Search Within

After a long day of excavating, I laboriously crawl into my sleeping bag, the tent straps lightly slapping the canvas in the night breeze. Visions of pyramids and other hidden wonders fill my thoughts. Where have I been? Where will it lead? When I look at the Sphinx, I wonder who or what decided to construct such a work? How does one link such differing fluctuations in quality between the Pyramids at Giza and those constructed before and after, supposedly by the same civilization? Does it make any difference? Will the knowledge affect the world in a positive or negative way? I ponder these and many other questions as I begrudgingly fall to sleep.



I awaken chilled, but refreshed, from the night’s cool dampness. The lingering musty odor of the pack llamas mixed with the soothing aroma of fresh coffee fills the air. Dawn is an hour away, but the four members of our guide team have been up for two, and started breakfast. I ask one of them to awaken the rest of our entourage.



I grab a cup of coffee, and stroll over to one of the ancient walls that adorn the great city of Machu Pichu. I ponder the view to the East for some time, anticipating what spectacle the Sun will cast upon the world when it rises. I think, “The day will be wasted if I don’t learn something new in its course.”



Peering over the wall, I spot the first rays of the sun, shadowing distant vistas with its milky yellow pearlescent glow. Directly below, almost a half a mile down, the sacred Urubamba River catches my eye, sparkling, silently winding its way around the foot of the mountain.



It is now six o’clock a.m. and everyone has finished eating. Some have already gone off to complete their assignments while a few of us lag behind for our weekly progress report to our benefactors. This is boring, tedious and somewhat emotionally stressful for me; nevertheless, it is necessary if we are to continue our work. I have never enjoyed having to explain myself to anyone, especially the ones who pull the purse strings; it seems to diminish my sense of control.



Today marks the last week of a three-month cross-discipline investigation of a hypothesis that could be the makings of an intellectual revolution, a dramatic and possibly irreversible change in the way we understand our past, which may even cause us to rethink our future.



We spend most of the three-hour satellite phone meeting justifying delays, tracking expenditures and determining a need for any side trips that may be significant to our research. Finally, the excitement of last week’s aerial trip over the Nazca lines becomes the topic of discussion. We rant over the Nazca spider, which although we have seen it hundreds of times before, takes on new meaning when related to other archaeological sights around the world, especially the Great Pyramids of Giza, Tiahuanaco, Bolivia and Tula, in Hidalgo Province, Mexico. Never evaluated like this before, these connections bring ancient history to a completely new line of thought. It has come with a great price, though, and that is in the scoffs and ridicule we are receiving from the archaeological and historical mainstream.



Someone finally breaks our giddy conference and we all realize we have been conversing for almost four and a half hours about what we had already experienced, forgetting about the tidal wave of  consensus that will bear down on us when we have published our findings.



As the others go to their work, I sit and ponder, under the warmth of the noon Andean sun, what is really in store for us. Will they ignore and conceal our work, for others to discover and decipher in the distant future, as the Greek legends and ancient myths have been to our time? Will the future hail us as great philosophers, having sought to interpret evidence beyond our own capacities and derive meaningful purpose from it?



Nevertheless, these are the very questions that lead most to become archaeologists in the first place. I surely do not know the future, but if we dig deep enough, re-examine all the clues and puzzles left to us by our ancestors, we are bound to get one-step closer to the truth and aid humanity in navigating the future with more certainty.

I hear a demand for my expertise in the distance.



Will this be the find of the century or has one of the student volunteers stubbed his toe on one of the stone artifacts that litter the area?



One never knows.



I hope its something new….



God, I love this life!