Themselves

Word Count: 2,794

I was overwhelmingly ecstatic to be one of the few fortunate archaeology students privileged enough to be chosen from a multitude of extremely highly qualified candidates. We were to take part in a classified expedition to a wildly remote location. I simply could not believe it when the dean of anthropology from a prestigious institution of higher learning contacted me gave me the good news.

This was a once in a thousand lifetimes opportunity. Signs of another advanced civilization prior to ours surfaced after workers found engraved stone tablet buried for who knows how long under the solidified rubble of an ancient mudslide. No evidence of any previous civilization as old as this, at least in modern times, was ever discovered until now.

Linguists from around the world were already on the scene making an attempt to decipher the odd lettering of the massive stone tablets. We hoped they would translate them of course, but personally I cared little about that aspect of the find. My unbridled excitement focused solely on the possibility of uncovering never before found fossilized remains of the inhabitants of this newly discovered civilization.

After an agonizingly long ground trip, I saw the winged vehicle in a small clearing that would take us to our ultimate destination. Our small aerial transport jolted abruptly, up and down as we passed through some rather turbulent winds. Sudden gales rocking the vehicle made me think more than once we would dive nose first into the dense jungle floor.

It was necessary to take this rough flight in order to progress over the mountains to our destination in the deep, remote valley. The long arduous trip from home to the sharply mountainous region of the southern continent was very uncomfortable. My body ached from the long flight as the craft shuddered through the side winds beating against the flying vehicle.

I had to admit, despite the numbingly rough ride, I did find the view of the majestic snow-capped mountains and vibrant green forests so incredibly alive with color. Seeing the vastly chromatic, lush green of the trees below and the white snow at the peak of the mountains all in one glance was indeed quite a sight to behold. Eventually, a small speck of a clearing became visible ahead. As we drew closer to the landing site, it was all I could do to quell my increasing excitement.

The clearing was small. It was a narrow fit, but the pilots managed a safe landing on the recently constructed pad below. As we began unstrapping ourselves from our safety harnesses and grabbing our equipment, the pilot told us sternly not to exit until the engine came to a full stop. I felt like I waited an eternity before the sliding door finally opened.

There were many supplies to unload. We first removed our most delicate equipment and set it carefully out of the way. Then we began unloading the basic essential supplies. The water here was found to be undrinkable, so there were many heavy jugs to unload. I am smart but not strong, and I strained my way through the unloading process until everything was on the ground.

Our transportation then rose back into the air with a flutter, stirring leaves and dirt from the jungle floor. It reached the top of the giant trees and disappeared over the canopy of leaves. A bit of panic, or perhaps anxiety hit me as I watched our only way out of this remote jungle fly away; I knew it was not coming back for seven days. The transport would return when it was time to bring more supplies, so the amount we had was going to have to last us until then.

We were virtually alone. There were the other team members, but the extremely remote valley location made contact with the outside world all but impossible. If for any reason, we had to contact the forward base, someone had to scale the steep mountain to send and receive transmissions. The funders of the expedition did not bring in an engineering team to install an antenna at the mountain’s peak yet. I did not think it would get to me, but I hated the idea of being cut off from civilization with no way out except for small aerial vehicles.

Putting those thoughts away for a while, I helped the others carry the equipment to a cleared pathway to meet with the linguistics team and geology team. With their camps already set up, the other teams helped carry the supplies to the base. The food and water was for them as well, and it was only fair they carry some of the load.

Although the linguistics team had yet to decipher the tablets, the geology team made some rather interesting findings. After using various methods of measuring radiation levels in the rock strata and the decay of radioactive isotopes, the group determined the rough age of the tablets. By their calculations, the tablets were more than two million years old.

Surely they made some egregious mistakes in their estimations. Our own species is estimated to be around one hundred thousand years old at most. I could not believe there was any possible way any intelligent species evolved so many eons before us.

