Modern Archeology

Jane Whitebones, the young archeologist, was flying in her well equipped airplane contemplating two different places.

On one side over a high plateau, she saw a Spanish mission town plenty of sunshine and open spaces. There was the main plaza, the church, and the parishioners. She imagined a friar was teaching the children catechism inside the church.

On the other side at the bottom of a huge, steep rift, she saw the jungle a dense, green, rain forest jungle. She imagined it growing, rumoring unintelligible voices in the midst of green, intricate shadows where only scattered beams of light could enter.

The voices would say, I cover everything. I overcome everything that I haven't created. In fact, Jane Whitebones knew that the jungle covered the ruins of an ancient civilization waiting to be discovered -- a civilization certainly older than the Mayas, even though it was probably colonized by them before the Spanish came.

A big river flowing down to the ocean separated the high plateau from the jungle.

Flying her airplane over the river, Jane Whitebones was observing her area of research.

The young archeologist with boots, shorts, and heavy eye glasses looked down at the place not as a living, growing rain forest dense with the chaotic noises of life, but as her object of study. She compared what her eyes were seeing with the infrared satellite pictures that were glued to the walls of her plane, and she felt satisfied. Her research had paid off.

Landing on the mouth of the river, she could barely see the small city because it was immersed in a big cloud of mist and humidity.

What a contrast with that sunny little town I saw not long ago, she thought. Already in her hotel, she opened the agenda and revised all the necessary steps to navigate down the river to her place of research.It wouldn't take long.

Jane was approximately at the middle of her general plan. First, location of the site. Done. Second, expedition and research. In process. Third, interaction with the untouched civilization. Coming. This last part was what really fascinated her because it was an almost impossible task..

How can she, or anyone for that matter, research an isolated civilization if the mere study would entail to brake that isolation? But she was not naive; on the contrary, she was aware that starting with a few bones and ruins, and finishing with the reconstruction of a lost world was, in essence, a huge exercise in imagination.

Archeology presents, among a million alternatives, a single possibility of what it could be. And that was at the root of her fascination. "Interaction, ha, ha, ha," she laughed extending her legs to enjoy the air of the silent fan in the ceiling. "I found the solution for the problem of interaction.

It consists of the recreation of all that has been lost of the ancient civilization. Revivification in the blood and flesh of their descendants," she though. "What an achievement. The final result will be known, not only by the specialists readers of the journals of archeology, but also by the general public in television, watching scenes performed by the natives that will be educated and dressed with the information provided by my research in the tradition of their ancestors. Convoluted, but true.

Rowing in her special camouflaged kayak down the river, she got all the exercise she could desire. Several weeks of exercising, eating, and sleeping were all planned before with mathematical precision. Only one thing bothered her. She would hope to see on her right some indication of that little sunny town that belonged to the other different microclimate. "I am asking too much," she said while she kept rowing.

Already settled in the jungle, Jane was clear of her objective. Setting aside the ruins, she would focus on the oral tradition of an ancient civilization colonized by the Maya. She decided to repeat the method used in her expedition to Africa in the gorilla site. She simply sat there doing the same things the natives were doing while she waited for them to take the initiative.

While Jane was drinking coffee at night by the fire, exactly twenty days after living near the natives, the rumors of the creatures of the night stopped. An Indian boy with a torch in his hand followed by an strange old man reached the place. The man addressed the boy in a language with cadences of Maya. Obeying the command, the boy searched for some timbers in the forest and came back to nourish the fire.

Jane turned on the tape recorder. The old man, in a grave mood, spoke in a rudimentary Spanish.

"Pedro Atamishky ask, who are you?"

"I am Jane Whitebones, and I come from the north. I would like to be your friend and to know about your people," Jane answered in Spanish.

"You living here for a week and know my people already," continued the old man.

"Yes, but I want to know more,"Jane replied.

The thrill of the moment overtook Jane, but she could still think.

"Why a week?" she thought, "Twenty days, I stayed here for twenty days. Unless Pedro is counting the time the Maya way, with weeks of twenty days. Then, Pedro is a living archeological treasure!"

The dialogue resumed. "You can hear the memories of Pedro Atamishky that are the memories of our parents, and I want Shunko to listen," said the old man looking at the boy who was silent and respectful. "There is one additional condition," Pedro continued in the same tone. "If you ever, ever ask me a question, you will leave this place immediately."

From then on, every night Jane recorded the voice of the patriarch in the presence of the boy.

During the day, she worked on the introduction to her paper. "We are educated in a civilization with no important use of memory. So, all our acts are governed by that memory's surrogate which is the written word. This is the reason why it is difficult to understand how the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Bible, and many other foundational works were transmitted by oral tradition before they were written. Only when I saw and listened to Pedro Atamishky speaking with that ceremonial cadence did I understand the oral tradition in its fullest."

Every night the old myths of creation in the Maya expanded week of twenty days came out of Pedro's mouth. It was a detailed, astounding description where even the flowers were created in a distinct act.

Shunko, the boy, listened to the old sage with anxiety, in fact, with disapproval, but he refrained from correcting him. Night after night Jane heard all the sacred stories of Pedro's ancestors, some of them surprisingly close to the Christian tradition. As usual, Shunko showed some distress, but Jane got used to it.

One night Pedro was telling the story of a noble forefather who had received the order of immolating his own grandson to God. Seeing that Shunko was showing signs of disapproval, Jane couldn't avoid saying, "But you don't do that anymore, do you?"

At that point the old man said, "Woman, in spite warnings you ask question. You must leave." Seeing that his sentence was unappealable, Jane left the place the next morning. The data she gathered was more than enough for her reconstruction.

One week later on the other side, on the high plateau in the Spanish mission town, a boy had arrived at the church.

A Franciscan friar said, "I was missing you, Shunko. Why didn't you come to catechism any more?"

"We had visitors," the boy said, "a foreign woman."

"Did you read the Illustrated Bible Story to your granddad?" the friar asked.

"Yea," said the boy, "I was reading to him before the woman came, but he got it all wrong."