On the Fifth Day

On the Fifth Day is, of course, a work of fiction, though elements of the story are rooted in fact, and I thought it might be of interest to readers to know what some of those elements are.

The fish at the core of the story is my own invention, but the story’s use of the “living fossil” fish, the coelacanth, and the details of the recently discovered Tiktaalik roseae are all as factually accurate as I could make them. I stand indebted to Peter Forey (formerly of the Natural History Museum, London) and to Susan Jewett (of the Smithsonian Institution), and feel obligated to point out that the much discussed “Florida scale” supposedly sent to the Smithsonian in 1949 is almost certainly a myth. Silver votive fish like the one in the novel do exist, however, and their origin continues to be debated.

The locations in which the story takes place and the artifacts associated with them are all real, with a few small exceptions. Pompeii does indeed contain a “magic square” of disputed significance, and Herculaneum’s House of the Bicentenary does have a shadow “crucifix” on the wall of an upper room. No cross matching that shadow has ever been discovered, and most archaeologists of early Christianity would agree with Deborah that the crucifix did not become a core element of Christianity until considerably later. The strange fish images found throughout the ancient sites I present in the book are all real (and you can see some of them on my website), though the idea that they refer to some hitherto unknown species is purely my own imaginative whimsy. The description of Paestum is accurate with the exception of the second diver grave, which I invented.

The Fontanelle cemetery is real, and though it is currently closed to the public, there are plans to reopen it soon. I am especially grateful to Claudio Savarese and Fulvio Salvi of Naples Underground for showing me around during a recent visit, and to Larry Ray for fielding some questions thereafter. Again, I will be posting images from the Fontanelle and other locations from the book on my website. The Captain legend does come from Fontanelle lore, as does the belief that the cemetery has housed local Mafia meetings. The legend of the crocodile in the passages beneath the Castello Nuovo is also authentic, though such stories accrue around lots of places.

Having lived a couple of years in Japan and visited several times since, much of the data on which I based those parts of the book came from memory, though I’m grateful to Masako Osako for her willingness to supply information where I was either forgetful or just wrong.

I am indebted to C. Loring Brace of the University of Michigan’s Museum of Anthropology for his advice on dating and the racial classification of bones; to Janet Levy of the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, for her help on the archaeological uses of pollen; and to C. T. Keally for all manner of help concerning Japanese archaeology, recent scandals therein, and how I might perpetrate a fictional one of my own. Thanks also to my brother, Chris, for his help on issues of satellite monitoring.

My sense of Catholicism is derived largely from my own experience, though I have been fortunate enough to speak candidly to several priests in preparing the book. My thanks especially to my old friend Father Edward Gannon and to Reverend Philip Shano, S.J. Another old friend, Jonathan Mulrooney, introduced me to the extraordinary writings of Father Teilhard de Chardin, for which I am deeply grateful.