In the Time of Man

Chapter Five

(Before I get to the latest on the sci-fi novel, just want to let everyone know that I will be live tweeting the Trump Party presidential debate tomorrow night. While they live lie, I will live tweet, or maybe I will be X-ing, whatever that is, if it’s even a thing. I will also post real time thoughts on Substack’s Notes. I am no longer getting any real uplift on my writing on Twitter because his Muskness throttles all things Substack. I don’t think too many of my followers even see my posted Substack story links on Wednesday and Sunday. The Substack analytics show I used to get up to ten percent of my readership from Twitter but it is now less than one percent, which means there isn’t much to stop a cowboy from riding away.

No matter. After the live tweeting of the debate, I will write my immediate analysis and send it out for Thursday morning, but I will dispatch it as soon as it is completed, and won’t wait for the scheduled send of 3:00 a.m., which I normally use. There’s a chance I might even take some cheap shots at Trump. Just make sure you share anything you think worth sharing, subscribe if you haven’t, tell your momma, your daddy, too, they’ve got nothin’ better to do.

Meanwhile, I am aware that most of my readers are probably not science fiction fans, but many are and they have expressed great interest in the science fiction novel I am writing. The book has been fully drafted for some time and I am sharing the final rewrites and edits of each chapter as I complete them. The latest is below, and if you are interested and missed the first four chapters, you can find them at this earlier post. - JM)

Chapter Five

Inside the Hogon’s dwelling, Elliot Anders lay still on his straw mat, unable to sleep, waiting for the first pale traces of morning to cross the dirt floor. For at least the hundredth time, he counted the communal beer gourds hanging from the ceiling.  There were twenty-four and each one of them represented a sixty year separation between Sigui ceremonies. Because the Arou tribe of the Dogon was believed to be its oldest, its Hogon in the village of Yougo Dogouru was given custody of the sacred drinking gourds used in the ceremonies of the Sigui.

Mornings were the only time Elliot had his moments of self doubt. What in the hell was he doing in this lost stretch of the undeveloped world? The question was worth asking over and over and over. The ridicule, private sniping and condescension from colleagues, had gone on for years. Every scientist and university researcher or professor thought him a bit mad to chase an African tribal myth and try to prove it was based upon reality. There were early attempts to have him censured and his grants eliminated but Elliot’s credibility from previous accomplishments in the fields of archaeology and anthropology had kept him from professional ruination. Regardless, he had reached that point in life where he no longer cared what anyone thought. What mattered was his pursuit of the mystery, even if it was never solved. That was enough reason to give up love and money, which is what his obsession with the Dogon had cost him.

As the sun climbed above the Cliffs of Bandiagara and dropped soft shadows through the Dogon villages, he heard the muffled puttering of a gas engine. Each morning at dawn, his graduate assistant Phil Traynor started a small Honda generator, which they used to charge sat-phones, iPads, cell phones, laptops, and the small dish that connected them to the internet through a satellite link hung in the sky by a man who had launched a car into space. The motor’s whir, the saucer-sized receiver nailed to a tree and pointing upward, and the glow of the computer screen were the only evidence for Elliot and Phil that any other kind of world existed beyond the Dogon villages. 

“Dr. Anders?” Phil Traynor leaned into the narrow opening of the Hogon’s hut as Elliot sat up on his sleeping mat.

“Yes, Phil. What is it?”

“I think they’re starting.”

“Starting? Starting what?”

“The whole drinking thing,” Phil said. “The Sigui ceremony.”

“Good lord. Why do I have to keep hearing everything from my assistant? All right, Phil, I’ll be right there.”

When Elliot got outside, Phil pointed just north of the Hogon’s hut to an open field where children often played and families sat in the sun after a rain. A broad, woven canvas of some sort was being unrolled and Dogon men were stacking poles and pulling ropes in the mist of a tropical morning.  

“I guess the Arou Hogon has decided it’s time.” Elliot said. “I don’t know what else it could be. He leads the Awa cult and they are in control of the timing.” 

“Well, I like a culture that celebrates by drinking beer, even if it’s millet beer.” Phil pulled on the bill of his dirty Astros cap and squinted at Elliot, silhouetted against the half-risen sun. 

“You and I have been guessing that the last Sigui was sometime before Griaule got here to start his work so that means slightly more than half of their traditional sixty years has passed.”

