back on the funding of regional arts programs, Guy had forged an unprecedented relationship to build the extension with an oil company as a sponsor. The perception in the archaeology community was that this was an American-style model of business, the first step in turning a public institution into a space for private gain. My French friends were of the firm opinion that Guy was the barbarian who had kicked open the gate.

  “I didn’t realize that you had been appointed to the Ancient History Museum,” I said.

  “You know my work in Arles?”

  “Of course.”

  “My remit here is much the same.”

  “Invite a sponsor to chisel its name across the door?” I asked.

  He let out an easy laugh, clearly unconcerned. “My dear, this is New York. The wealthy don’t need to hide behind a company here. They etch their own names, in full. But the true problem is that this institution has become a dusty crypt for artifacts. I will make it into a center for didacticism and debate. The public will be engaged with a dynamic institution, as important as the public libraries of the nineteenth century.”

  “Carnegie funded the libraries,” I said. “Private money.”

  “With a vision for public good. We can be the start of the next American revolution.” The corners of Guy’s mouth curled up in satisfaction. I could already see how he thought it would play out. My theories about Neanderthals were controversial enough to attract the kind of attention Guy needed. He had the connections to negotiate a working collaboration around artifacts found in French soil. He might have kicked open the gate, but now he invited me to step through.

  Tim looked unsure about the tension between Guy and me. Was it a good sign or not? Aware he’d missed some of the subtext of the exchange, he waved a hand toward my chair. “We will let you get started, Rose.”

  I sat, swallowed hard, and made a show of taking a sip of water from the glass at my right. I plugged in my computer, using the quiet moment to think. Maya Patel, like Tim, would understand the significance of the find. Guy clearly knew that my theories were controversial, but what was the depth of his understanding? The primatologist would also need context. Eyes on the floor, I tried to summon whatever part of me had once been brave.

  “Maybe start by telling us why you should get to spend our money?” Guy broke the silence and, in doing so, rearranged the room into his vision of its hierarchy.

  “I’ve spent the past few years working on a detailed review of the archaeological evidence we have about Neanderthals,” I said. “I compared it to similar evidence from modern humans who lived at the same time. We wanted to better understand the disappearance of the Neanderthals. As you know, their extinction is usually explained in terms of the so-called superiority of modern humans. It’s commonly posited that Homo sapiens had the ability to innovate as well as a more evolved culture and a greater cognitive capacity, and that’s why they survived when the Neanderthals didn’t. Our review was an attempt to test this assumption.”

  Now that I was in my area of comfort, I started to warm up. Rather than being cool and imposing, the stone in the building strengthened me. All four people leaned forward, listening intently. “We reviewed most of the studies completed within the past ten years. In that time, there has been a huge shift in our conception of Neanderthals, especially given the new DNA evidence that has greatly deepened our understanding of their biology. We compared modern humans and the Neanderthals who lived at the same time, and we found that the archaeological record shows little difference between the technological or cognitive ability of the two groups. It is incorrect, in any of these areas, to call the Neanderthals inferior.”

  Maya Patel quickly raised a finger. “If I may, Dr. Gale?”

  “Yes, go ahead.”

  “I read your paper and was intrigued. But—forgive me—if the Neanderthals were not technologically or cognitively disadvantaged, could you expand on your ideas about why they did not survive?”

  “It’s a good question,” I said, knowing that it was also carefully phrased. Maya was probably on my side.

  “It must be answered with perfect clarity.” Guy pressed his forefinger and thumb together in the air; his polished cuff link caught the light.

  “I won’t claim to have a definitive answer for you,” I said, addressing Guy directly. “If you are looking for public engagement, then I’d suggest the conversation about Neanderthals is what needs to evolve. It’s unlikely that there was a single cause for their extinction. They had a stable culture that survived for more than two hundred thousand years, which is far longer than the modern human has endured or likely will. That said, living at low population density left Neanderthals vulnerable to disease, climate change, interbreeding, and, especially, viol
ence and competition from modern humans. What they lacked was the safety net of a social network, but they were a magnificent people.”

  “So magnificent, they died off?” Guy asked skeptically. “That’s the question we are up against.”

  “We’ve long assumed that it was our species’ large brains that set modern humans apart. The studies show that Neanderthal brains were possibly larger than ours, though cognitive ability and brain size are not necessarily as linked as we once thought. In the physical evidence, we see a brain that might have worked similarly to ours, like in the way they made tools. What’s more, the modern human brain hasn’t evolved substantially in the past fifty thousand years.”

  “If a Neanderthal were sitting in my chair, would he give you funding?” Tim tried to lighten the tone.

  “My point”—I tried to smile—“is that our brains haven’t changed significantly since the time of the Neanderthals. We are running twenty-first-century software on hardware that was last upgraded fifty thousand years ago. If the modern human brain is largely unchanged and the Neanderthals lived in much the same way as humans did then, it is realistic to think that we might be able to communicate with one sitting in your chair. The question remains, though: Would his brow protrude as much as yours, Tim?”

  Tim, bless his heart, laughed out loud.

  “With apologies.” I gave Tim a friendly nod. “I undermine my own position by making a joke. The point is that the archetype of the grunting, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal is not only outdated, it’s wrong. That’s what the conversation with the public should focus on.”