My experience and education taught me only numerous, gigantic beasts roamed the planet before us. It was estimated to be about this time when an explosion in the number of species on the planet occurred. These enigmatic beasts were not technologically developed and died out hundreds of millions of years ago.

Most of the creatures were extinct. In fact, virtually all of the species were extinct with the exception of a few aquatic creatures. A miniscule number of species remained unchanged, but evolution literally took everything else to a different state.

Once we got all of our equipment and supplies to the camp, my team set up our own temporary shelters. The sun was already set behind the thick canopy of the trees overhead. It was dark enough already. I knew when the sun set behind the mountain peak, I would learn a new meaning to the word “dark.”

We had to set up the camp under the few lights we could spare. Power supplies for the lamps were as limited as the food, so we could not light the camp brightly enough to really see what we were doing. Setting up our feeble shelters turned out to be quite a difficult task.

I wanted to get to our dig site now, but it was not safe to be out in this untamed jungle in the pitch black night. Predators on the ground, in the trees and even in the air made night travel very dangerous indeed. When we finally arrived at the dig site the next morning, it was not at all what I expected.

I assumed the ground covering vegetation was removed, but it was as dense and green as ever. Dense underbrush and thick vines obscured any dirt from sight, and I realized how difficult this was truly going to be. It was our task to first clear the surface before excavating any deeper.

My team received our next load of supplies and the surface was still not completely cleared of the dense, heavy vegetation. It was vital we took as much care of what we did. Rushing and getting ahead of ourselves could in some way damage important archeological evidence. We toiled over the tedious work even beyond the arrival of our supply delivery at the end of my second week.

I knew without question, when I accepted this golden opportunity, I absolutely could not pass it up. An entire year in this miserably hot-steamy place was going to feel like an eternity. In my furvor to be given the chance to take part in such a rare expedition, I did not allocate much thought on the difference in environment from which I was accustomed. It was more than worth it, but the weather was still quite miserable. It was rainy more than it was not, but I was going to see something only two other teams in recorded history ever had the opportunity to see.

From this point, we began to sweep away the dirt after sectioning the area into a grid. I literally removed very thin layers each day, no more than my finger in thickness from any gridded section in a day using only a light haired brush.

Twenty-nine days passed before one of my team mates uncovered the fossilized remains of something incredible. Much more ground had to be excavated before we could determine what it was, but they definitely found the endo-skeletal remains of something.

It was four days after this when the gentle sweeping of the dirt uncovered enough of the fossilized remains to determine what type of creature to which these bones once belonged.

It was large, very large. The newly discovered beast was every bit as massive as the largest of the mammals living in modern day. Although badly decayed, we found evidence of some sort of harness on its body, there since the creature died. Patterns of iron-oxide in the soil indicated the harness was held in place with a series of rings and buckles.

We theorized this was a beast of burden or a riding animal, and became very hopeful to find the master who harnessed the creature. That would be the most amazing discovery to date. What made this truly unusual were the carnivorous teeth filling the beast’s mouth. What kind of being could tame a massive beast such as this?

The geologists surveying the area used various methods and set the date of the strata in which we found the beast approximately eight hundred thousand years old. This placed the time of the creature’s death after the time the ancient mudslide covering the stone tablets.

The linguistics team made a lot of headway as well. Although they had yet to translate the tablets, they began to understand the sequencing system of the chiseled language. Now they had that figured out, it was somewhat easier for them to make the translations.

Days passed, many supply shipments arrived, but no one discovered anything new. For leisure, we did not have much. Members of the three teams entertained themselves with daytime walks through the forest. They had to cut the thick vegetation in order to make walking paths.

One night those out for a walk were about to turn around and make their way back to camp. That was when several of them spotted two vine covered cyclopean stones. It was an immediately noticeable aspect they saw that the massive stones were too well shaped to be natural.

With few supplies and the dangers lurking in the forest in the night, they had to return to camp without any further examination of the newly discovered blocks. We started at dawn getting our supplies to the new location. Going back and forth each day would take too much time, so a secondary camp was set up near the new discovery.