“But they are going ahead with the Sigui, anyway?” Phil asked, though the answer was increasingly obvious. “I don’t suppose we’ll know what that means until it’s over, which could be what; weeks, months, years?”

“Not more than a year, according to Griaule. But maybe the timing on the drinking bouts is different, too. If they start early, they might quit early. In any case, it’s good sign for us and an indication of progress.”

 “And lil ol’ Phil Traynor of Effingham, Illinois might have a front row seat to witness the coming of the Lord; or at least Nommo.”

“It also means there is now a clock ticking on how much time I have to get down into the Sigui caves and videotape the masks. And I have no idea when that time runs out so I’ve got to get down there soon.”

“I don’t know, Dr. Anders,” Phil said. “Is it really worth risking your life? Griaule lived with these people for what……… fifteen years? And they never let him near those caves. There’s probably a reason.”

“I think we’ve had this discussion, Phil. I’ve come too far on this to stop without knowing.” Elliot put his hand on his assistant’s shoulder. “Go eat your tasty millet glop breakfast and I’ll meet you over there where all the action is in a half hour.”

“Okay.”

Ammonu, the Hogon for Yougo Dougoru, was up and moving somberly about his hut when Elliot returned. He was crunching raw vegetables for his breakfast, onions and greens peppers, which he had raised in a small garden on a rare loamy slope not far from the Niger River. Elliot wondered what his host was thinking. The scientist had been expected to live with the Hogon because it showed the priest-chief’s power and gave him honor but Elliot’s ineptitude with language meant they struggled to communicate. Elliot wished he had the capability to ask Ammonu if he had expected to see a second Sigui in his lifetime and if there was any significance to its early arrival. Ammonu, whose wife was dead and his three daughters gone to become wives of men in other Dogon villages, smiled thinly at Elliot. His bare chest and round, sagging belly were already lightly beaded with sweat as he plodded outside to join the men erecting the ceremonial tent for the first drinking bout. Careful not to make physical contact with the spiritual leader, Elliot stepped back to let him pass.

A few of the Dogon men were trying on the elaborate fish head masks when Elliot and Phil arrived at the ceremonial site. Griaule had written that the strange fish masks were an essential part of the rite, though he never seemed to have completely understood their symbolic value. Elliot moved closer to look at a few of them that had been placed on a simple table. The eyes were brightly polished stones and the body of the head gear was intricately carved wood with a meticulously woven and dyed fiber.

Elliot carefully raised one of the masks for a closer examination. “Fish. It’s always fish.  Wherever you go. Whatever you study.”

“What do you mean, Dr. Anders?” Phil Traynor stood at the other end of the table shaking his head in amazement at the quality of the craftsmanship. 

“In all of these ancient cultures, Phil, as you know, they each appear to have their historical beginnings connected to a fish creature. The Sumerians had Enki, who they claimed was a walking fish that stood up like a man out of the Persian Gulf and taught them the ways of civilization. And, of course, Sumerians gave us the first governments and libraries and general social orders.

“And the Egyptians had Isis as one of their gods, who was from Sirius. It’s not a minor point that the Egyptians believed the souls of the dead left this world for Sirius. And then there’s the fish icon Oannes of Babylonia’s culture and Acadia’s Ea, and now the Dogon with their Nommo: a fish with legs that educated them and let them eat of his flesh for food. And the day the Dogon celebrate for his first visit is called ‘the day of the fish.’ Maybe fish were so critical to the sustenance of these cultures that they developed a creation mythology around them or maybe these fish beings, or whatever they might have been, actually came from somewhere else and provided this guidance. The Dogon say the Sirius stars are ‘watery’ and if they are …………any intelligent life form would have a good chance of being amphibious, eh?”

“You’re skeptical, right?”

“Of course, that’s our jobs. Look, it could just be that fish have been worshipped because they were a primary source of food available to early man. But look at what the Great Pyramid taught us during that project. We keep getting data and evidence that these stories may not be as far-fetched as we think.”

“Yeah, but Van Beek said it was all a bunch of bunk, as far as the Dogon was concerned. If he’s right, then Griaule just sort of prompted a few tribal elders into adopting the Sirius mythology.”

“Yet another reason we’ve got to get our hands on one of the ancient Sigui masks, or make a video recording.”

“I know, Dr. Anders. I know.” 

