The darkness is suffocating. Thick. Oozing. Like a living entity clamping down around me, squeezing the air from my lungs. It is everywhere – to the left, to the right. Above. Below. I cannot escape it. I cannot hide from it.
This is my life now. This is my world.
My Underworld.
No, I’ve not been hurled into some dark and terrible prison. I’ve not slipped and fallen into a deep dark cave. I am not some victim, not some lost soul desperately wandering through hopelessness, through despair, hoping to see the light, to find my way out.
No.
I chose this.
And, instead of searching for the exit, I step deeper into this lightless underworld. Every move I make takes me further from the light, further from escape.
Sarisariñama Basecamp,
Venezuela
We call it the Labyrinth. And while this is only my second trip into it, I can certainly understand why Kira Sharpe dubbed it so.
Yesterday, Juliet McKinney gave us all a whistle-stop tour of the first hundred metres or so of the tunnel complex hidden inside the rock of Sarisariñama. Several free-standing halogen lamps, connected to batteries connected to solar panels on the summit, bathed the tunnel walls in artificial white light.
It didn’t seem so bad.
But, even there, the strange ruins offered their first puzzle. We walked deeper into the underground maze (or so we thought) for about five minutes. McKinney waffled on, explaining the incredible discovery of Cellular Polygonal Masonry within as though we were first-year BA students. Then we reappeared precisely where we had started.
McKinney, of course, had a smarmy, triumphant expression on her face (when does she not?).
“And let that be a lesson to ye,” she crowed in her Glaswegian accent. “You’ve been here less than five minutes and already fallen for the Labyrinth’s first trick.”
In fairness, we had. Like suckers. But then, she explained, so had every other group she had brought down here. In a rare moment of humility, she admitted that even the mighty McKinney had fallen for it.
Indeed, it was a surreal sensation and an important lesson learned.
The ancient architects of these tunnels created the illusion of walking in a straight line when, in fact, the passageway curves in a not-inconsiderable arc.
Kudos to them was all I could think.
“It’s a defence mechanism,” McKinney then elaborated. “A way of protecting something deeper inside.”
And ‘Ahah!’ There it was. The admission for which I had been waiting. An acknowledgement of her quest for glory. She wouldn’t be satisfied with slowly peeling back the layers of archaeology like one dissects an onion. She wants the Indiana Jones treatment. The Howard Carter Experience. The Hiram Bingham Adventure.
Sure, we all do. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t fantasise about being the archaeologist who makes a world-shattering discovery. I have, after all, devoted most of my life to trying to make a world-shattering discovery! The Moon Mask, the Black Death and the Progenitor Theory would certainly count as one.
But McKinney has made no effort to hide her disdain towards me and such theories, insisting that it is not proper archaeology. Yet, there she was, jumping to the conclusion that the subterranean maze was a sort of booby trap, protecting whatever lies within.
Someone who says they have particular moral beliefs but behaves in ways that shows these are not sincere.
Sorry, not sure how the dictionary definition of hypocrite got into this post.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), archaeology isn’t a roller coaster thrill ride of giant rolling balls and poisoned arrows. Booby traps just aren’t part of the job. Yes, the possibility remains that the ancient architects designed the Labyrinth to disorient intruders, but we must entertain other explanations first.
But I guess that’s what we’re here for – the mundane bit. The boring bit. And sure enough, today, after the initial thrill of setting off into the dark unknown faded, it’s incredible how quickly it … well, I’m sorry to say, how quickly it became boring.
So, what’s the plan? I mean, beyond aimlessly wandering through pitch-black tunnels for the next six months, I mean.
Well, that kind of is the plan. Not completely aimless, of course. And I’m sure that once we find something, things will liven up. But, essentially, that’s it.
We have no idea how big this Labyrinth is. The surface area of Sarisariñama is over 300 square miles. While I feel pretty confident the tunnels don’t burrow that far into it, we could still be talking about some significant mileage here. Add to that the looping, curving maze-like layout of the passageways (we intersected one of the other teams less than an hour after setting off this morning), then who knows how much ground we’ve got to cover.
Along with hard hats, high-vis vests, radios, ropes and flare guns (not sure how much help that will be in a confined space!), we’ve also been issued a high-tech health and safety solution in the form of an app. The potential for getting lost in the Labyrinth is obvious until we can produce a map. So one of Sharpe Enterprises’ subsidiaries has developed an app, loaded onto our expedition-issued tablets, which solves both problems simultaneously.
Geoarchmap (yeah, catchy name) does what it says on the tin. We stick a geotag on the wall (using a non-damaging organic adhesive) every one hundred metres. The app talks to the tags and, theoretically, will guide us to the nearest one should we lose our way. Think of it as a digital trail of breadcrumbs. Yet it has the added benefit of feeding the information from all the geotags and everybody’s apps into one unified representation of the tunnels, cutting out a massive chunk of work when we get topside.
And that’s what Sid, Nadia and I have been doing all day. According to McKinney’s cringeworthy nicknaming system, we are one of the four 3-person teams currently designated the ‘Burrowers’. We’re making our way slowly through the tunnels, placing geotags and photographing our surroundings. We record the width and height of the passageways at regular ten-metre intervals and sweep the ground in search of archaeological material.
So far, we’ve found nothing. Not a single pottery sherd. Not a single stone axe or arrowhead. Not a single bone or rag of clothing. Miraculously, or strangely, or both, we’ve barely found a single speck of dirt beyond the few dust motes drifting in our torch beams. I know Cellular Polygonal Masonry is like the Mona Lisa of ancient building techniques. Still, I would have expected some damage to the walls, ceilings or floor, some trace of crumbled stonework on the ground, some build-up of dust and dirt. But it is as though the entire place was swept clean before our arrival, leaving nothing behind for us to find.
After hours in the dark, it is easy to lose all sense of time, and I have to force myself to remember that it is only Day 1 of the actual dig. We’ve only been at this for a few hours. McKinney might hope to find an Amazonian King Tut around the next corner. But, as we packed up and headed back towards the doorway and blessed sunlight beyond, we all realised that this is going to be a long process.
We didn’t find anything today.
But at least we’ve started looking.
NB: This will be my last daily post, at least for a while. I’ll be shifting to a weekly schedule, with a new post every Monday. This change allows me to adhere to work commitments. Now the survey and excavation have begun, we are all expected to write a daily report and update various databases with measurements, finds and observations etc. As well as reduced free time to write new posts, there is a contractual embargo on releasing detailed information and/or photos. So, unless you were looking forward to pretty generic blogs with very little to say, I’ve decided a weekly update will be far more engaging.
Don’t worry; I’ll keep my social media updated regularly. If anything exciting happens, I’ll be sure to write a special edition, so make sure you’ve signed up to be notified when I publish new posts.