Morning all. I hope you are having a splendid morning. After nearly a week of balmy weather we are once again expecting snow. Luckily we did the shopping early and there is no need to run out to the milk and bread aisles for us. So as we have no potential snow panic, let’s start off the day with a writing prompt. Timers set.
I think this could be an interesting set up. Haven’t gotten to the story yet of course, but an interesting set up.
Tuesday, February 18th: It was like entering another world.
It was like entering another world. The cave stretched high overhead. Here in the upper levels it was completely above ground, dry with streams of fresh air. Yet the mouth of the cave was so placed that it showed only a thin sliver of sky. Many of the lower levels were flooded or at least partially so, which was why they had diving gear.
Mapping of the space was done and they knew the route the flooded caves took. The video recording showed tantalizing glimpses of possible artifacts. Items lost to the world for centuries, millennia even. They appeared man made but up until now even though human habitation of the region was theorized, simply because conditions and placement made it likely, no evidence had yet been uncovered.
It was why the team assigned to study this system was comprised of the best in many fields. The potential for knowledge of the far distant past was enormous. Everyone wanted all elements covered so nothing was lost. Their team was a mixed bag. There were those, trained in archaeology and paleontology. They had people who specialized in bones and others in pottery. There were those whose specialties were more geological in nature who could study the cave and learn secrets from it’s development. Then there were the cave divers and the climbers. They could get into every nook and cranny of the site no matter how high up on the cave wall or submerged below the surface.
‘Some of them are even trained in archeology so they know what they are doing.’ It was a comfort. Admittedly, for this expedition those chosen for the diving and climbing teams had also worked on many other sites, many of them quite important,
This would be no one’s first rodeo.
Already work started in several sections. The priceless and detailed section of cave art that brought them to the cave in the first place, was documented. It was laser scanned so that the computers could focus in on all of the minute detail that the human eye could not see. Tiny scrapings of each type of paint was collected and analyzed. They were all natural dyes of course, ochre red and charcoal black, the occasional sulfur yellow. The analyzation was one of the reasons his team was here. The art was studied by a team believing they knew the approximate age. Their assumptions were wrong.
The analysis proved them to be much, much older.
And then while they were looking around for any extra details to add to their already spectacular find, one of those happy accident’s occurred.
Someone tripped and fell.
It would have been nice to say he fell and found something of monumental import. An artifact of some sort. But no, he fell and gained a different perspective. He saw the cave from an entirely different angle and in toing so, spotted another opening. One that was shaped by stone tools and not nature.
Ten til Midnight 