Elliot was as critical of Walter Van Beek’s work as he was of Griaule and Dieterlen’s.  The Dutch anthropologist had traveled to Mali in 1991 and, in spite of extensive research, his team said it could not find any evidence that anyone in the tribe was in possession of the Sirius lore. Griaule had written that about fifteen percent of the tribe’s elders knew the story and passed it on from one generation to the next.  According to Van Beek, who spoke with some of Griaule’s surviving sources among the Dogon, none of the tribal Hogons who had given information to Griaule were even aware that Sirius was a double star.  

“These things are almost beautiful beyond belief,” Elliot said as he gently returned the bright fish head mask to the table. 

“I know,” Phil said. “The Dogon are far more advanced than the outside world gives them credit for. I’m afraid the Jihadists will keep coming to convert the Dogon and eventually their animist religion and this culture of theirs will be lost. How many different masks do they have now? Is it 78?”

“Yes, yes. That’s the most accurate count I can get. They tend to get a bit apprehensive when I linger and stare. But each one is perfect in its own way. And don’t forget cultures have been running over each other since the beginning, Phil. I suppose if Islam got all of the Dogon to worship Allah that would just be another example, and no more or less sad than any of the rest.”

Elliot led his assistant over to a log that had been split evenly in two near the far side of the tent, which the celebrant Dogon men had just finished erecting. Along the log’s flat side, several Cowrie shells were displayed in careful rows. Associated with the ocean and the spirit of the earth, the Cowrie was once a form of currency in much of Africa. The Dogon, however, intended to use the shells to tally each day's drinking bout as they moved the Sigui rituals to several other villages.

“You know, Phil, there’s another thing I’d like to piece together with the fish iconography and that’s this business of 50 years. It’s a time period that’s pretty important throughout history.”

“You’re talking about Digitaria’s 50 year orbit?”

“Yes, but that time period turns up as important in a lot of cultures. It’s a sacred number throughout the mythologies of several ancient civilizations, including the Sumerians, Greek, Babylonians, and Egyptians. Even Moses was aware of the significance of the number fifty. I’ll bet you didn’t know that in the book of Leviticus, Moses commanded the Hebrews to observe a jubilee every fifty years. He was raised by a Pharaoh, you know, so maybe Moses knew something about the 50 year orbit of Sirius B through the Egyptian’s worship of Isis.”

“Maybe. But that makes it even more confusing that the Dogon do a Sigui every 60 years.”

“Yep. I know. Can’t figure that one out either,” Elliot said. “Hey, take a look over there, Phil.”

Elliot pointed toward the other side of the tent as all of the chattering Dogon men fell silent. Their Hogon, Ammonu, was carrying a large, painted gourd across the nearby meadow. He held it delicately and kept glancing down as he moved, treating the object with great reverence. This was the new communal beer gourd for the Sigui drinking bouts and its delivery to the tent by the Hogon was a signal moment for the beginning of the ritual. 

After watching the colorfully painted gourd’s arrival with silent respect, the Dogon men took up their own personal drinking vessels and arranged themselves in a circular cluster around the old man who was their spiritual leader. Elliot and Phil watched as another large gourd with a hollow neck for pouring was carried into the midst of the group. Millet beer was emptied into the common container being held by Ammonu. 

When it had reached the proper level, the Hogon stood and moved around the circle of men, pouring the millet beer into each one of their cups. The larger gourd, which had filled the common container being used by the Hogon, was also passed around behind the chief and was used to top off each man’s drinking cup after the Hogon had poured in initial small splashes. Once everyone had taken beer from his common container, Ammonu nodded and the Dogon men began to drink.

“Run back and get your still camera and audio recorder, Phil. Let’s gather some of this. It’ll probably be repeated dozens of times but we can’t be sure.”

“Okay. Be right back.”

Elliot watched the proceedings more closely while he waited for Phil. What exactly was transpiring in front of him? The Dogon worshipped spirits of their ancestors and the natural world and this ritual was to rejuvenate that connection. But was it also possible they were making ready for Nommo’s return? Perhaps an altered consciousness caused by the drinking gave them their insights. 

At almost the precise moment Phil Traynor returned, the Dogon men rose in unison at a grunt and head nod by their Hogon, Ammonu. Elliot guessed they had been drinking and talking in somber hushed tones for less than an hour and the Hogon had decided it was time for whatever was next.     

