The Find

by Steve Charles

David could not remember how many times he had reminded Giovanni he was a doctor, not a bloody professor, but here he was again holding the flap of his tent open, beckoning him to come down to the dig site in his earnest, overly energetic way, hand flapping like the wing of a trapped bird. “Presto Professore! Vieni in fretta, err, come quickly!” He always started in Italian before remembering David was Australian and then repeated himself in his thickly accented English.

“What now!” Shouted David, tired of the interruptions to his research and study of the small broken pieces of ancient earthenware, knapped stone spearheads and carved bone ornaments, all from the wrong period in time of course, but still holding a fascination for the archaeologist. Giovanni did not pay any attention to his boss shouting. He had learned early in the expedition that the short, balding, stocky man had a bad temper and became increasingly aggressive as the heat of the desert reached its zenith around noon. So he continued, brushing his temper aside, to do what he was being paid to do, manage the dig site and the workers.

“What is it this time?” David hissed, “Another spearhead or shard of pottery?” He really wasn’t in the mood for another false lead or secondary find, it was getting to the point where he was seriously weighing up the options of pulling up stumps and forgetting about the whole idea.

“No Professore, no!” urged the slim, bearded Italian dressed in the local Sudanese Tob, a 15-foot long piece of material worn wrapped around the body with enough left over to cover the head as required. “Venire! Come, come.”

With much ado, David relented, stood, gathered his wide-brimmed Akubra Hat, sunglasses and cane and limped out of the tent under the arm of Giovanni still holding the flap open. Once outside he stopped momentarily, and out of habit patted the hot, downturned horseshoe gaffer taped to the tent pole. His brother had given it to him years earlier when he embarked on his first international dig and although it was a silly superstitious thing to do, it had become part of his routine for more than two decades.

It was a short walk down to the dig site over the baking sand and flat bedrock, Giovanni, as always leading the way and waving David forward while talking non stop about how “Eccolo Professore, sono positive! This is it professor I am positive!” and other words of encouragement that now, three weeks into the dig, fell on deaf ears.

The path angled downward as they circumnavigated a large boulder and soon they were overlooking a small group of Sudanese laborers shoveling and sweeping sand and arid dirt away from, what initially looked like any of the other dull reddish-brown rocks littered across the landscape.

“Well?” questioned David, removing his sunglasses, and immediately regretting it as the bright, glaring sun burned his eyes. Giovanni urged him closer to the dig, his right arm extended and pointing to the rock being uncovered and his left hand indicating to David to follow. “What the bloody hell,” his boss grumbled but followed nonetheless.

When they arrived the laborers, glad for a reprieve from digging, stood back and watch the cranky old boss man as he limped forward and stood over the rock.

“So you found a rock,” David mumbled unbelievably.  “You mean you got me out here to look at a rock?” he continued glaring at Giovanni with his piercing sky blue, bloodshot eyes.  “Why are you wasting my time you idiot?”

“No Professore. Guarda. Look.” Giovanni replied placatingly before sweeping his arm across the rest of the area on which they stood. “Guarda, err, look, here.” He continued, leaning down and grabbing one of the smaller brushes left by the laborers and sweeping some more sand away from the top of the stone. Instantly David saw why he had been dragged down there in the noonday heat.

It wasn’t one rock but two carefully carved to butt together with a tiny accent of a curve exposed and either end disappearing below the surrounding landscape.

David immediately stepped back pulling Giovanni with him and indicated for the laborers to continue digging and clearing the earth away. In about twenty minutes the small gang had removed enough to expose a rough oval shape of carefully aligned stonework. David's heart was racing in his temples, not with the heat but a growing sense of excitement and anticipation.

This was something very unexpected in this country. The stone oval was similar to others he had seen in the past as a young student in Europe, indicating the base or foundation of a hut. But that was impossible, those were built in the Upper Paleolithic period but here, at that time, it was a Rainforest. It was conjectured that the local peoples were nomadic, made rudimentary shelters from hide or foliage, leaving no evidence of a settlement or structure that had ever been discovered.

David calmed himself. This couldn’t be a hut foundation, could it?

One of the laborers shouted out and Giovanni ran to him and knelt down studying an object poking out of the sand. “Professore!” he exclaimed waving once again for David to come to him.

With assistance from the laborer who had made the discovery David knelt and began to carefully sweep aside the sand. Bit by bit an antler of one of the local Bukhara Deer started to emerge, but it was not your usual run of the mill antler. This one had what looked to be a symbol carved into it and a primitive lined design surrounding it!

David looked up at the men now gathering to see what all the fuss was about and asked if anyone knew what the symbol meant. Of course, none of them understood English so Giovanni asked them in their local dialect. “Dupi anjeun ningali simbol ieu sateuacanna?”

