The Sicily Chronicles

9230 B.C.E.-2

Anu worked a long time on this project, switching from the first stone implement to its sharper successor, carving curves and arches in the stone to depict a sheep. The art was mostly composed of straight and curves lines that, although apparently representing an animal, had no depth or detail. It was all monochromatic, with no suggestion of color, and so depth was impossible to achieve. But once he had completely this stick figure of the sheep, Anu proceeded to etch what was obviously a man alongside it - his father, Anutu.

At one point, Anu rested, his right arm tired from striking the large bulbous stone in his palm against the carving implements applied to the wall. He tended to the smudge pot by gently stirring the embers and grease adding more leaves to create a flame. After a moment’s respite, Anu returned to the silent chore of adding his father’s image to this sacred cave.

Finishing the carving gave him great satisfaction. He knew that Anutu would not arrive in the afterworld until this work was completed, but now Anu nodded his head in a confident feeling that he had completed the task. He gathered up his implements and put them back in the bag, slinging it over his shoulder. He lifted the smudge pot and treated it with care. A fire once started could never be deliberately put out; it was a simple rule of life in his tribe. Even though they now knew how to create fire on their own, it was still a gift from the gods and no one in his tribe would extinguish the flame once started.

* * *

Anu stepped out into the midday sun, blinked twice to adjust his eyes from the dark of the cave, and began the long trek back to his village.

Anu trudged the distance back to the village, through small stands of cypress trees that grew at the edge of the cliff encircling the small island of Fansu, past meadows of short grasses making their annual appearance in the wild. The tough hides that he used for his footwrapping absorbed the sharp stones that were encrusted in this cliff, and his strong legs easily navigated the small crevices and minor slopes that crossed his path.

He recognized a type of ruddy tree on his path, so he tapped its branches, which stirred a fresh scent that he inhaled with pleasure. The tree, with its twisted trunk and silver green leaves, was a distant ancestor of olive trees. Anu was already familiar with its primitive fruit and aroma and he had harvested the tiny berries in the past which he and Baia crushed to turn into an oily substance to tenderize and flavor the meat they grilled over an open fire.

The cool morning air had been replaced by moderate midday temperatures so he loosened the sinew strings that bound the leather hide around his shoulders, letting the animal skin fall loose around his arms. A hint of a breeze blew steadily across the plain as Anu crested the slight hill and saw the clump of huts in the distance. The slope of the earth was now downward and he began to smell the village fire and the scent of baking bread, so he quickened his pace.

Upon arriving at the village, Anu went straight toward his own hut. By this time of day, the people were out of their shelters and moving about. Lotya, a man of the same age as Anu, approached him and they exchanged greetings. It wasn’t necessary to shake hands or embrace or engage in any other physical communication. Life in the tribe was very communal and most considered the people around them to be kin as, in fact, many of them were.

At the hut, Anu’s son was at the doorway, looking up at the man as he approached. Baia kept close watch over the boy but knew that the others in the village would also keep an eye on him, just as she would for the other children of the tribe. She looked up when Anu entered and smiled. He had completed his task and, today, would set about the business of burying his father, Anutu.

“This day,” Anu told her, “I take his name, Anutu,” he said, indicating his deceased father at the back of their hut. “And he,” pointing to their son, “takes mine.”

Like most things in the simple life of these people, names were not used in abundance. It was common for one’s name to change as life’s circumstances were altered, as when a man took on the name of his father at the older man’s passing. Anu, now Anutu, was honoring not only that tradition but also his father. And, at last, his son would have a name.

The baby girl didn’t need a name yet, so none was chosen. It would be in due time and, if her mother perished for some reason before that event, the little girl might just as well use Baia’s name, rather than waste it. Creating things that didn’t need to be created, like new names for every birth, seemed unwise and unnecessary.

And like names, their language itself had its own inherent conservation, just as with other resources for this people. The villagers spoke in the present tense, rarely using the past and never the future, because time, for them, was the moment they were living in. It wasn’t hard to conceive of something that had come and gone, and the people understood that an animal or person had lived before but didn’t now, but they were unable to imagine the future and so they didn’t think in terms of it.