Phil began snapping off digital photos as the men formed an orderly line and were individually handed their fish heads by the Chief of Masks. Known as "inima," the masks are thought to contain the life force the Dogon refer to as "nyama."

After they had all put on their headgear, an orderly procession began a kind of awkward shuffle step out from under the ceremonial tent. The Dogon men took up a chant as they moved through the village of Yougo Dogouru and were trailed by a growing crowd of women and children from the Arou tribe. This line of men wearing their bright, ocher-colored masks was to dance from village to village, leading to renewed drinking bouts in surrounding communities.

“Keep up with them, Phil,” Elliot jogged awkwardly up next to his assistant, who was trailing the snake-like procession. “I’ll run back and grab the other video camera and catch up with you.”

Elliot, though, had no intention of joining Phil Traynor. As the excitement of the celebration drew a crowd of villagers and focused attention away from the escarpment, he walked quickly back to Ammonu’s hut to retrieve the mini-cam. His plan was to record video with his phone and the camera at the same time to make certain he had a backup if either device failed. After checking the batteries for a full charge, Elliot went back up the short trail to the plateau with the camera, extra batteries, and a small light in a carrying case over his shoulder. He looked around and saw that the village of Yougo Dougoru was mostly deserted. In the distance, he spotted dozens of people dancing around the Binu Shrine, a sanctuary found in each of the villages. The Binu Shrine, often painted with mystic symbols, is believed to be the location for ancestral spirits and is said by each tribe to be composed of body parts from Nommo’s dead twin. Elliot had witnessed a ceremony in his village where millet porridge and monkey’s blood had been left at the foot of the multi-spired structure to ask the benevolence of ancestors in assuring a bountiful growing season.

Nervous and a bit disconcerted, Elliot Anders moved more quickly than might have appeared possible for a man of his girth. His breath was labored after just a short distance and he thought about how long he had waited to get even a scintilla of scientific data about the Dogon’s ancestry and their knowledge of Sirius. Walking toward the Yougo Rock, Elliot became more convinced than ever he was going to be the scientist to solve the enigma. They would respect his work and remember his name, not whisper it at their supercilious conferences.

Maybe there was a simple, prosaic explanation for the Dogon’s astronomical knowledge. Carl Sagan had reputed most of Robert Temple’s 1976 book The Sirius Mystery, which had argued the Dogon’s knowledge about the star system had been brought by visitors from the space. Sagan suggested instead that the Dogon had been interacting with colonists and other westerners almost since the beginning of the twentieth century. Those educated outsiders could have easily spoken of galactic constellations to a culture that wondered about the great, sparkling blanket of a night sky, and the Dogon may have used the information to develop their own religious mythology. Even though Sirius B had not been photographed until 1970, the star’s presence had been hypothesized about more than a century earlier. That still did not explain, however, the fact that the Dogon had been telling the tale of Digitaria to outsiders since they first encountered white missionaries around 1800.

Elliot himself had not become completely animated about the Dogons and their Sirius mystery until the Einstein Orbiting Observatory confirmed a lesser known tenet of their legend. For as long as they had been talking about Sirius B, which they referred to as Digitaria, the Dogon had also described a third star in the system. It was known as “Emma Ya,” and its existence was proved when NASA launched an x-ray telescope aboard its third High Energy Astrophysical Observatory. Renamed to honor the famed scientist after it was in space, the Einstein Orbiting Observatory sent data from x-ray photos back to NASA that proved Emma Ya, in fact, existed just as had been insisted upon by the Dogon.      

If Elliot was right in his own hypothesis, the next essential step in verifying the tribe’s astonishing narrative would be to reveal the carved faces of the ancient Sigui masks.  He wanted to photograph and record a video of one that was centuries old. In fact, he dreamed of finding the first Sigui totem, which would have been made sometime not long after Nommo had come to earth in his whirling ship of fire and water. Not even Griaule and Dieterlen, though, had been allowed by the Dogon to enter the sacred cave where the totems and masks were stored.      

On top of the high spot at the edge of the lava field, Elliot saw the ethereal glow of the Yougo Rock and he looked for tribal members who might be present and viewing the phenomenon. None of the Dogon was visible, though, and had most probably been drawn away from the Yougo site by the onset of the Sigui and the departure of the dancers. The rock’s redness cast a barely visible shadow onto the sun-drenched sand in front of the opening crevasse. Elliot took one last look around and then quickly trotted down a footpath into the opening at the front edge of the Yougo Rock.

