Agent out of Time (The Agents for Good) (7 page)

It took hours to carefully uncover the bones.

I made Ted sit and rest while I dug. It wasn’t a complete skeleton. Some parts were gone; others had drifted slightly away from the main body. There was enough evidence to tell from the bones that they belonged to a female of about average height. It was a tantalizing discovery, but it didn’t much prove Ted’s theory correct. That changed when we found her skull.

The skull was completely intact. Carefully, brushing off what remaining dirt that there was, I handed the skull to Ted. Gingerly he took it from me and began studying it carefully.

Minutes went by and finally I asked, “Well does it prove your theory correct?”

“Yes and no.”

“I don’t understand.”

Ted studied the skull a moment longer. “You are of Native American blood. You belong to a distinct ethnic background. Native Americans and the native peoples of northern Asia share a common immediate ancestry that among other things distinguishes you by your skull shape. In particular, your ethnic skull type is referred to as mongoloid. This skull is not mongoloid.”

“That would prove your theory correct then that there were people already here before my people came over the Beringia land bridge from Asia.” I said.

Ted shook his head no and pointed to the skull again, “The skull may not be mongoloid, as we know the phenotype today, but it does have some mongoloid features to it.”

I think I knew what he was getting at. “So this woman could have perhaps had a mongoloid type father and a mother that wasn’t?”

“I suppose that could be true.” Ted said somewhat musingly, as he studied the skull indepthly.

“Wouldn’t that still prove your theory correct that there were other people here in North America that my people either killed off or intermarried with?”

Ted was shaking his head no, “I think another explanation is in order. One firmly rooted in biblical fact.” He nodded his head, as if agreeing with his own statement.

“Which is what?”

“That, at one time, people were remarkably similar to each other. Not only does the skull have slight mongoloid features, but it also has the influence of features of other skull types that exist and some features that I’ve never seen before. And yet, the skull itself, is clearly of the human kind, but not yet dominated by any one set of underlying genes. This could be one of the greatest discoveries of the ancient ancestors, ever to have been found up to this point, which proves descendence from a common pair of original humans, Adam and Eve!”

I was listening, but not quite understanding. “So she’s different from my people and yet she’s the same?”

“Exactly!”

I shook my head in consternation.

Ted patted my shoulder and together we moved back to rest against the side of the dig. “Have you ever heard of the Ice Age Caleb?”

I nodded, “Usually in reference to millions and billions of years though.”

Ted shook his head in disgusted denial, “As you know I pride myself on being a biblical archaeologist. I interpret everything that I see and find in the course of my work, by what is able to be gleaned from off the pages of the infallible word of God. My Bible tells me that all of creation took place over six literal days and so that is what I believe. And it so happens that is what the overwhelming amount of true science shows. Not this evolution crap that has no basis in the reality of the evidence that’s quantifiable and reproducible and on display all around us! The evolutionary mush there cramming into the heads of our children is nothing more than a trumped up religion designed to instill non-belief in a Divine Creator and nothing more! Evolution can’t survive, as a science so now it masquerades as a religion, that’s vital to be believed by its followers, because it offers them up a utopia to believe in that is without God in it, as well as common sense. It takes more faith to overlook the mistakes, missing evidence, trumped up evidence, and general all round lie that evolution is, than it does to believe in the God of the Bible!”

Ted’s voice had risen several octaves and with his heart condition neither this vitriolic angered outburst or this manual exertion were good for him.

“Simmer down Ted. I believe in the efficacy of the Bible, as it relates to all things the same as you do.”

Ted did calm down with a depleted sigh, “Oh I know you do Caleb. I just get carried away sometimes. The older I get the more I see how the self evident truths of the Creator, as manifested in His creation, have been distorted and twisted into a lie, I well, I just get mad!”

“Well at your age you can’t afford to get mad, but I know what you mean. Now before all the righteous explosions you were going to tell me something about the Ice Age.”

“Oh right! Well for starters it really did happen, only it occurred a lot faster and ended a lot shorter than evolutionists maintain. It was a violent and often precarious time to have lived in, as I believe that this woman did.”

“When did it happen?” I asked.

The Ice Age had always been one of those things, as a Christian that I had never delved into knowing more about, because I had always regarded it as somewhat of a made-up event by people with an evolution-based mindset.

“All right, by studying the Bible’s timeline we can arrive at the probable time of man’s existence upon the Earth. If you go down through the generations listed from Adam to the present you get a time span of roughly 6000 years, give or take a few. The Genesis global flood occurred in approximately 2350 BC. Now there are different theories as to what caused the Ice Age among creation scientists, but the one I think has the most credence is this. During the flood the fountains of the deep were broken up. Now, beyond possible extra sources of water being released, a lot of magma probably was to. Now with all of that emission of magma into the sea water on a global scale it would’ve caused the temperature of the ocean to rise significantly. Now the hotter water gets the more easily it evaporates into the atmosphere from the action of the sun’s heat upon it. So not only did massive amounts of water get shot into the atmosphere, as steam from underwater magma outbursts, but it also evaporated at a much higher rate from the warm seas upon the Earth. All of this extra moisture created a massive amount of precipitation on dry land. As the ocean cooled through the process of evaporation so did the world. So much water was taken out of the ocean and tied up in glaciers and ice packs at the polls that there was land exposed everywhere that there is not today. It was dry land between Great Britain and Europe, which was called Doggerland. Fishermen are still dredging up stone tools from that time period in the English Channel. The Black Sea in Russia was inhabited by people and most notably in our case there was a wide land bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska known as Beringia. Most notable about the Ice Age is that its occurrence coincides perfectly with God’s dispersion of the people at Babel, who were building a tower to reach heaven and were instilling singularity of thought against God among all living upon the Earth. God pledged at that time to personally drive man throughout all of the face of the Earth and the Ice Age was the perfect mechanism to do so. Because of the abrupt and often severe weather pattern changes it was safer to roam about living off the land than to stay in one spot dependant on crops that might not mature. The land bridges and the shorter distances between landmasses by water also helped fulfill God’s promise to disperse man throughout all the world. The Ice Age abruptly ended, as it had started, around the time of Abraham as we can see that once again the children of men had begun to build cities, such as Ur, which means that once again the seasons were favorable enough to raise crops and harvest them. The actual physical data supports this biblical timeframe of intense change instead of the eons of time stipulated by evolutionists.”

