‘That’s right,’ Lucy said. ‘Present-day apes and our own oldest ancestors still walked on all fours for the most part, and thus their spines entered the skull in a place that allowed them to look forwards while being on all fours. As we evolved to walk upright on the open plain on two legs, so the entry hole for our spines gradually moved until it is where is today, allowing us to look forwards naturally whilst walking on two legs. It is adaptions such as this that show how we evolved over many millions of years to become who we are today.’
The children were silent as they considered this new piece of information, and Lucy felt a glow of warmth inside as once again she saw how simple evidence could be presented to the children that made perfect sense of the complexities of evolution while allowing them to make their own judgements.
‘I still don’t get how somebody’s bones knew how to move place in order to help us?’ asked another young boy with curly brown hair.
‘That’s not how it works,’ Lucy explained patiently. ‘As we learned to live on the savannahs and it became helpful to be able to stand upright and see further, so those individuals who naturally had a slightly more upright gait would have been given an advantage living in that environment. That would have allowed them to hunt better, survive better, avoid predators better and find a mate easier, which would then have passed those advantageous traits on to their children. Those people who did not have such an upright gait would have found life a little bit harder and would have been less likely to mate, meaning they would have no children and would not have been able to pass on their traits. After long enough only the upright people would remain. That in essence is how evolution works, passing on the traits that work well to our children until only the things that work well remain.’
The children remained fascinated by the fossils around them and Lucy could see that they were accepting of her explanations. Their teacher, a friendly man named Clive, smiled in gratitude or possibly relief to see the children enraptured by the museum’s exhibits.
‘Feel free to walk wherever you want to,’ Lucy said to Clive as she moved to stand alongside him and watch the children peering in at the remains inside the glass cabinets. ‘I’ll be in my office for most of the day.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want to look after thirty kids all day instead?’ Clive suggested. ‘You’re clearly a natural at it.’
Lucy smiled. ‘Being a natural doesn’t mean it’s something I want to do, that’s why I became a scientist and not a teacher.’
‘Can’t blame me for trying.’
Lucy gave Clive a pat on the shoulder and took the opportunity to slip away from the fascinated children as she headed towards an access door that led to private offices kept out of sight from the general public. She strode up to the door and tapped in her personal security code into a panel beside the door, and the door clicked open and allowed her to pass through.
Lucy strode down the main corridor, glancing briefly left and right through glass windows into various laboratories where staff scientists were working on the museum’s many projects. Recently excavated fossils were being cleaned, new species discovered in far-flung corners of the globe examined and recorded, ice cores retrieved from distant Arctic shores measured and examined for signs of climate change. Lucy passed them all by and then turned to her own office, opened the door and stepped inside. She closed the door behind her and strode across to a small desk that contained a computer and several files.
Lucy Morgan was not a senior scientist at the museum and so was not blessed with a large office, but she liked the view across the museum’s lawns and the cosy feeling the small room gave her, which was warm even in Illinois’ bitter winter months. Across one entire wall opposite the window were ranks of tiny shelves upon which were stacked countless specimen jars containing bones, fossils and exotic species collected over centuries by explorers and suspended in alcohol to preserve them.
Lucy slumped down into her comfy office chair and stared out across the lawns at the bright blue sky outside, wishing she was in the field rather than cooped up in the museum. She was lost in her thoughts when a sharp knock rattled against the office door.
‘Come in?’
The door opened and Lucy was surprised to see the man in the blue suit she had spotted in the main hall standing in the doorway looking at her. On impulse she stood from her chair and the man smiled as he held out a card toward her.
‘My apologies, doctor,’ the man said, his voice heavily accented in what could have been Russian. ‘I hope you do not mind me contacting you in this way?’
Lucy took the card and look down at it, reading quickly the name Vladimir Polkov and a title across the top of the card that read: Moscow Institute of Anthropological Studies.
‘You never thought to try the phone?’ Lucy quipped.
Vladimir smiled. ‘I did, but my English is not so good and I thought it better to meet you in person. Having seen you teaching those children, I believe I’ve done the right thing.’
‘How did you get in here?’
‘I watched you input your code into the security door,’ Vladimir shrugged. ‘Again, I apologise.’
Lucy glanced again at the card briefly and then laid it down on her desk as she beckoned Vladimir into the office. Stocky and with thickly gelled black hair, something about Polkov seemed off to Lucy, as though he were a bad actor in a B-rated movie.
‘What can I do for you, Mr Polkov?’
‘Please, it’s Vladimir, and I was wondering if you could help me with an investigation we are making?’
Lucy gestured to a spare chair in the corner of the office as she sat back down. ‘Sure, shoot.’
‘It is something of a delicate matter and I wasn’t quite sure where to start.’
‘Delicate?’
‘It involves an excavation that occurred within the borders of a country which would not be happy with Russian investigators being present.’
Lucy raised an eyebrow but said nothing, letting the silence provoke the Russian into speaking further.
‘My superiors have become interested in a discovery that was allegedly made in the deserts of Israel some years ago, the remains of a very ancient tomb in which bones were found and excavated. It is our understanding that those remains were then taken to America, but from there the trail has gone cold.’
This time it was the Russian who fell silent and allowed the silence to build.
‘I’m not aware of any recent discoveries being made in Israel,’ Lucy replied with a vague shrug. ‘Not in anthropological terms anyway.’
‘But you are aware of discoveries, however?’
‘Fresh archaeological digs are ongoing in Israel at all times,’ Lucy agreed. ‘We try to keep up with the flow but given the country’s complex history there are far too many to document.’
Vladimir smiled with thin lips only, his eyes fixed upon Lucy’s. ‘My superiors have gone to great lengths to follow what happened in Israel and have solid evidence that you were there and were present at the excavation site. They know and understand that you may not be able to speak of what you found, just as they are aware that you would love to do so given the nature of your discovery and that it was stolen from you.’
Lucy Morgan remained silent for a long time, her gaze likewise affixed to the Russians but her mind already travelling back several years to the dusty plains of the Negev desert. She had been sent there by the Field Museum in order to make archaeological excavations, but while present she had found herself on an entirely unconventional dig that she had kept secret from her employers. Guided by the expertise of native scientist and former mentor Doctor Hans Karowitz and by her own instincts she had eventually located an extraordinary tomb which she had successfully dated as being in excess of seven thousand years old.