Inside, the walls were close and there was no way to get lost because the trail was determined by the course of the breaks in the stone. Elliot realized as he moved deeper into the formation that he had not touched the surface of the rock and he stopped briefly to see if there was a vibration or temperature associated with the pulsating color. The strange emanation, however, was without sound or heat. 

In about five minutes, he came to a major fissure where four different cracks appeared to run deep into a cavernous hole. Deciding the correct route was simple because three of the trails led to quick dead ends in small box canyons. The path he followed was marked by small green ferns trying to grow along the cooler bottoms of the stone. Overhead, as he walked, the geological formation began to close and create a ceiling until he was in a tall cave. The powder blue Mali sky disappeared from view and Elliot found his way by the light from the Yougo Rock. 

Moving slowly, he kept watch for a tribal guard. There was no way to know what to expect if he were caught. The trail sloped further downward and as he moved deeper underground the rock walls drew away and the passageway opened abruptly onto a small cavern. On the far side, Elliot immediately noticed what appeared to be two wooden pedestals. The rock, for some reason, appeared to be giving off less light and the diffuse illumination in the cavern had the effect of obscuring his vision so he waited to sharpen his focus and then stepped across the open space. Elliot listened closely for the sounds of someone sleeping or the creak of bones under the pressure of muscles tensed for attack, but there was only the silence of the underground.   

When he moved into the open, he saw that the two pedestals were standing in recessed spaces against the far side of the cavern. He assumed they were religious altars, which tribal teachings had said were located far beneath the ground in the Yougo Fault. There were figures atop each of the pedestals and Elliot thought they might be the carvings of the Andoumobolou busts. He moved in the direction of the wall where the two slim structures stood barely lit.     

The Andoumobolou were people of small stature whom Dogon legend said used to live among the rocks of the great fault. Honored by the Dogon as gods, a few investigators like Temple thought the diminutive Andoumobolou may have been Sirians. The far-fetched theory that Elliot had heard was that the Andoumobolou were left behind by Nommo to live with the Dogon and give them instruction before they returned to the stars. As incongruous as that notion was to traditional anthropology, Elliot speculated about what the Andoumobolou busts would look like if they were artifacts of a relationship between humans and an undiscovered form of intelligent life from an unknown location. It was more likely, Elliot reasoned, the Andoumobolu were the Tellem, a culture and people that were forced off of the Cliffs of Bandiagara after the arrival of the Dogon. He also wondered if they were connected to the small, gray beings often described by UFO abductees.

The busts and the Sigui masks, Elliot had concluded, in order to offer even debatable scientific value, would have large tear drop shaped eyes, broad upper craniums drawing sharply down to narrow pointed chins, and barely discernible noses and mouths. The image to be presented ought to be similar to aliens of pop culture.

The busts of Andoumobolou, however, resolved nothing. As Elliot approached them, he saw that the carvings had rotted from the endless humidity and condensation in the cave and had been gnawed at by rats and other vermin. Whatever were the facial characteristics of the Andoumobolou, they were lost to years of mold and the deterioration of time and the elements. The soft wood from which the carvings were made, probably boab, had all but dissolved and left little more than crumbling husks atop the pedestals. The Dogon had made no effort to preserve these pieces of their culture even though the cave of the Sigui masks was supposedly sealed for complete protection. Elliot hoped that was the case. The history of the Dogon tribe was contained in the Sigui art work and if it was destroyed, so was the Dogon’s past along with any chance of showing the world that these Africans had been part of an ancient encounter with an unknown intelligence.

Elliot backed away from the ruined busts and more carefully scrutinized the cavern.  Portions of the walls appeared finished and smooth and the small openings in the ceiling, which allowed rays of sunlight to reach the floor, looked as if they had been busted through the igneous rock with hand tools. The strange blend of ambient red glow from the rock and the directed sunlight made discerning details difficult in the enclosure. 

As he was about to leave, Elliot noticed two smooth boulders symmetrically located behind the pedestals. In concentrating on the busts, he had not spotted the stones.    Weak light was playing off of them and emanated from a source at their rear, away from the front of the cavern and the falling beams of sunlight. Elliot thought it was possible the large stones and the Andoumobolou busts were framing an entrance of some sort. 

