Neanderthal

It was cold. Very cold, even for that time of year. Olnuk tossed another knot of wood on the fire and then dove back into his pile of hides. No matter what he did it seemed that some part of his body was exposed to cold air. Right now there was a breeze running up his leg freezing his left buttock. He had no word for buttock of course, he just knew that now his bottom was cold.

He turned the frozen buttock towards the fire. Now he was facing the opening to the small cave, and could hear the wind whistling past the entrance. He was irritated that he was now awake. He usually slept through the coldest parts of the winter, not really hibernating but sleeping so he would not feel the cold and so he’d not have to eat very much. Not eating meant not hunting, and hunting in this weather was an unpleasant chore.

He couldn’t get back to sleep. Looking outside he saw that it was daylight. He couldn’t see the sun, but the glare from the snow proved that it was a bright day. If he had to get up and hunt, then this would be the time. He threw off the hides and reached for his hunting gar-ments: leg coverings that tied up in the front, a hide shirt and another for warmth, and coarse book-like foot coverings. Growling his discom-fort, he grabbed a spear as he crawled through the narrow cave opening into the blinding whiteness outside.

Snow. Cold. Bright. The world smelled glorious, though. He had to wait a few moments until his eyes became adapted to the outdoor glare, com-ing from both above and below. The snow was shallow and icy, and his steps made crunching sounds as he started to walk towards the nearby trees. It would be hard to be stealthy.

Olnuk was used to hunting in a group, but he had done a bad thing. His clan had sent him on a spirit-quest, and he had to be alone for an-other moon to ponder his error. So stealth must replace teamwork, and right now that meant he must hide and wait for food to pass or build some kind of trap. He decided to hide and wait. He found some bushes growing beside a tree and dug a hiding place out of the snow between them. He backed into his lair, spear in hand, and waited. Oddly, he was now more comfortable than he had been in his cave. His mind gradual-ly grew fuzzy and he wandered off to sleep again.

A sharp noise brought him quickly alert. Bark. Three man-heights in front of him stood a dog, staring at him. It was just standing there, not angry or aggressive or afraid. Just staring. His spear was still in his hand. He threw it with all of his strength, a hard throw given that it was underhanded and from a kneeling po-sition. It struck the dog just above the top of its sternum and passed deep into its chest. It jumped and gave a screech, and then collapsed.

Olnuk was pleased. He had not been out very long, and the animal would feed him for days. He tied the front legs together with rawhide straps, put the end of the spear through the loop so formed and slung the spear over his shoulder for the trip home. It was a short trip, and he was so happy that he ran most of the way.

When he arrived home he first built up the fire a bit for cooking. Then, using his black stone, he cut the fur and skin from around on back leg and pulled, peeling the skin down to the foot. He cut the skin off, and then disjointed the hip and cut the leg from the carcase. The leg he placed in a hot spot of the fire, and the remainder he lay just outside of the cave en-trance in some snow. His people had learned that keeping their meat cool attracted fewer scavengers.

He sat facing the flames, seeing them flicker and watching the haunch cook. In spite of the punishment from his clan, life was good. He was warm; he could smell the meat cooking, and hear the hissing of the fat and the popping and crackling of the fire. He did not hear the small noise behind him. He leaned forward to poke the fire with a stick, and when he straightened up again something smacked him hard on the back of the head. Then he felt nothing.

* * *

When he awoke was no longer in the forest, and no longer in the small cave. His head hurt. The smells were confusing. Other people were near, to be sure, and smoke and food. He was hungry. Under these smells were others, more subtle: damp fur, discarded food, and other smells harder to place but familiar. Dog. He smelled dog. Not his dead dog, not his dinner, but a live dog, and nearby.

He kept his eyes closed and listened carefully. The wind rustled branches nearby and there was a small fire someplace within hearing. There! Someone spoke. Again. Not the language of his people, but definitely speech. Oh, maker! He was with the others! He was a captive – this was very bad for him. The others did not often tolerate his people. His tribe were chased away and sometimes killed. To be their prisoner was an uncomfortable prospect.

He could not move much at all. He could roll a bit but his hands and feet were tied together, and his feet were fastened to a stake in the ground. He was alive, though, and that was a bit confusing. Why not simply kill him if that was to be his fate, why delay?

Perhaps they would eat him. This dismayed him, and he let out a small groan. He did not wish to be eaten.

