17

The next day, October 6, I sat at my kitchen table looking at the job advertisement I had typed out on my laptop. It was fairly straightforward, a basic description of the kind of people I would need and the time line for starting work. Working through the morning, I sketched out a plan of the kind of equipment I would need to mount the expedition, created a rough design of the communication systems, drafted a set of safety procedures, and, finally, filled out an application to SAHRA, the South African Heritage Resources Agency, requesting legal permission to do the work.

It had to be a big operation, with all the cavers, scientists, and support people I required, that was for sure. My rough count came up to around 50 people in all. They would have to be housed, fed, and transported. All this had to come together within a three-week period.

Why was I moving so fast? What bothered me most was that I could see from both Steven and Matthew’s photos that some of the bones were freshly damaged. As Steven and Rick had assured me again and again, they had been very careful and had not stepped on the material or dislodged any from the cave’s floor. That meant other cavers had likely been through that chamber, even though it was not on maps of the site. And then there was that survey marker on the back wall of the chamber. Someone had indeed been in there before, and I had no way of knowing who or when they would be back.

Now, after our trip of last night, perhaps 10 people knew about the existence of important fossils in the chamber. Soon there could be many more. Though I had warned everyone against it, casual tourism by someone just interested in seeing the material in the chamber, or someone who heard a rumor that it existed, could cause tremendous and irreparable damage. So I was not going to waste any time. I wanted to be in that chamber by November if I could get all the permits and permissions in place and find the right people to do the job.

I needed to get the landowner’s permission. Although the cavers knew who that was—a Mr. Leon Jacobs, who had given them permission over the years to cave in the system—they had lost his number. I called a friend, Mags Pillay, at the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site Management Authority, informed him of the discovery, and asked for assistance in finding out the landowner’s number, the management authority keeping such records. He agreed to help, and offered assistance in fast-tracking permit applications from their side as well.

Now I had to find the right people. I reread my description of the requirements again: knowledgeable scientist, intrepid caver, tiny in stature. Should I just mail this to my colleagues and ask them to distribute it in the normal way? I guessed there probably weren’t more than a handful of people in the whole world who fit the description and were available on such short notice. Glancing at my computer screen, I saw a Facebook notification pop up in the corner of the screen. It started me thinking…Why not?

A minute later, the ad went live. It read like this:

Dear Colleague—I need the help of the whole community and for you to reach out to as many related professional groups as possible. We need perhaps three or four individuals with excellent archaeological/palaeontological and excavation skills for a short-term project that may kick off as early as November 1, 2013, and last the month if all logistics go as planned. The catch is this—the person must be skinny and preferably small. They must not be claustrophobic, they must be fit, they should have some caving experience; climbing experience would be a bonus. They must be willing to work in cramped quarters, have a good attitude, and be a team player. Given the highly specialized and perhaps rare nature of what I am looking for, I would be willing to look at an experienced Ph.D. student or a very well trained master’s student, even though the more experience, the better (Ph.D.’s and senior scientists most welcome). No age limit here either. I do not think we will have much money available for pay—but we will cover flights, accommodation (though much will be field accom.), food, and of course there will be guaranteed collaboration further up the road. Anyone interested please contact me directly…My deadlines on this are extremely tight, so as far as anyone can, spread the word among professional groups.

I sat back and watched the screen. Within minutes I started seeing “shares” and “likes” as social media did its thing. Now I would just have to wait.

The next morning, as I was driving into work, my cell phone rang. It was my assistant, Wilma Lawrence. She sounded unnerved.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice a bit tense.

“Why, what’s the problem?” I queried, wondering what had got her upset.

“I have a bunch of messages from women giving me their body dimensions!” she said.

I laughed out loud.

“It’s OK, Wilma,” I reassured her. She must have thought I had put an ad out on a dating site or something.

THE APPLICATIONS CAME ROLLING in. Within a week I had hundreds of inquiries by colleagues and people from around the world. Within 10 days, I had the CVs of almost 60 qualified applicants, the vast majority of them young women. This gender dominance was due in part to the physical requirements: They had to be physically able to fit into the slot, after all. But it also reflected the changing demographics of archaeology and anthropology, in which the strong majority of students and young scientists are now women. The CVs in front of me were impressive as I went through them, ticking off the skill sets one by one. This one had climbing skills, a big plus. This one had emergency medical skills, another plus. As I went through the stack of papers, I was hugely impressed at the varied abilities people had that made them suitable, in a variety of different ways, for this unusual task. I was also humbled by how many people trusted me. I wasn’t paying them, after all, and I hadn’t even said what we were going to do, yet all these applicants were willing to drop everything and come to South Africa based on that Facebook ad alone.

