Epic Unearthed Read online

  Chapter II

  A Labyrinth of History

  All supplies have been moved to the new site. Everyone rests except Kyle and a couple of volunteers. While Duncan takes a quick nap, Kyle and his team dig around the entrance, just wide enough to send someone through the dark chamber of the mountain. Immediately after the task, Kyle runs urgently to Duncan’s tent to tell him the news. Duncan wakes up suddenly and smiles at his right-hand man. He dons his boots and jacket, and both men jog toward the site. Rachael is already waiting at the edge of the entrance with ropes and climbing equipment. Kyle and Duncan move quickly up the pile of rocks to the opening.

  “Ready?” Rachael asks Duncan.

  Rachael Baker has a slender athletic build, with long strawberry blond hair, and green eyes. Being somewhat of a tomboy, she does not get a lot of attention from her fellow male archeologists. However, when she attends social events and dresses up, she floors her peers with her natural beauty.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” Duncan replies, as he fastens the last harness to his belt.

  Duncan jokingly tells Kyle, “I’ll go in first. I may need you to save me.”

  Kyle begins to laugh and says, “Well, you are forty-four years old. You may break your legs by just touching the ground. Don’t go in too fast.”

  Rachael lowers Duncan into the mountain. He clicks on his flashlight and stares in amazement. The rope is twirling as he glides downward. The full descent is almost sixteen feet to the stone floor.

  “What do you see?” Kyle calls to Duncan.

  Duncan looks up and yells sarcastically, “I don’t know; my eyes are failing because of my age.”

  Everyone on the surface laughs at the remark and Kyle says, “Real funny, Old Man.”

  In a serious voice, Duncan yells toward the surface, “Kyle, you need to come down here. Rachael, you come too. There are things in here only God can explain.”

  The crew lowers Kyle and Rachael into the cavity. After ten minutes, the three are on solid ground inside the mouth of the mountain. The archeologists explore in different directions with their flashlights, and notice the discovery is more than they expected. Kyle says to Duncan, “If this is the entrance, where does it end? We need more light to see the full picture.”

  The three shine their flashlights upon every structure. The archeologists are shocked at what they see with their simple observations. Numerous pathways splinter off in various directions. The stone floor inside is completely level, and walls are cut out of the mountain in straight lines. It is amazing to them how much detail went into construction. Each team member walks in different corridors and sees large cavities with buildings and statues.

  “A civilization this magnificent should not be here,” Duncan yells in awe at a distance from his team.

  Kyle points his flashlight at a stone wall with metal hangers used to hold torches. Above the torches are ventilation shafts, allowing smoke to escape. As Duncan walks closer, he can feel the air being sucked slightly from the cavity.

  “There’s just enough air pulling through the ventilation shafts so the torches would not go out. This is a very complex system that would have taken years to construct with a great deal of manpower,” Duncan says in disbelief.

  Duncan pokes his head inside one of the holes and looks into darkness with his flashlight. As he puts his head deeper into the aperture, Duncan’s hair is windblown. When he looks back at his colleagues, Kyle and Rachael laugh and try to look the other way from their mentor.

  “The architecture doesn’t meet the profile of any other culture,” Duncan says as he slicks his hair back into place, realizing why they are laughing.

  Kyle returns to the mouth of the breach and yells to the group above, “Bring down the small generators, lights, and surveying tools.”

  Meanwhile, Rachael notices that the writing on the walls does not match what is written outside. She takes a better look and says to Duncan and Kyle, “The symbols in the writing outside are vertical. These are horizontal and look totally different. Why would a civilization have two different styles of writing?”

  “Maybe they had two different languages,” Duncan surmises as he tries looking down another corridor.

  The trio ventures around for hours, taking pictures. There is so much to absorb. Before noon, Duncan tells the survey crew to come down and measure the front cavity. He instructs everyone to stay in the light until more people are lowered from the surface. He does not want his crew to get lost: their safety is his responsibility. Although Duncan desires to go forward, he follows his own rules. The archeologists begin to lower generators, lights, and surveying equipment through the entrance. Eventually they turn on the lights, but the equipment is not strong enough to penetrate the darkness.

  Duncan calls up to a team member, “Julie, go to the nearest town and buy the supplies we require. We need as many supplies as we can get until our main investor sends in the heavy gear. Mister Callaway has already been notified, but I don’t know when our supplies will arrive. To get what we really need may take weeks. Time is our enemy right now. I need fast solutions.”

  Duncan, Rachael, and Kyle go further into the new discovery. For safety purposes, each of the three takes a team, and explore in three different directions. Since it is their first time going so far, no one ventures more than two-hundred yards from the entrance. A labyrinth of pathways leads into larger cavities. In some areas, the ceilings reach almost eighty feet.

