20

I’m an early riser, and each morning I would get up at the Rising Star site just before dawn. Usually Marina Elliott was also up, getting a bite in the kitchen area. I would pull out my whiteboard and begin to outline the briefing for the day, to be held every morning at 6:30—first, the goals for the day; second, the teams and their composition; third and last, the safety protocols and safety reminders. Because most of the people in camp were young and highly attuned to social media, I started naming each day with a hashtag at the top of the briefing board. This became a fun part of our daily ritual.

It was November 9, and tomorrow would be #Hday—Hominid day—the first time scientists would enter the Chamber and recover fossils. Today was the last day to check all systems, making sure the complex camera system worked and we had dotted all of the i’s and crossed all of the t’s. The day progressed smoothly, and by midafternoon I was confident that tomorrow would indeed be the day of first entry. I called the whole group together. After congratulating everyone—it had been a monumental effort in the short three weeks since this expedition had been conceived to get it designed and now delivered—I got down to the point of the meeting. I announced that Marina and Becca would be the first to enter the system the following morning. I was pleased to see that there were no signs of jealousy among the other lead scientists. Although I am sure there may have been some disappointment, they knew they would all get their chances in the Chamber. I let everyone have an early afternoon off to prepare themselves mentally for the next day. People drifted away to start a small bonfire, listen to music, or shower in one of our outdoor showers before the sun set.

That day John Hawks arrived after sunset. Straight off a long flight from his home in Wisconsin, he was clearly tired but ever ebullient. As I watched by the light of the campfire, Marina—having taken on a clear leadership role in the camp and organization—showed him to his tent. He wandered over to the fire, looking around at all the unfamiliar faces.

“Welcome. I see they’ve set you up properly,” I said as he sat down in one of the canvas chairs around the fire.

“Sure, thanks. This is quite a little city you have going here.” He gestured into the darkness.

“You have no idea,” I said to John. “It’s been a busy few days, but you’re just in time. Tomorrow we’re going to get some hominin fossils!”

AS THE SUN ROSE on November 10, the side of my tent glowed and the heat started building inside. The hot sun made oversleeping at this campsite its own punishment, and I rarely had trouble getting everyone up at daybreak. I started the gasoline generator a minute or so after six, and people soon began wandering toward the mess tent, knowing that instant coffee would be ready before too long.

I gave the usual 6:30 briefing, with an estimated time line on first entry. After sending everyone off to do last-minute preparations, I pulled the lead scientists aside and again went through the protocols. Rick and Steven would lead them into the cave. Rick would act as Chute Troll, manning Base 1, and Steve would descend to the Landing Zone, where he would act as safety officer. Matthew, my son, would lead Marina and Becca into the Chamber and point out where the most vulnerable bones were, including the skull. He would then exit.

The plan was first to place marker pins for the Artec scanner. These would be critical for linking scans in the future and needed to be affixed permanently. For markers, we were using simple stainless steel dog tags with personal identification numbers engraved onto them. They would be nailed to the wall as a permanent record of the scanner points. After these were in place, the Chamber floor would be scanned in the vicinity of the first intended excavation area. Only then could collection begin. The first specimen I wanted out was the hominin mandible that we had seen in the photos. It was in a vulnerable position, lying loose on the surface, and of course we all wanted to see it firsthand! Among all the specimens that we could see in the photos, this was the most likely to indicate what species of hominin these remains might represent. The sooner it was out, the sooner we would know a lot more.

My family arrived later that morning to watch the first entry. Megan and Jackie took up residence in the Command Center as Matthew tried on his caving gear. I walked up the hill to give a last interview for the National Geographic blog site before this first cave entry. During the middle of the interview, Andrew Howley asked me how I would describe the lead scientists. I immediately answered, “They’re like astronauts, but underground astronauts!” I had grown to think of them in just that way. With their blue jumpsuits and their willingness to risk their lives to recover fossils, I felt then, and still do, that they were every bit as heroic as space travelers. So Andrew started calling them the Underground Astronauts in his blog—and the nickname stuck.

It turned out we were not ready as planned for the cave entry by late morning. As lunchtime and then early afternoon crept away, I worried whether we would get into the cave at all that day. We kept bumping into glitches, particularly with the all-important camera system. But by midafternoon, everything came together. I looked around at the large group in the Command Center and announced, “It’s a go!”