Therefore, Anu didn’t say that his son “will take” his name. So Anu took on the name that his deceased father no longer needed, just as his son would take on his name. The laws of linguistic conservation acted like boundaries on their speech, so the phrase instead was “he takes mine.” These same boundaries affected their nonverbal communication and the primitive art forms that they practiced. Cave drawings had little imagination, because imagination required conceptual thinking about something they hadn’t witnessed, just as thinking about the future required imagining about what they hadn’t observed.

The words and vocabulary common to these people grew out of the necessity of survival, so verbal exchanges between men – the hunters – involved more hand gestures than vocalized sounds, so as not to attract the attention of the animal they sought to bring down. The gathering activities of the women allowed more vocalization, but not remarkably so, as the villagers were still developing their own list of words that would be necessary to achieve their purpose of communicating. The focus was more on nouns, since a person might want to refer to a thing that they knew but which was not present, while they would use their hands and arms to suggest the action of a verb. Swinging one’s arms in a steady motion, spinning an index finger in circles, or pushing upward with exposed palms all had their own meaning, and indicated actions better than words could have.

Each tribe might have created its own word for essential resources like water, because it was the foremost noun that the people would label. In fact, it was precisely the words for nouns – things that they could hold and show to other tribes – that served as the codex for translation of tribal languages whenever they encountered new people on the plains. Beginning with things like water, fire, tree, pig, and so on sowed the seeds of understanding between people who encountered new tribes for the first time.

And words for concepts like “where” or “when” were hardly ever spoken; rather they were indicated with the body and facial expressions like raised eyebrows, shrugged shoulders, or a glance cast left and right.

* * *

Death was never welcome, but it was a common part of life in the primitive world. Anutu’s father had seemed to just pass on out of life. There was no indication before his last day that anything very important was wrong. He moaned about a belly that ached more than normal the evening before, while eating his food and after completing the repast. But he lay down on his mat without mentioning anything else, so his son and Baia were surprised the next morning when he didn’t wake.

At first, while Anu – now Anutu – stood over his father wondering what had happened, Baia let out a single whimper. She was very attached to the man who had brought his son into her life, and she didn’t expect him to leave so soon. Baia became sad that morning while she helped her man arrange the older man’s body, crossing his legs and folding his arms in a fetal position, the common position used in preparation for burial. They knew that his limbs would become wooden and not easy to fold, and that a body left to harden without folding would be hard to bury. So, it was common for the villagers to arrange it this way.

While little Anu looked on, Anutu picked up a tool fashioned from a short wooden handle with a wedge-shaped stone tied to one end with twine made of braided reeds. First, he stabbed at the earth with a sturdy stick to loosen the soil, then picked up his tool to scrape and carve out a small indentation in the floor of the hut, near one end away from their sleeping mat. He dug with care, trying not to tear the bark or let it break in half. He removed layer upon layer of soil, piling it by the side of the excavated hole, while the grave went deeper.

At first, little Anu tried to imitate his father’s actions, using a small piece of wood to scratch at the dirt. But soon, he lost interest in the activity and moved outside to find his mother.

Anutu continued digging, leaning farther into the hole as it approached the depth necessary to hold his father’s body. When the grave was dug sufficiently, Anutu stood up, stretched his back, and laid the bark down at his side. He would need help moving the body and wanted a break from the work before completing the final task.

* * *

All together the tribe consisted of about fifty people. Childhood wasn’t recognized except for the very young like Anutu’s son, barely walking about on his feet. It was assumed that as soon as a young person could use their hands for useful endeavor, they would be taught to help out in the activities of the village.

There were eleven huts to shelter the tribe. The family was the nuclear unit, but some huts provided for more than a man, woman, and their children. Anutu’s father and mother had remained with their sole surviving son and Baia until their own deaths. Separate huts would usually be built only when the dimensions of the domicile could no longer accommodate those within.

The eleven structures were loosely arranged in a tight compound, with each clump of four to five huts existing in a separate cluster with a fire pit in the center of the area between them. The men and women of each cluster would prepare their own fires, large enough for the people sheltered there, but not so big that the flames wasted the fuel that was carefully collected and stored.

When the early morning cooking chores were completed, the embers were packed closer together and more large stones added to the perimeter, to contain the heat and keep the fire burning with less wood. It was in this way that the village fires would burn throughout the day, tended carefully to avoid having to restart each one, but conserving the fuel needed to cook the meat later in the day and keep the people warm on cool evenings.