He heard someone approaching. He closed his eyes – he could make no sense of what he could see anyway – and hoped that whoever was coming would think he was still asleep. He heard a rustling sound and smelled hides; then WHACK! A great pain in his leg, He jerked, screamed, and opened his eyes. He looked into the face of one of the others. This one was light haired, frail looking but tall. He was holding a stick, which had obviously been used to strike him.

The spindly creature made sounds, but nothing Olnuk could understand. The thing poked him and repeated what he had said. Olnuk growled and bared his teeth. The other raised the stick again, but then lowered it and backed away. He opened a hole in the ‘cave’ with his arm and left. The hole closed behind him.

* * *

“One of the Harig folk?”

“Yes.”

The taller man was holding a skinned tree branch. The shorter one had curly, darker hair and red lines drawn down his face. The shorter one spoke again. “You wish to continue with this, Ulan? The Harig are bad enemies. They are few but strong. We have some peace with them now.”

The one called Ulan spoke next. “He killed Unoo and I demand payment. There is a debt here.”

“He would have nothing to trade. It would mean his life, because you could never make him a slave. There may be those in the village who would pay the debt simply to avoid a conflict.”

“We would win, JONO. There is no doubt.”

“True, Ulan, but it would cost lives, and more death will not pay your debt, not really.” Jono put his hand on Ulan’s shoulder and looked him earnestly in the eyes. “What is it you want? Another dog? Unoo is gone, but some of her sons and daughters are here. I’m sure you could have your pick.”

“Bah,” Ulan spat. “To the Harig dogs are just a nuisance or food. Unoo was a hunter, a friend and companion. She was my protector. I gave her food from my pot, and she gave me meat from her kills. Do we not have an obligation to protect her too?”

“Of course we have an obligation, but she was not completely one of us. If she had been you daughter, I would not suggest any mercy. But Unoo was not your daughter, she was an animal. A smart and loyal one, a valuable one, but an animal. How far will you go? Some would say that your responsibility was to keep her safe, and you failed. Now she is dead. Should we start a war over it?”

“Your words are hard ones, Jono, and I under-stand. Please let me think about this. He was alone in a cave. I think he had been ejected, and will not be missed. We have time to consid-er.” Ulan squatted and poked the fire with his stick. Jono waited for a time, then turned and moved silently away.

There seemed to be no real choice. Jono was correct, any actual retaliation would cause conflict and death. The dog was maybe not worth more human or dog lives, and no lesson would be learned. There seemed to be no path that to – he had no word for what he thought he wanted, only a feeling that something was unfair, that some wrong was going without being resolved. He still angry, but he saw the other side.

He paced back and forth in front of the hide tent holding the captive, HIS tent. A dirty, smelly Harig sleeping in his bed. He wasn’t afraid of the ugly creature, but perhaps the best thing would be to try to forget the whole thing and receive some gratitude from the tribe. Practical gratitude, or course.

After a moment’s pause he listed the flap of his tent and went inside. It was dark, but he knew where things were and he fetched his stone axe from beside the entrance. When his eyes ad-justed he saw that the Harig was staring at him, lying immobile and silent on his side. He tried to make soothing noises and approached him slowly, but he knew the creature expected to be attacked and would be dangerous.

Ulan held the axe like a knife and approached the Harig’s feet. With two strokes of the sharp axe he sliced through the hide that bound it to the stake. That freed the Harig’s feet from the stake, but they were still tied together. It was enough freedom to make him struggle with great intensity, gaining a standing position a few times before falling down again.

Ulan watched impassively until his captive was still again. He then approached very slowing and mimed the action of cutting the bindings on his feet, and said what he hoped were comfort-ing things in a calm tone. He sliced through the hide tying the Harig’s feet together and stepped back, expecting another violent re-sponse. Instead it sat up and looked at him, and then extended its hands. Ulan brought the axe forward and sliced quickly through the hand bindings as well. Too quickly.

The final stroke of the axe blade was slightly off target, and cut through the hide but also sliced into the Harig’s arm just above the wrist. He screeched and grabbed the wound with his other hand. Blood was flowing. Ulan could see that the wound was a small one, and started to say something comforting, but was struck down by an elbow and then stepped on as the no-longer captive bolted to the tent flap that meant his freedom.

Ulan tried to yell but had no air in his lungs. He struggled to gain his feet and his breath and stumbled out of the tent waving his arms furiously, gasping. A few curious folk were sticking the heads out of their tents. Some of the dogs trotted over, sniffing. One of them caught the blood scent and howled, then raced off into the woods. Others followed. Ulan was still winded, but tried to jog in the same di-rection.