The explorers emphasized the massiveness of the blocks, but I did not think they would be this big. The obelisks were every bit of ten times my height. They were the largest of the tablets found yet. These, covered from top to bottom with the strange ancient glyphs, might be the cypher the linguistics team needed to break the strange code, those writings of this long lost civilization. If the team translated the tablets into our language, it may be very possible they may indicate the locations of other important sites.

At the secondary location, when darkness came, every little noise made me jumpy. In the midst of the large encampment, I felt safe. Now, with nothing more than a few tents and a small campfire in the center, I felt much more vulnerable to the creatures in the jungle. The first two nights, I got very little sleep. By the third night I began to grow accustomed to this even more remote location, my nerves were not quite so shaken, and I finally managed to get a good night’s slumber.

One of the stones was finally cleared and the linguistics team got to work on the translation. My small group chose a spot and prepared for a long and tedious excavation process. With our team divided, we gently dug into the sediment in search of more evidence of the ancient civilization. Five supply shipments later and discouragement began to affect us all. My particular sections of the excavation became deeper than I was tall.

On my knees, a pad underneath me to distribute my weight, I swept away dirt and dust by one stroke of the brush at a time. For what was supposed to be the biggest moment in my life, I had to say the tedious work almost drove me insane with boredom.

I was close to sneaking into a supply transport to get out of here by this time, but then I finally uncovered the bones of something big. It looked very big. It was much bigger than the first fossilized find. Now all of the tedium washed away. I made the discovery of a creature much-much larger than the beast of burden. Nothing remotely like this could be found in recorded history.

I wished I could dig it out with a shovel, but it was far too large. I had to be patient as we slowly removed the several million year old sediment from around the massive skeleton. It was probably going to take me more than the rest of my scheduled time here to completely uncover it. I knew I would need to ask to sign up for another year. I was the first to discover something so amazing, and I was not going to hand my find over to someone else.

It took nearly thirty days only to reveal what appeared to be a hand. A chain of bones held at what we believed to be the upper cavity of the creature was exposed thirty days after that. The chain of bones had at their upper end a set of strangely curved bones. It was possible for me to stand fully erect inside of the torso cavity.

As the excavation continued, we theorized the creature must be bipedal. It was astounding to think something as enigmatically tall could possess enough strength to defy gravity in order to remain standing. It did not add up. The strength to weight ratio for something this large to maintain an erect posture was not previously believed possible.

The phalanges at the end of the top limbs appeared to have been dexterous enough to manipulate tools. The ends of the lower appendages were different, being too short and oddly shaped to effectively use tools.

On the next supply drop, a six member camera crew exited the vehicle and unloaded all of their equipment. Due to the size and amount of the equipment, there was little room for the food, water and basic medications we needed. One member of the geology team rather lost it when he confronted the pilots about this. Our water was running low and our food supplies were nearly depleted.

As angry words spewed from his mouth, one of the pilots stopped him and told him another shipment would arrive in a few days with yet another crew. This crew faced the monumental task of figuring out how to move the pieces of the giant skeleton safely to a museum. There, great care would make sure the bones remained intact for generations to come.

I did not like the idea of someone handling my discovery. I could not stand the thought of them disassembling the body to move it one bone at a time. This body rested here for millions of years and it felt wrong to move it. It had to be moved now as my excavation exposed it to the elements though. Careful and very specific labeling was done to assure the curators reassembled it correctly.

My find was nearly completely uncovered by the time the linguistics team finally deciphered the language found on the many engraved stone blocks. With great enthusiasm, the team ran into the camp yelling they finally made their translation.

“We broke the code,” one of them said while trying to catch his breath.

“We know what they called themselves,” another continued.

They both nearly collapsed as they tried to breathe. The members of the linguistics team tended to be sedentary and out of shape.

“Humans, they called themselves humans,” the first managed to say.

Humans huh? That seemed like an odd name for creatures to call themselves.

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