One by one, the men stooped to look but shook their heads muttering to each other in low curious tones. Disappointed, David continued to remove all the sand and dry dirt until carefully pulling the single antler out of the earth and placing it into a large plastic bag Giovanni had retrieved from one of the crates at the side of the site used to transport and store all the dig’s paraphernalia.

Carefully scouring the rest of the area, David again motioned for them all to start removing the surface sand. Starting around the exterior, they found the stonework was three deep and neatly hewn so they all fit snug into place. It was featureless except for one end, which had the top row missing, four stones width. “That would have been the doorway,” David mused to no one in particular.

By now it was mid-afternoon and the intensity of the desert heat prompted David to call a halt to the progress directing, through Giovanni, for them to rest and rehydrate. Once the gang had left and sat in the shade of a nearby dune, boiling water in a large pot for their traditional hibiscus tea and chatting easily, David began to slowly scrape away the top layer of sand on the interior of the hut foundations. Giovanni sat with the men watching in amazement the transformation of his usually cranky boss into an animated, delighted childlike state of curiosity. Everything about the man had changed, and for the first time in weeks, he looked happy to be here.

After fifteen minutes of scraping and kneeling, David had removed several bucket loads worth of sand and grit and sat straight back upon his haunches, removing his glasses, wiped sweat from his face and back of the neck with a lime green bandana, motioned Giovanni to come over.

“Look at this.” He wheezed from the heat and his exertion as his site manager arrived handing him a mug of hibiscus tea and opening a large Umbrella to shade them both. In the hole sat several rudimentary tools of stone and petrified wood, some fully exposed, others still half-buried. “Look,” continued David after a sip of tea “Do you know what that is Giovanni?”

David was pointing at a small pile of knapped stones that had been shaped into a tool to be cupped in the palm of the hand and sporting a keen broad outer edge. Giovanni was no expert but guessed it was some kind of cutting utensil and said so.

“Yes,” replied David turning his head to look at him directly. He was smiling, which caught Giovanni off guard; he had only seen the man smile once before when David hired him online several months ago.

“You are quite correct.” He was saying, then broke into a short barking laugh of delight before adding, “These are called Scrapers and were used to clear land and dig the earth for cultivation.” Feeling around for his cane, David awkwardly managed to maneuver himself into a position to stand waving off Giovanni’s offer of assistance all the while describing some of the other tools and utensils. “That is an axe! See how the wood, now petrified, has been split at one end and a smaller version of the scraper strapped and resined in place. And here, see here?” he wheezed excitedly as he forced his arthritic knee and hips to join his good leg in raising himself. “I’d bet my bottom dollar that those long straight bits of bone are needles or hole borers, or both!”

Once fully erect David took a deep breath, held it, and then expelled the air out of his lungs, puffing out his ruddy cheeks to relieve the tension from the pain in his joints.

He then picked up his half-drunk mug of tea and waved it all around them.

“You know Giovanni, this may look like a barren, lifeless desert but in reality, we are standing on a farm.” He suddenly laughed again, the action and sound so foreign not only to Giovanni but also the work gang that they too began to laugh contagiously.

“A farm!” exclaimed David in a wild delight, “Here in the middle of this God-forsaken place, a farm!”  His mind was working overtime trying to fathom the implications of this find.  To farm, you would need a decent climate, arable land and regular rainfall and be close to permanent water.  None of those had been here since………

“HOLY SHIT!” He suddenly exclaimed and broke into a crazy little jig as Giovanni stepped back confused and the men relaxing in the shade of the dune broke into another chorus of laughter pointing at the silly old man.

Spilling the remainder of his tea in all directions he threw down the mug and grabbing Giovanni by both shoulders dragged him into his crazy jig and they twirled and danced together laughing.

“My boy, my boy” puffed David once the exuberant joy and jig were evaporated by the baking heat and his aching joints. “I think we have stumbled across the find of the…” he paused a moment trying to find the right word then, ”Yes, the find of the century!” he stated proudly.

Still confused Giovanni had to ask. “Cosa Abbiamo Trovato professore? Um, what have we found Professore?” and David laughed delightedly once more before clapping him on both shoulders again.

“If I am correct, there has not been a forest or grassland here for over 12,000 years! Twelve Thousand Years!” he repeated excitedly to stress the point. “And, if my theory is right, we are standing in the middle of the worlds oldest known domestic dwelling, on the worlds oldest known farm, in the middle of the fucking Sudan!”

Grabbing Giovanni again for the third time David embarked on another waltz around the exposed stone foundations, yelling “We are going to be famous my boy, Famous I tell you, like Tutankhamen discovery famous!”

