An Archaeological Twist

Chapter 1.

The archaeologist’s gloved hand brushed away the lichen; small flakes of stone crumbled to nothing, causing her to pause and almost to pull her hand away. The surface was so old, so fragile. But even through the gloves, she could feel the indents in the surface. They must mean something, but what?

Her team were setting up cameras and other scanning equipment around the area, using varying wavelengths, from infrared through to the ultraviolet. It was hoped a more discernible image could be persuaded to reveal itself.

The large building located roughly in the centre of the open space was clearly very old; all around it were these upright stones. The indents on the surfaces appeared to convey a message; already, it was clear they were some form of writing, a combination of letters and numbers, the latter might be dates.

The ground-penetrating radar revealed lower-density material and the possibility of objects some distance down. It appeared that each stone had something buried underneath it. Could they be grave markers?

The computer's software was slowly analysing each image and interpreting the indents in the stones.

The stillness was absolute. There was no sound of technology beyond her small team. There were birds and insects, but no civilisation, only the crumbling skeletal ruins, like the tall building they were set up around.

There was a signal ping from the computer, indicating a result had been achieved, an interpretation?

Hopefully better than the last time.

Chapter 2.

Others of her team made their way to the desks and equipment; some smiled and nodded to her, others were lost in their own thoughts, still affected by the almost physical weight of time that seemed to bear down on them.

Another ping, then another. The software was beginning to create a series of pictures, but even better, there was an initial translation of some of the words, especially the numbers.

One of her younger colleagues gasped, then quickly covered her mouth with her gloved hand. She was clearly overwhelmed by the magnitude of what they were seeing. The numbers were dates, and the best guess was that they indicated the ages of the deceased. The words might be their names or titles. The computer was doing better with the numbers than with the letters or words, but some had the same combination and could have represented a title of some sort.

Another older female raised her hand. The archaeologist nodded in her direction, indicating for her to make her comment, “If these are numbers and follow a standard pattern, assuming they counted time from a starting position and moved forward. Then have you noticed that there are no dates after a certain point?”

The archaeologist was caught out. She hadn’t seen that. Looking at the computer translations of the dates, it was clear. The other female explained that she’d completed a course in mathematical patterns and statistics before joining the history faculty’s archaeological team.

The archaeologist was a little irritated with being shown up in this way, but she maintained her composure and gracefully replied, “That’s a good observation. Let us return to our work, and perhaps with time, the computer will be able to analyse more information.”

The others nodded, and the archaeologist smiled at her older colleague to acknowledge her contribution.

Resuming her position in front of the stone, she looked at the indentations and considered what this might indicate about what happened to the inhabitants of this place, those who had built this structure. Clearly, they cared for their dead. This place must have taken considerable resources to construct and maintain. The graves had been in use over a long period of time; some stones were far more eroded than others.

And yet, it was suddenly abandoned. The archaeologist couldn't help but wonder what could have led to such a drastic change. Was it a natural disaster, a war, or something else entirely?

Chapter 3.

There was no way of knowing the details of those ancients’ calendar, but the erosion of hard stone showed without doubt that a long time had passed since anyone had lived here.

Then nothing, no new graves. What happened? Would they ever know?

…

She removed her suit's exo-glove. She knew it was wrong. She just wanted to feel the stone, to feel the ages of time that had passed.

Momentarily, the sun came out from behind a cloud and shone into her yellow eyes, causing them to sparkle, and her vertical slitted pupils closed down to only a thin line.

With her reptilian green-scaled fingers, she caressed the stone, feeling the indentations in the surface and thinking …

Whatever happened on this world all those years ago, there was no one left to bury the dead!