  Some of the buildings inside the mountain are three stories tall. Each structure has specific colors with many different pictures painted on each wall, noticeably the image of a bull. Duncan sees no resemblance to Roman, Greek, Egyptian, or Eastern cultures. The buildings inside are like nothing the archeologists have ever seen or read about. Each dwelling has a fireplace and a ventilation shaft. This is a perfectly-made city for any time period.

  Close to nightfall, two days later, Mister Callaway arrives, with three helicopters full of supplies necessary to keep the expedition going. Without delay, Duncan informs the tycoon about the horse artifact found days earlier and asks that it be carbon dated. Callaway examines the stone carving, and hands it to one of his pilots to get the task done. The millionaire wants to see more of what Duncan has found, and they proceed toward the entrance.

  Even though Mister Callaway is fifty-three years old, he is in no way discouraged about being lowered into the breach. Being six feet tall, the tycoon takes a harness, then loosens and retightens the ropes to fit his body. Duncan looks at the older man with disbelief that he is willing to take the chance of getting hurt; nonetheless, he cannot refuse the investor’s enthusiasm. He needs the man’s financial resources and influence to continue the dig.

  After evaluating the ancient city, the tycoon calls several outside sources for more men and supplies. He stays at the discovery for another hour and is astonished. Callaway knows he has to get back to civilization to help expedite resources for the new find, so he leaves the site to make things happen.

  While watching the helicopter fly off into the distance, Duncan and Kyle realize they will have everything they need. Shortly after Callaway’s departure, a smart kid named Lucas yells from inside the site, “I need Duncan to come down here right now. I found something he needs to see.”

  Duncan, Rachael, and Kyle run to the breach and are sent down right away. The archeologists follow Lucas three-hundred yards from the entrance to an area where no one has ventured.

  “Look at this over here,” Lucas says excitedly.

  They follow Lucas sixty more yards into another small hallway. In the middle of a room, Duncan shines his flashlight on a set of armor with skeletal remains. The protective covering is made of silver and other metals, but remarkably has not eroded. Writing is engraved onto the armor across the breastplate, as is a symbol of a bull. The emblem seems to be the crest of the once great civilization.

  “I am wondering who this could have been,” Duncan says. He shakes his head and studies the d
iscovery.

  “Do you have any thoughts about the time period?” Kyle asks his mentor. “I am trying to fit this together, but I don’t know where to begin.”

  Looking around, Duncan notices something on the floor and says, “Look at this sword that seems to be made of stainless steel. This could be revolutionary. We need to find out what metals constitute this artifact. A great number of elements, including chromium and nickel, are necessary to make such a weapon. Stainless steel was not invented until the eighteenth century.”

  The archeologists transport the skeletal remains, sword, and armor to the surface. They conclude the sword is indeed made of stainless steel. The crest on the armor is unlike anything they have ever seen. Duncan will ask Callaway to get the items carbon dated on the next supply run. The crews take the artifacts to a tent where they start studying the objects more closely.

  Meanwhile, a crew brings to the surface different artifacts from their exploration. The team finds gold and silver relics deeper inside the mountain. Duncan senses that this is only a fraction of what awaits them. Many places inside the mountain have yet to be excavated.

  Duncan, Kyle and Rachael decide to explore further and to continue pushing deeper inside the mountain. In case of being trapped or lost, they take food and water for a one-day’s journey. During their exploration, the team sees defensive bridges which appear to not have been walked on for thousands of years. Soon they see a small community of buildings and a marketplace deep inside the mountain.

  In the middle of a courtyard, the archeologists notice another corridor that is blocked by rubble. They climb and crawl through the obstruction. Finding a large room, they venture in and see what seems to be a place of worship. The cavity is about twelve-thousand square feet, and the ceiling inside is fifty feet high. The room is beautifully sculpted with intricate designs, and the writings on the walls are vertical. A forty foot tall statue constructed of pure granite towers toward the ceiling. The face of the sculpture is an old man standing as if he is looking at the heavens. From the foot of the huge monument, the archeologists look up in amazement.

  Rachael notices two black marble pyramids inside the cavity, standing twenty feet high and thirty feet across. “Look at these structures. The style looks as though they are between Greek and Egyptian. In my opinion, the timeline of this civilization is two to four-thousand years ago.”

  Duncan flashes his light around the cavity and says, “The religion of these people seems to have been centered on one god in their civilization, so this culture might have been monotheistic. Look around. There are no other statues to worship. Considering the history of man, this also doesn’t make sense. Except for the last two-thousand years, many past civilizations believed in multiple gods. The timetable is off. There are so many unanswered questions here. This culture is one of a kind.”

  Kyle says, “Rachael, take pictures. There is very little light here, but the flash from your camera will help show what is in the shadows. We should be able to better understand the photos at the surface.”