Short-listing was harder than I thought, but with the assistance of my colleagues, I eventually got the number of applicants down to a dozen highly qualified individuals. I was, by that time, beginning to rethink numbers. Although we were only going in to retrieve a single skeleton, having a few more skilled people to work would mean that we could work longer each day. More scientists would also give us some backup in case of injury.

I set up Skype calls with my top 10 applicants. I decided that even in these first calls, I would begin to test them immediately, because I knew what sort of stresses they would be under. I planned an open communication line into the chamber using a rugged outdoor intercom system, which would let me talk to the excavators at any time without their having to activate the communication system and allow me to hear what was going on as they worked. In other words, it put another virtual excavator into the chamber along with the advance team. So, I decided that I would interview each candidate over Skype, but during the course of the interview, I would cut out the visual communication, and even drop the line as if we had been cut off. I wanted to see how each candidate responded to losing communication in the middle of the interview, how they would deal with changes in the planned scenario—a sort of mini–stress test.

Some applicants fared worse than others. A few simply panicked when I cut the communications. Others sulked audibly. Some had difficulty when I asked them to describe the room they were sitting in, allowing me to assess their ability to use words to describe things I could not see. To all, I described in great detail just how dangerous and life threatening I felt the operation would be. One of the successful applicants told me later that it was the strangest interview she had ever experienced.

In the end I had eight candidates whom I considered all pretty much equal. I had been brutally honest with each of them. Yes, it was an expedition to recover what we thought was a single hominin skeleton. It was going to be highly dangerous—in fact, if something went extremely wrong, they could be facing a risk of death—but we were taking all precautions to ensure their safety. I emphasized the size of the slot, making sure they understood they needed to squeeze through a gap only 18 centimeters wide. It was going to be tough, dangerous work, and I needed to be sure I could rely on every one of them, and that they could rely upon each other.

I eventually chose six candidates and called each one. My office began making arrangements to fly them out. The next day, two of those candidates backed out. One simply got cold feet, and the other, a young man, told me that he had lied about his measurements. He couldn’t fit through such a small gap. I thanked him for his honesty, and though he promised to crash diet, I told him that I just couldn’t risk it. Other people’s lives were in the balance. I then contacted my seventh and eighth short-listed candidates, who were thrilled.

I had my science team now, who just happened to be all women. Marina Elliott, Lindsay Eaves, Elen Feuerriegel, Alia Gurtov, Hannah Morris, and Becca Peixotto: Each came with her own unique skill set. I chose a diverse team so that their different skills would complement each other, joining a multitude of strengths with few weaknesses.

Tough and wiry, Marina was a Canadian, finishing her Ph.D. in biological anthropology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. She was an accomplished forensic anthropologist who had worked in crime labs and morgues and had joined archaeological digs in Siberia and northern Alaska. Trained as a veterinary technician, she had valuable medical skills, and she carried an impressive set of outdoor skills, including experience as an adventure guide, climber, and caver.

Lindsay was taller and athletic. She came from Texas, having worked on her Ph.D. in paleoanthropology at the University of Iowa. Her CV showed a strong record of excavation skills and a deep knowledge of paleoanthropology. In addition, she had built a good track record as a public communicator of science, something we thought would be of considerable use to our team in the months and perhaps even years ahead.

The only Australian on the science team, Elen, was a thin redhead in the midst of her Ph.D. studies at Australian National University. A student of the well-known paleoanthropologist Colin Groves, she had excellent skills in working with postcranial anatomy, a knowledge base that would be critical underground. Her impressive academic record was supported by extensive experience in caving and climbing.

Petite and dark haired, Alia was a student at the University of Wisconsin and had worked for several years at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, trying to understand how the animal teeth from that site could lead to knowledge about the ancient environment. During the interview process, she had tested herself in an MRI machine to prove she could work in tight, claustrophobic spaces. I also anticipated needing her experience with animal bones in the chamber, because the fossil material would inevitably include a large number of animal remains, as always happened in South African sites.

Hannah was tall and slender. She was the softest spoken of the group. Raised in Georgia, my childhood home, she had an excellent record of caving and outdoor experiences, as well as a long history of working on excavations in both historical and archaeological sites and experience handling human remains.

The smallest member of the underground scientific team in physical stature was Becca, but her size belied a toughness and strong background in outdoor skills and leadership. She was an accomplished climber and had been a field instructor for Outward Bound before she moved into archaeological work, exploring for traces of the communities of escaped slaves in the Great Dismal Swamp of southeastern Virginia.

With these six women, we had our core scientific exploration team.