Once again the heat and pain overcame his exuberance and David wheezed to a stop panting like a running dog and red as a beetroot. His hat had fallen off during the dance exposing his baldhead, which was beginning to turn a dark pink. Giovanni helped him to the stone wall and bade him sit, recovered his mug and called for a refill which David drank one draught. “Another, please!” he asked Giovanni then requested of him to get two of the better suited Sudanese workers to come and help him excavate the rest of the hut interior.

With the aid of the remaining gang, Giovanni erected three floodlights, and as late afternoon rolled into sunset, the site was illuminated in a stark white glow. Now and then they would have to reposition one or two so that David did not cast a shadow over an object he was painstakingly removing from its resting place before cataloguing and then packing into a fresh self-seal bag.

David’s body was reaching its absolute pain thresh-hold by the time dinner was served, and by midnight he could hardly move from the waist down, still, he managed to crawl inch by painful inch through the dig site, knees and back screaming for relief. He was determined to finish before the sun returned, reaching over the horizon and flooded the dig with wave after wave of increasingly intensifying heat.

In the early hours, at last, satisfied he had found all of the relics buried in the interior of the oval stone hut base, he permitted himself to stop, slid over the low rock foundation wall and collapse on his back feeling relieved and exhausted. The pain from crawling on his hands and knees for hours would not leave him for several days, even if he took the morphine tablets his physician had so readily prescribed, but he elected to forgo that option.

“Giovanni,” he wheezed, “Turn off the lights and generator and send the men back to camp.” Which he did, and as the tired Sudanese laborers passed him laying there, he raised a hand to shake each in turn, thanking them for their good work.

When they had gone he motioned the slim Italian to bring the water canteen and sit by him. “I know you don't like me much,” David began, “I am a bad-tempered and rude individual and have treated you far worse than you have deserved but…” Giovanni interrupted him at that point “No, no, no Professore” he began, but David would have none of it.

“Yes,” he insisted. “I have been a right royal pain in the arse and I don’t expect you to forgive me, but let me tell you something.” He tried to sit up, but his back was protesting too much, and in the end, accepting Giovanni’s aid, managed to prop himself up as comfortably as possible against the rock wall. He smiled a new feeling the rough-hewn surface against his aching back, still warm from the heat of the day and floodlights as the cooler night air wafted across his sunburnt face and arms.

His sight quickly adjusted to the darkness and he looked up at the brilliant display of stars in the clear desert sky and raised the canteen to his lips, but it was empty.

Meanwhile, Giovanni sat patiently waiting for the old man to tell his tale when David, shaking the empty canteen, passed it to him and asked if he could please refill it before he went on. “Si Professore, tornero a breve, I’ll be back shortly.”

And there he was, all alone in the Sudan, leaning on the biggest discovery of his career, proving that humans had built dwellings and begun farming 2,000 years earlier than previously believed. He was feeling lightheaded and for the first time at peace with himself and his choice of, to date, a lackluster career. Now he would be one of the giants - Dr David Mason, from that little backwater village in New South Wales, Australia, with the big dreams and bad temper, up there with Howard Carter, Hella Eckardt and Edward Drinker Cope!

Giovanni had to run all the way back to camp for water as the drum at the site had been drunk dry. The men were lying already asleep in the open air on woven woolen mats around well-stocked campfires for, although sightings were rare, wild animals still-hunted at night in this region.

Once he had filled David’s canteen and another for himself he gathered up some Dura bread and a bowl of Moukhbaza, a mix of bananas and chili peppers, then began tracing his way back along the path to the site. He did not need a torch; under the clear Sudanese sky the moon illuminated everything in a pale waxen glow.

“Professore,” he called out as he neared “Ecco, ti ho comprato anche del cibo, err scusa, sorry, I have bought us some food as well.” David was laying back against the stone, head back, eyes closed with a broad smile on his face and Giovanni sat next to him and began laying out the bread, banana chili mix and canteens.

His boss hadn’t stirred so Giovanni gently tapped him on the shoulder, “Professore, Professore?” He began but David did not respond, so be sat quietly eating some of the bread and banana mix and sipping on the water while overhead the universe sparkled like a billion diamonds scattered against the black velvet of space.

David hadn't moved since Giovanni had found him on his return, eyes closed, head back, angelic smile and for some reason, he felt something was wrong and reached over and laid his hand over David’s right arm expecting him to stir, but his sunburn limb felt cool to the touch. He snatched it away without thinking and then gently placed his hand on his chest. It was still; he felt no breathing, no heartbeat.

Genuflecting, Giovanni sat back against the stone again as a sadness descended and a tear slowly gathered on his eyelash before running down his cheek unchecked. On the eve of his greatest achievement his boss had simply gone to sleep with the angels and he, Giovanni, would never know what he was about to tell him.