When he went over to inspect he found a low archway about four feet high and wide enough to easily accommodate a man. Lowering his head for a look on the other side, Elliot discovered a short tunnel about ten feet long that emptied out onto an open rock surface. Without hesitating, he went through to the other side.

He came out onto the round top of a bald mountain, which offered no shelter from the sun. Upon further inspection, Elliot realized the location was likely a perfect circle with a diameter of about a hundred feet enclosed by low stone walls around the circumference. Off to his left, there was one break in the continuity of the wall. Elliot went to the spot and then down a ramp leading to a series of steps. The stairs took him toward another dark opening in the rocks.

Just before losing all light down at the end of the corridor, Elliot arrived at a door. He carefully assessed his surroundings, looking for either watchmen or traps. He saw and heard nothing; except for his own uneven breathing. Placing his hands on the dark heavy wood of the door, Elliot felt for hinges or handles and found none. Perhaps, it had to be lifted for access. But when he pushed, nothing moved. On his second, stronger effort, he was startled by the sound of his own grunting exertion. Nothing gave. Running his fingers around the edge of the frame, he felt for a separation between the stone and the door. None seemed to exist. Frustrated, he stepped back.  The Sigui masks and totems were probably on the other side of that door and he had to find out how it was opened. There did not appear to be any sort of lock or hole for a key or any type of device that might serve as a trigger for opening, which suddenly made him remember the Egyptians. 

In constructing the passageways and doors of their ancient stone structures like the Great Pyramid, the Egyptians, or whoever had built the pyramids, had devised sophisticated counterweights and a series of levers to easily control tons of stone. If the door in front of Elliot happened to be counterweighted, a simple application of pressure at the right spot might cause it to swing open. 

In the near darkness, he continued probing, testing the wood for pressure points, trying to guess a spot that could be easily opposed with a weight on the other side.  He pushed in dozens of locations, feeling for any weakness in the wood or stone.  Finally, on the verge of giving up, Elliot pressed with both hands against each of the corners of the heavy wood obstruction. In the upper left hand corner, he thought he felt movement. On the second try, he stretched his legs behind him and laid his body weight forward into his arms and the barrier swung open without the slightest creak.  Elliot jumped back and gave way for it to pass.

The door was much taller and broader than the opening it had been concealing. Elliot saw another tunnel that had been cut into the rock and as he leaned over to peer inside he was unable to determine its length or where it might lead. Its width was easily comfortable enough to accommodate Elliot but the low ceiling meant if he entered he was going to be crawling. He saw no other choice, though, and slipped the video camera’s bag off his shoulder and nudged it in front of him as he slid forward on his hands and knees.

Inside, the air was still and he tasted the long-settled dust he stirred up by anxiously clawing his hands and shuffling his feet. Only inches separated his shoulders from the rough rock walls as he crawled. The diffuse red light of the Yougo Rock did not illuminate the passage for more than three feet in front of him and Elliot was comforted by the camera light he was carrying in the case. Momentarily, he was overwhelmed with an urge to back up and run to the sweet African air with its big safe sky and all of its comforting and chaotic life but he kept inching forward.

In a few minutes or a few hours, Elliot was not sure, the tunnel opened onto a room.  The light from the Yougo’s glow was not sufficient to enable him to determine whether he was in a natural cavern or a manmade space. He had an unnerving sense of being close to a precipice so he unzipped the carrying case and turned on the light atop the mini-cam. After scanning the space with the bright beam, Elliot stood and made a more comprehensive assessment of its dimensions.     

While he was panning the light along the farthest wall, he saw rounded shadows in orderly lines across the floor. They looked like the sawed off ends of fallen timber.  Pointing the light a few feet in front of him, Elliot moved slowly toward what he had guessed were logs. He discovered that there was an extensive row of them along the wall and they were arranged in a straight line as if they were cut trees waiting to be milled. Only the sawed off ends were visible and the logs appeared to extend into a two or three foot tall slot that reached further into the mountain. Elliot estimated there may have been thirty or forty of them partially concealed in the storage space. 

If these were the Sigui totems, the first one ever carved was on either end of the row.  Elliot worried about the length and weight of these tree trunks and whether he had the physical strength to drag even one out for inspection and videoing. He had been hoping to find the smaller masks and not the totems that were used to model their creation. Assuming he could extricate one of the logs to see the totem carved upon its surface, Elliot hoped it might reveal who or what the Dogon had been worshipping through the centuries.

