Smoke and Mirrors of Time Part 2 by Kath Norgrove

Scene from Nairobi National Museum

Rescue, however, seemed to be a long time coming, but in the meanwhile I participated in tribal life as much as I could. They seemed to be a relatively egalitarian society, with no governing hierarchy or status differences between individuals, and where children were, it seemed, reared cooperatively. They'd welcomed me in and fed me, even though I was obviously different to them. We must have been in a really isolated and hidden area, which would have explained the strangely slow appearance of rescuers. Despite the fact that I should have been panicking, I felt strangely calm and tranquil with my new-found friends.

Much of their time was spent on foraging and hunting in nearby mixed woodland – grassland habitats. Both females and males foraged in larger groups for berries, fruit, tubers and honey. Smaller groups hunted small game like monkeys and small deer, using the dispersed trees as cover or lying in wait overnight at watering holes, often using weapons and hand axes fashioned from stones and bones. I initially helped with the foraging, but later started learning to hunt.

We saw other tribes from time to time. Their obvious differences in appearance to both me and the tribe I was with convinced me that we were way off the beaten track that was unfrequented by outsiders. One tribe consisted of small-bodied individuals with a strange form of bipedal walking. They had curved fingers which were very short compared to their very long thumbs, and they were great climbers. They seemed to stick to the few wooded areas with a diet based on fruits, leaves and other edible parts of plants.

A couple of other tribes were characterised by massive teeth and skulls with flared cheek bones. One of these – the dish people, I called them - had such large cheek bones that they projected beyond the nose and upper face, producing a dish-shaped face. Some of the males had a ridge of bone running lengthwise along the midline of the top of the skull. They were capable of cracking open nuts and other hard objects with their teeth, and seemed to favour tough and fibrous plant food.

The other tribe similar to the dish people but with a robust body form had tiny peg-like front teeth and preferred sedges and grasses supplemented by termites.

There were a couple of other tribes that looked more similar to my friends. One lived on the grass land near the edge of lakes. Although they used stone tools, they used lightning or things that were already on fire to made camp fires rather than light their own. Their choice of diet was lizards, tortoises, pigs, rabbits, young antelope and fish. The other tribe were larger and more robust, with a heavier face and jaws and larger dentition, making the lower face look slightly deformed. They relied primarily on tubers but also ate meat.

Given that reliable access to sufficient food in this inaccessible area was probably low, the different tribes seemed to target different food resources so they could happily coexist. I was glad I'd been found by the ones that preferred a diet similar to my own. Sedges, grasses, tough plants, nuts and termites weren't exactly appealing.

One day, while out with a small group to hunt, I was darting from one small dispersed tree to another through the grasses when a thunderstorm came overhead and lightning struck the tinder-dry landscape around me. Before I knew it, my lungs were filling with acrid smoke and my eyes were stinging. I rang through the grasses, trying to get out of the path of the fire. I had no idea where the others were; they'd vanished and were nowhere to be seen.

Then the rain fell. Heavily. Suddenly, I stumbled through the grasses upon a group of jeeps with rangers – a search party. They were delighted to see me but admitted that they didn't think I'd still be alive, and certainly not in such good health.

“I was helped by my friends,” I responded, waving my hands in the general direction from which I'd just come.

“Come on,” said one of the Rangers, “let's get you out of here”.

Much as I wanted to say goodbye in person to my new friends, I didn't know where they were and hoped that they had found another way out. The Rangers wouldn't let me go back and look for them. I wished them a silent thanks for keeping me safe and well, and jumped into one of the jeeps.

There was a lot of fascination around my stories about the tribes. Most people thought that the tribe I was with were either San people or Hadza and the others I'd seen were ones of several hundred indigenous ethnic groups in the continent. One friend in particular, who was a researcher in human origins and accredited archaeologist, was absolutely enthralled and mesmerized about the tales I had to tell. He asked if he could borrow the hand-axe I still had with me when I'd been found.

When I asked why, he said he wanted to investigate similarities with tools made by early humans. It made sense. Little had changed for those secluded tribes.

“Sure”, I said. “But don't lose it. I made it myself and I want it as a memento of my time with these people”.

A few weeks later, he phoned me, barely able to contain his excitement.

“Where did you get your tool?” he asked.

“I told you, I made it while I was with the tribe”. I replied.

“Are you sure you didn't find it somewhere and repair it?” he persisted.

“No”, I said, “I made it myself while I was living out there. Why?” I queried.

“Well, we did some investigations and, just for fun, carbon dating” he replied.

“I can tell you it's only a few weeks old” I responded.

“Then why”, he paused for dramatic effect, “did the carbon dating age it from about 1.5 to 1.9 million years old?”.