“That’s all very interesting. Can’t say I’ve ever heard it all put together like that before, but what does that have to do with our woman here being the same and yet different from my people?” I asked.

“Well it’s very simple if you think about what we know from the Bible. At first everyone came from Adam and Eve, but after the flood humanities genes were narrowed back down to one families genes in particular, Noah’s. Now, we know that after the flood, up until the time of the Babel dispersion that there was a common language and a unity among the descendents of Noah. People had grouped together in their unification of their desire to be like God. There would have been little overtly noticeable diversity at all among the descendents of a single family, which had stayed together since the end of the flood. Now this is where our girl here is the same and yet different from your people today. She could have come from the very same genetic group that you did only she got here to North America much earlier than the rest of your people. I’d say that is the most likely scenario to explain her.”

I took the skull from Ted’s hands and studied it thoughtfully. “So you think she got here relatively earlier on before her features could differentiate the way they later did with my people into a primarily Mongoloid type ethnic origin?”

Ted nodded, “She likely followed the same migration route, as fellow family members did much later than her. So she likely has the same parentage blood as your people group did, but she hadn’t diverged, feature wise, from the common form into your people’s more unique features.”

“Despite that likely being the case Ted you know what the world will say. They’ll say that a different race of people were here before Native Americans were.”

Ted nodded.

He took the skull back from me and stared at it, as if he could see back into the distant past. “Can you imagine the challenges that these early settlers, and for that matter the later settlers had to face on their journey here and then to survive once they were here? The dinosaurs were probably more congregated to the south, but just the prehistoric monsters alone would have been enough to contend with. Packs of dire wolves numbering above twenty or more, American lions that were bigger than full-grown Siberian tigers, and bears, such as the short faced bear that were twice the size of an adult grizzly and could run as fast as a horse. Count me out Caleb! I’m glad I didn’t live during that time, but I have to admit it must’ve been something to see!”

I nodded, as I likewise reflected on that tumultuous time in the history of my people here in this land.

My people?

At one point in time all the peoples of the world had been but one people, one family if you will. Now there was so much division that this discovery of Ted’s would kick up a maelstrom of contention that did not need to be. Racists on both sides would come out of the woodwork. Those not happy with the governmental perks and the casino royalties that Native Americans got would scream loud for the end of all such payments of reparation to cease. Those on the Indian side would scream that a miscarriage of justice was being enacted in the form of a trumped up archaeological dig designed to do them out of what they richly deserved.

There were truths to be had for either side, as well as the ridiculous, but all the situation would further illustrate was the spirit of division that had been present ever since the division of the peoples at Babel by God. Different peoples just couldn’t get along with each other very well and yet we all had the same point of origin and kinship at one point in time. Where would it ever end?

Chapter Seven

The Skull

Deshavi leafed through the summer dresses in the store in town. Trent would be back from the East today in the late afternoon and she wanted to look nice for him.

She turned a corner to see a man standing there. She’d never liked him and so she started to back away, before she realized that there was a man behind her and to the side of her too. She was more or less trapped unless she made a commotion of it in the store. Armed with that option of last resort she stood with her arms tightly folded, “What is it that you want Running Bear?”

He smiled nastily, his stained and broken teeth giving evidence to the bad breath that was now assailing her, as he stepped closer. “Heard you’re getting married. To a white man no less! To think the granddaughter of a chief would cheapen her bloodline so!

Deshavi snorted derisively, “You’re one to talk blue eyes! Are you sure you shouldn’t be having this conversation with your own mother? At least I’m going to marry the man of my affections, unlike your mother.”

For a moment it looked like he was about to hit her, but he regained his composure. “What you do is no business of ours, but it is, who you have picked that we find unacceptable!”

Deshavi’s face turned all knowing, “You mean that you don’t approve of me marrying the grandson of the man whose discovery is likely to take away your booze money don’t you?”

Running Bear wasn’t to be put off though. “We will only approve of the union if you first do something for us. It is well known that before your current saintly attitude that you were a thief. Steel the skull from the grandfather and see that it is destroyed and we will permit you to marry as planned.”

Deshavi’s temper exploded. “Why you little dirt bag weasel to come to me and threaten my right to marry whomever I will!”

Her hand found part of a clothes rack, which was leaning up against the wall, with which she proceeded to wail away at Running Bear and his two companions. They made an attempt to grab her, but retreated away from her and out of the store in the face of her wrathful whacking of them. Deshavi stormed out of the store after them, but the cowards that they were, they had already disappeared.

Her people were an honorable people, but some members of the tribe should have been thrown to the wolves long ago.

It was one week from the wedding. Tomorrow I would head back to the east with Deshavi and Trent. Ted was coming along to. I pulled Windstalker to a halt at Ted’s cabin and got down. I wanted to make sure that he was ready to go in the morning. I stepped up to the door and started to knock, but stopped as I realized the door was already slightly ajar. An ominous feeling swept through me.