He moved to the left, reasoning that the Dogon would have stored the Sigui totems chronologically from left to right, though he knew such sequencing was not common in all cultures. He knelt and touched the pole notched into the most leftward position.  The surface of the wood had a crumbly softness and some of it fell off like dust. Elliot circled his arms around the cutting to test his grip against its weight. 

Taking a deep breath first, he arched his back and extended the muscles of his arms.  As he was positioning himself to more evenly distribute the effort along his legs and back, Elliot's foot touched something beside him in the darkness. He reached down and felt around trying to determine what he had just accidentally nudged, and placed his head beneath the overhang and reached both arms into the darkness to grasp the object.

After he had removed it, Elliot held in his hands what he guessed was possibly the initial Sigui mask. He raised it close to the dim red light coming off of the walls warning himself to be circumspect and scientific and not foolishly enthused. He was looking at a head shaped almost like a heart with a tiny, pointed chin and barely distinguishable mouth and nose. The eyes used to decorate the top of the broad cranium of the mask were large almonds stretched at the ends like taffy, and curling around the side of the face and away from the hollow, sunken cheeks. The mouth and nose lacked definition and looked vestigial.

Carefully, Elliot sat the mask on the floor and turned on the mini-cam and its light and began to record. As he did, he rotated the mask with his free hand for different views and then he zoomed tight on the intricacy of the shining black eyes and the slit of the mouth. A barely visible bump with two small holes formed a nose. Elliot also felt his hands sweating with an unnamed anxiety. Was it a coincidence that this ancient face he was staring at matched the one that had turned up in pop culture fifty years ago?  If this was the first Sigui mask, as he felt certain it was, it had been created no later than sixty years after Nommo’s first visit to the Dogon a few thousand years earlier.  Elliot began to wonder if all of humanity had carried this vision around in its collective conscience down through the ages. Was Nommo, or whatever name it was called in whatever culture, with humans from the beginning?

He wanted further corroboration of what he was seeing. Elliot put down the mini-cam and gently eased the Sigui mask back beneath the stone outcropping and sat it down on the slab where it had been stored. Returning to the bottom of the totem pole on his left, Elliot crouched to lock his hands beneath the log.   

He bent his knees and began to lift, expecting some of the centuries old wood and bark to disintegrate under pressure. The aged tree trunk, though, felt solid and strong, and he began dragging it slowly into the light to see if it also showed the totem of the initial Sigui. Uncovered, the artwork on the log presented the same image. 

After he had also recorded the totem pole and shoved it back in place, Elliot slipped the mini-cam into its case and moved through the red light to the opening of the entry tunnel. By the time he had gotten back outside, he was already worrying about what this all meant for the world, its religions, and even if anyone would ever be willing to accept its implications. What if he had just captured the images of intelligent beings that were part of a hierarchy of life stretching from God down to mankind? Would people claim he was part of a hoax? They were certain to ask why anyone would be convinced of anything by wood carvings from a tribe with ancient customs.

Elliot pressed his hand against the door’s counterweight and stepped back as it quietly closed and sealed. He looked around and made certain he was alone before he moved back between the steep walls of the Yougo Rock. Were the recordings he had just made, the findings he had achieved at the pyramids in Egypt, and all of the other data gathered by others through the decades, adequate proof? Maybe there was not enough evidence to prove any theory when the truth it reveals is too awful to be believed. 

The rock above him had opened up again and Elliot saw tall, white clouds tumbling through the Mali sky. He breathed the reassuring air with its taste of all the live growing things and was beginning to feel safe again when there was a sting in his right shoulder. At first, he thought it was a bee or one of the perpetually annoying black flies. He reached back and swatted at whatever it was and felt a slight, tufted shaft, which he knocked loose before he was able to grasp it. When he turned around and leaned over to look for what had caused the bite, Elliot collapsed against a rough rock face. He tried to relax, calm himself, and he leaned back to look for the sun and clear his head. He tried to convince himself he was being unnecessarily paranoid.  The clouds stopped moving and the sky faded from blue to gray and then lost all color. In a minute, his eyes would not open.

Elliot had the pleasing thought that a brief nap would be very refreshing.