Chapter 4: Island History

Sunday

Bethany Maddox spent Sunday reviewing the progress of the excavation and what had been discovered to date. The Haka Nuva expedition was a small one, but she had been in the archeology business long enough to know that sometimes the small digs could be the most surprising. It was certainly more pleasant than some she had been involved in. The Egyptian digs were mammoth undertakings, and farther east the entire area was a cauldron of war and terrorism. The Central American ones were also big, and every once in a while, the natives would become restless, shutting things down to protect their ‘rights’ and otherwise trying to extort money out of anybody they could. By contrast, the Maltesanans seemed happy and cooperative, and while the weather was still hot and humid, the site wasn’t ridiculously far away from civilization.

Beth had originally planned to arrive three weeks before, shortly after the expedition arrived in Haka Nuva. She had a previous commitment for the first week and planned to catch up afterwards. The collapse of the GPR, the ground penetrating radar, had changed everything. It was decided that she would wait until the parts arrived, and then come out with the shipment herself, supervising everything, and bringing in some additional supplies that hadn’t been expected. As such, she desperately needed to catch up to what Doctor Veracruz and Mister Smith had been up to while she was delayed.

Clearing the expedition’s site hadn’t involved much more than running a bulldozer up the side road from the main road, and then dropping the blade and clearing the brush and jungle from an area several hundred yards away from the actual temple site. Some gravel and crushed stone had been brought into the campsite to keep everybody from sinking into the mud when it rained, which was a frequent occurrence. From the campsite to the temple, everybody walked since the dozer would have torn up the original path. The path was wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side, but the original natives, without metals tools or the technology of wheels for carts, had not widened the path beyond that.

The location for the temple had been determined from translated records, Haka Lelo to Spanish to English, and also with the help of some of the older residents who had heard stories about the ancient temple on the mountainside. The site had further been pinpointed through satellite imagery, now available at a price even a college archeology program could afford. While the satellite’s sensors couldn’t photograph a temple covered in jungle, it could detect something was probably in the area, confirming the other stories. It would require the GPR to pinpoint the site. That had occurred relatively quickly, but then the GPR had died before the doorway had been identified.

It had been decided at that point to conduct regular excavations and do a lot of the other work necessary at any dig site. The basaltic lava was only a few inches under the surface in most places, so slit trenches were not possible. Instead, the overburden was carefully dug up and run through sorting tables to search for any artifacts. Still, the idea was to enter the temple, and for that they needed the GPR. Only the radar would find them the doorway. If they just started digging through the walls, they could easily destroy priceless artifacts and knowledge. They would be little better than grave robbers at that point. With a doorway, however, they could figure out how to open it carefully and safely, and then optimize their research, preserving everything to the maximum extent possible.

Maohinui Smith had proved to be a font of knowledge about the Maltesanos and the Maltesanans. It was obvious he loved the islands and considered himself a citizen of all the islands. Despite the English last name (“Great-grandpa landed here back before the Second World War and married a wahini, a local girl. Ever since, there’s always been at least one son to pass the name along.”) Mao looked like and considered himself Polynesian. He spoke Haka Lelo fluently and managed all the liaison duty needed.

Bethany was sitting in the communal tent, reviewing research reports when Manolo Veracruz came in with a big smile on his face, followed by Mao and several of the kids. “It’s definite! The GPR has pinpointed the entranceway into the temple!”

Beth grinned back at him. “Great! Are we going to be able to get in?”

He nodded. “We always could get in. The trick was doing it without destroying anything. That looks increasingly possible. Tomorrow we will check things again with fresh eyes, but it looks like when they buried the temple, they did so by the simplest means possible. They simply stuck a pre-cut boulder in the doorway and covered the whole thing with dirt. The jungle probably overgrew it within the first year!”

“Interesting. No traps or false doorways?” she quizzed. Many more elaborate structures around the world, like the Pyramids and tombs of Egypt had elaborate methods to keep the unwanted out, almost all of which had been breached over time.

“Not that we could see,” replied Veracruz.

Mao nodded and said, “Probably not. Remember, they weren’t trying to bury anybody, just keep the Inquisition from finding it and destroying it. Maltesanan burial rituals involve internment in sand or at sea, depending on whether somebody was a farmer or a fisherman. We never built tombs to bury people. Besides, in Pre-Discovery times, the Haka’po’e were Neolithic. We were late Stone Age. There are no metals on the islands, for instance, so nobody is going to be buried with gold jewelry. This is a temple, not a burial site.”

“Much will depend on the quality of the seal around the doorway,” added Manolo. “We have two competing factors. On the plus side, this is a very new location. It was only buried about four hundred years ago, so we haven’t had thousands of years of people trying to get into it. On the downside, however, is the environment. This place, to put it mildly, is warm and wet. What is inside might have been destroyed if the seals are no good.”

Bethany nodded at that. Egypt and the Middle Eastern sites were in many ways an ideal environment for archeology. They were arid and the soils were hygroscopic, so even after thousands of years, artifacts were perfectly preserved. It was almost a polar opposite of the conditions to be found on the side of an extinct equatorial volcano on a jungle island. Water could well have seeped through the seals around the doorway, if there were any seals to begin with, and destroyed any non-stone artifacts.

“The only way to find out is to find out,” she replied.

Veracruz nodded in agreement. “Another day or two with the GPR and we can probably figure out an entry pathway. Before we ever make the attempt, we’ll need to review everything, and get permission from our liaison.” He nodded with a wry smile towards Mao.

Mao smiled back. He looked over at Doctor Maddox and nodded in agreement. “True enough. I’m pretty interested in what’s inside, obviously, but I don’t want to chance destroying anything. We’ll know more in a few days at most.”

“So, we open the temple, figure out what’s inside, and you get to write the defining history of the Maltesano Islands?” she asked.

He smiled. “To a certain extent, yes. It’s not a long history, but it is ours, and we’d like to know it better. Who better to write it than a native Maltesanan?”

Bethany nodded in understanding. “Well, as a native Maltesanan, maybe you can explain a few things to me. Why did the Spanish come here? Was it for exports?”

“Well, they came here to conquer the world and bring God to the heathens, of course,” he replied, laughing. “Of course, nobody ever bothered asking the heathens, who were perfectly happy worshipping Kane’ and Kanalo and having fun with the lava lava and puka puka. Personally, I think we should have tried converting the priests and not the other way around.” Quite a few of the undergrads and grad students laughed at that.

Beth asked, “So what are lava lava and puka puka? I’ve heard the words, but I don’t know what they are.”

“Well, the lava lava flower comes from the lava lava tree. You’ve seen them around. They are the island flower.” He pointed at several of the dark pink flowers that a few of the girls had in their hair. “If you look closely, you’ll see a certain resemblance between the lava lava flower and, well, certain elements of the female anatomy.” He said this with a large grin.