The Mender

Library Visit

Saturday Clea and Esri made an early start and arrived at the reference library shortly after the doors opened. Standing in the central atrium, Esri gaped at the size. Surely here they would uncover something interesting about her cave-people. They rode the glass elevator to one of the upper floors and found an empty table near some windows. She was astounded at the endless shelves of materials and spaces to study. Even at this early hour it was alive with people pouring over materials, writing, using computers. Spacious and light-filled. "Could I live here for a while?"

Clea laughed, "Well, I don't know about that. And there is even more back in the stacks that the librarians will retrieve for us, some of the older rarer resources. Come, I'll take you to the computers we can use to search. I usually ask a librarian to help me. I'm not very good with computers but I'm sure you're a whiz and will know what to do."

They went to the computer terminals. Clea continued, "We know from the Huti stone that it was likely used 50,000 to 150,000 years ago, and your cave people are probably in eastern Africa, given where the stone was found. If the stone continued to hold special meaning, it might have moved around some, but it's doubtful that it would have gone any great distance. Let's focus our research using those clues."

They made a good team. Esri worked the library computers while Clea guided the scope of their searches to hone in on the most promising materials. They accumulated a large pile of books, papers, and periodicals from the stacks. Hours sped by as they skimmed the resources, making notes and investigating further threads of inquiry that arose from their reading.

"I have to eat something," said Clea. "Let's leave our coats and go down and get something to eat in the coffee shop – my treat. No one will disturb our materials. We won't be gone long. Have you found anything?"

"Lots! I'm hungry too, but there's so much interesting stuff here, I don't want to stop."

In the coffee shop Clea said, "I've found some things that might have a bearing on why you're going back to that time period. What have you found?"

"Oh my god, so much. I could spend tons of days here. I've been looking for stuff about how people might have lived around 100,000 years ago. They don't know a lot but believe that people were a lot like we are today – same brain size, probably in much better physical shape, which is certainly true for the people at Flat Rocks. They're super fit. Clea, I saw pictures of spear points, some small ones, like I've made in my dreams. Even remains of places like Zura's Thinking Circle. And I looked at a book about hunter-gatherers in Africa and how they lived just 50 years ago. So similar to Flat Rocks - it's incredible! I'm kind of overwhelmed. What about you?"

"I've been reading about the DNA work they've done tracing the migration of homo sapiens out of Africa. They believe that the first wave was 50,000 to 70,000 years ago. Not that long ago when you think about the evolution of humans. And that led me to read about population bottlenecks."

"What's that?"

"It's when there are huge shrinkages in the populations of humans or other animals. It sometimes ends in extinction. There is DNA evidence that there was a population bottleneck of homo sapiens – us – possibly around the time period of the Huti stone. That the human population got down to a few thousand, some even speculate a few hundred people."

"Wow, you mean humans were almost extinct?"

"It appears so. It happened to the Neanderthals."

"That's crazy. Do you think it was the Ash Rain and Always Cloud, whatever they were?" Esri finished her sandwich. "Can we still stay for a while?"

"Sure, we can do a couple more hours. And you can come again some time."

They finished eating and went back to their table in the library. After about an hour, Esri gasped, "This is it!"