Life in the Holocene

Life in the Holocene

It had been ten days at Gobekli Tepe—long enough for the excitement to wear off.  

“Gobekli Tepe—hell of a place for my first dig.”   

The archeology student swings his pick into the packed earth and strikes stone.  After hours with his brush, carefully clearing dirt from around it, he lifts his prize.  

“It’s too shaped to be natural.  It’s a sculpture of some kind—it must be!” 

As he turns it in his hands, his eyes lock into the indentations where its eyes might have been.

His world disappears.

“Abi! Abi!” he hears his daughter screaming as he comes to.  Where is he?  

“Abi! Are you okay?” his daughter cries.  

“I’m fine,” he says to reassure her even though he’s still a bit dizzy.  He was chasing a rabbit at the lake’s side. When he slipped in the mud, he must have hit his head on a rock.  

“That would have been a tasty meal for us both.”

Like everyone in his tribe, Ur-Alok spends much of his time finding and preparing food.  The land is rich.  Gazelle and boar fill everyone’s stomachs for days,  rabbits and partridges provide ready meals.  They soak tree nuts for eating and dry the bitter grass seeds for their sacred drink.

Sai, his daughter, is the only child left from his mate Rut.  They were bound together for many seasons.  He loved watching her dance—the way her hips moved, her ecstatic smile.  He was known for his ability to carve stone, and he would make her little animals. There had been two other children, the second taking Rut with her into the world to come.

The tribe is getting ready for the pilgrimage to Ha-Maqom—the place where all the tribes meet after the grasses flower to give thanks to their gods.  The god of the tribe of Ur-Alok is the god of the lake.  Others worship the god of the tree or the god of the rock.

“We have much to do to get ready,” Ur-Alok tells Sai.  “Go to the lake and fetch reeds. We will need baskets.”

Sai has always loved the lake—the still green water; the herons that stand gracefully; the chatter of ducks; the mud that slithers between her toes.  It is a worthy god.

Startled, the herons rise as she forages through the shallows. She feels a sharp stab in her foot. 

“Abi! Abi!” she yells as she runs back, “I stepped on a water snake.”  

Ur-Alok is terror-stricken—the bite of a water snake is a dangerous thing.  He sucks at the wound as he’s been taught, but Sai begins to feel ill later that day.

The men and women of the tribe gather and offer prayers to the Lake God. By morning, she is barely conscious. 

“Don’t take my daughter,” Ur-Alok prays.  “She is all I have left and I love her.”  “I must offer the god a present.”  

The sacred grasses had only just been cut.  He desperately runs to the lake and tears open the basket. He scatters the seeds along the shore as the herons stand watching.

“Take these,” he begs the Lake God, “and leave me Sai.”

It is too late; Sai dies before he returns.  

In the years to come, when grasses grow there where none had grown before, the tribe will call them the grasses of Sai.

Even deep in despair, Ur-Alok must still journey with the tribe to Ha-Maqom.  

“I cannot give thanks to the gods who have taken my Sai.  But I must give them something to smooth her passage into the next life.”  

As they walk, he spots a carving stone. Picking it up, he sees the shadow of Sai’s face.  “I know what I must do.”  

When they arrive at Ha-Maqom, he begins to carve her face into the stone, working as if compelled by the gods.  As he works, the pain begins—a stabbing pain in the front of his skull.  At first, he can’t sleep; then his eyes begin to blur.

On the tenth night after all the tribes arrive, gifts are given to the gods.  Ur-Alok has worked through the pain—he will not fail Sai.  He can barely see by the time the sculpture is done, but he sees Sai in its face. As he reaches up, disoriented by pain and grief, to place his sculpture on the altar, his world disappears.

The archeology student gasps.  “He wasn’t trying to invent agriculture; he was only trying to save his daughter.”