* * *

Olnuk ran through the thick brush away from the others, away from their dogs. He was bleeding, and leaving a trail behind him, he knew. He did not know the direction he should be running, simply away. The vegetation was slowing him down a lot. He hoped it would slow the ones following him too.

Then he heard the dogs closing on him from be-hind. Two were making barking noises, but could hear others crashing through the bushes. They could run faster and move under the worst of the vegetation. He knew he could not get away, he’d have to fight. He turned and grabbed the largest branch he could find, snapping it off near where it met the trunk and stood facing the direction of his approaching attackers, knees slightly bent and nostrils flaring.

A monster, all black fur and white teeth streaked towards him and leapt into the air at his head. Olnuk swung the branch hard and caught the airborne dog just behind its head, breaking its neck and sending it flying into the trees on his left. The second attacker was close behind, and Olnuk could not recover his pose in time to repel it completely. He tried to strike it on the backswing but struck only a glancing blow, and the dog was able to lock its teeth into his calf and push, knocking him to the ground. He fell on top of the animal, and while it tore at his leg he was able to grab a rear foot and snap it. Thus distracted, the dog released its grip and yelped. Olnuk reached back and seized the dog by the neck, locking it his elbow between his forearm and bicep and squeezing as hard as he could.

As he felt a bone snap two more dogs leapt on him from two different directions. One grabbed his wounded arm, and when he turned his head to see what to do about it the other fastened its teeth on his neck. He heard and saw some of the others, who had been following the dogs, but he was in great pain now and his vision was blurry. He was too weak to stand.

* * *

Ulan stood over the dying Harig. He did for it what he would do for any of his friends, or his dogs. He put the point of his spear on the Harig’s chest and forced it through his heart. There was no point in allowing it to suffer any more, and it could not survive the wounds the dogs had inflicted. The end of the spear broke off as he tried to extract it.

Jono ran up behind him. “So, Ulan,” he panted. “You get your revenge.”

“I was trying to set him free. It went badly. If we could speak to them it might be differ-ent’.

“I see we have lost two dogs. We should bury them. Here.”

“We should bury the Harig too,” Ulan suggested. “I think he had been banished. If so, his peo-ple will never know what happened to him. It will prevent trouble.”

“Agreed. We’ll put them all in the same hole, and hide it. But then we’ll move the village out of their territory. This place was a bad idea from the start.”

* * *

Dr. Beverly Rushkoff was at her desk reading a report when there was a tap on her office door. It was open a little, and she could see her graduate student Ben Cook standing there.

“Door’s open, Ben,” she said.

Ben stepped inside. “You called?” he asked. He was smiling, and sat in the chair in front of Beverly’s desk after giving a little head bow.

She looked him over. “You seem pretty happy, today. Cheer me up.”

Ben lost his smile. “I thought you called me to see some of the lab results from the dig,” he said. “what’s up?”

She tossed some of the papers across the desk and he picked them up. “The bones in the grave were about 30 thousand years old. It was a Ne-anderthal skeleton, we knew that right away. They didn’t always bury their dead, but when they did they sometimes buried them with some basic possessions; you know, a stone tool or something.”

“So why was he buried with two dogs? They were possessions?” Ben was flipping through the re-port.

“Page three,” she said. He was killed by a Eu-ropean early modern human. There was a spear tip in his chest.”

“Why can’t you say ‘Cro-Magnon’ like other peo-ple? Anyway, it looks like this poor guy had a fight with some Cro-Magnons and came up the loser. And his dogs with him. That’s not a good story for us.”

“No, it is not,” Dr. Rushkoff said. “Our theory that the working relationship between European early modern humans and dogs gave them an ad-vantage over the Neanderthals, who ate them and had no such relationship, has been put to a test, and the evidence seems against it.”

“It’s only one find,” Ben said.

“So were the dead sea scrolls. Look, this won’t affect your thesis. The excavation is good, and there’s information that nobody has published, it’s only the narrative that changes. If fur-ther sites confirm that Neanderthals worked with dogs you could become famous. If not, then maybe my theory is still accurate, and your work is still excellent.” She sat back and spun her chair so she could look out of the window.

“Let’s start writing this up,” she said. “I’ll start on the data from the lab, and you work up a history of the excavation. Get a draft by Friday and we’ll compare notes over coffee. We’ve got to stick our names on this. It could also be chapter 4. OK?”

“OK.” Ben stood up. She was still staring out of the window when he left her office. As he did, he couldn’t help but think of how large a story could be discovered from fairly slight evidence. He smiled again.