There were cheers and backslapping and a few hugs, and then everyone moved off to prepare for the first descent into the Chamber.

Marina and Becca, led by Matthew and Steven, would be the first scientists into the Chamber. As they nervously stood by the cave entrance, completely kitted out, I gave each of them a hug, and then I smiled, trying to exude confidence. They knew their jobs; we had prepared as much as we could. I looked at each of them.

“Ready?”

“As ready as we’ll ever be,” quipped Marina. Becca simply grinned and nodded.

“Happy hunting!” I said as I gave my son another hug, shook Steven’s and Rick’s hands, and sent them down into the cave with a pat on the back.

All work came to a standstill as people crowded around the outside of the Command Center. John and Ashley had set up extra monitors so people could watch what was on the screens. The interior of the Command Center was usually off-limits to anyone unauthorized, as the safety of the scientists and cavers depended on there being few distractions, but this first time would be something of an exception as people stayed outside the tent, watching the infrared images of five people descending into the darkness.

“They’re at the Ladder,” I noted aloud, tapping the screen as we watched them carefully descend, one by one.

“They’re through Superman’s Crawl.” Given the physiques of these five, this squeeze was no obstacle, and they slipped through in minutes.

We all watched silently, though, as they each climbed the Dragon’s Back, a much slower process with the safety harnesses and gear in place. After almost 15 minutes, Rick, the last person in line, passed the camera at the top of Dragon’s Back and gave a little wave, which caused a chuckle to pass among the tense crowd surrounding and within the Command Center.

A few minutes later, the phone gave its distinctive buzz and I picked it up to hear Steven on the other end of the line: “We’re at Base 1.”

I answered back, “Thanks, Base 1. You are go for descent.”

I entered the start time of Steven’s climb into the log. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the screens as we watched Steven maneuver himself into the narrow slot and then vanish from our sight. As Matthew moved into view of the camera and positioned himself near the phone, I caught myself biting my lower lip with tension. Was it really worth it to risk people’s lives, even my own son’s, for fossils? But it was a bit late for self-doubt.

The second phone buzzed a few minutes later: “This is Steve. I’m at the Landing Zone.”

“Copy that, Steve. Stand by. We’ll send Matthew down.” I picked up the Base 1 phone.

“Base 1, this is Command Center. Steve is down safely; Matthew can start his descent.”

Matthew’s safe arrival five minutes later was followed by a call for Marina to descend. The tension was palpable in the tent. This was the first untested person to descend into the Chamber, and the first scientist in history to enter. We waited as the minutes went by. Four, then five, then six minutes. She was taking longer than either Steven or Matthew. I glanced over at John, who stood opposite me, taking pictures of the scene. I raised my eyebrows at him, and he simply gave me a reassuring smile in return. There was more silence, and then the Landing Zone phone sounded. I picked it up and heard Marina’s voice on the other end.

“This is Marina. I’m at the Landing Zone.” A cheer erupted around the tent as people high-fived her safe arrival.

I gave the go-ahead for Becca, and she quickly disappeared down the slot, leaving Rick sitting alone at Base 1. Again we waited silently as four, then five minutes passed. Once again, the Landing Zone phone buzzed. I picked it up, listened for a moment, and then put the phone down and said, “Becca’s safely down!” Again the tent erupted with cheers.

It felt like a real accomplishment just to get the archaeologists into the Chamber safely. Now they could employ the excavation protocols we had all worked so hard on. Matthew took about half an hour to show Marina and Becca where the fossils were located, and where to step to avoid damaging others on the floor, and then he began his ascent up the Chute, leaving the three-person team behind.

Marina and Becca began to acclimate themselves to the Chamber. As Marina later recounted, it was so silent there, footsteps and fabric noise were the only thing they could hear as they looked around them. The floor of the Landing Zone sloped steeply from the rear wall of the cave for a few meters, until the point where the walls closed into a narrow passage split by a sheet of rock. Still sloping, the Chamber opened up again into a wider area two or three meters across. Although the ceiling of the Chamber was low in the Landing Zone, here it opened upward into a tall Gothic-like arch, nearly 10 meters above the floor. The floor itself was a very finely textured cave earth—the wet brown dust that had lain there for eons.

Here, more than 30 meters below the surface of the earth, we were about to find the bones of an extinct hominin.