Tag Archives: archaeology

Book Review of “Timeline” (1999)

timeline

© James Pyles

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Last night I finished reading Michael Crichton’s 1999 novel Timeline. I’ve always been a sucker for a time travel story, and this one is more unusual than most.

First, Crichton, who passed away in 2008, was not only an excellent writer, but well-versed in science, medicine, and history. His character descriptions are particularly good, and he always managed to pack plenty of action in his books as well as accurate (historical in this case) details.

My one complaint was his explanation of time travel. Crichton didn’t so much describe traveling back in time as jumping from one quantum reality to another. But the explanation presupposed that the reality being jumped into runs parallel to our own (since, as the novel states, time travel is impossible). Yet a person trapped in the 14th century manages to write a note among scholarly papers in a French abbey that is found by his coworkers in 1999.

I skipped over that part and just pretended it worked.

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The Fallen

beit shan

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

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Mastema watched Tancred’s ascension as Prince of Galilee over Beit She’an with hidden glee. This ancient city of the Hebrews had passed through many hands before falling into those of the Crusaders in the year of their Lord 1099 C.E.

It was well that Tancred did not know the true name or origins of his faithful adviser, because Mastema had his own reasons for coveting the city in the Jezreel Valley. He divined that men in ages to come would find sacred and mystic Egyptian artifacts. There was one he must take that would render him master of the dead.

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The Colonials

pictograph

© @any1mark66

“Wallace, I’ve seen your evidence and the supporting papers, but they don’t explain one critical piece of information.”

“Like if the Chinese had visited America frequently and in numbers from 1,300 BC until 500 AD, why didn’t they colonize, right Hendricks?”

This was a frequent argument between the British and Native American archeologists, however Hendricks had a point. Pictographic evidence of extended Chinese visits to North America included numerous artifacts in Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. So why did they stop?

“I’ve already introduced Dr. Christina Esquivel, Hendricks.”

“Charmed,” though the older man’s tone indicated he wasn’t. “What’s a geneticist have to do with archeology, Wallace?”

Christina looked forward to deflating this air bag. “I’ve just finished a five-year comparative genetic analysis between various Native American peoples and those from the Hubei, Hunan, and Yunnan regions of China. DNA markers are too similar to be the result of chance.

Meaning?” Hendricks’s voice was laced with anticipation and dread.

“Meaning,” Wallace continued, “that the Chinese did colonize America. Indigenous people like Christina and I are their descendants.”

I wrote this for the FFfAW Challenge of the Week of November 14, 2017. The idea is to use the image above to inspire writing a piece of flash fiction between 100 and 175 words long. My word count is 175.

The pictograph reminded me of articles I’ve read suggesting that the Chinese rather than Columbus or any other European or people from across the Atlantic, “discovered” America, perhaps sometime between 1,300 BC and 1,421 AD depending on which source you consider. Granted the information is highly speculative, but it makes a good basis for a story. The suggestion that there could be a genetic similarity between the Chinese people and Native Americans was also briefly mentioned in my source. To read more, go to DailyMail.com.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

The Mystery of the Fifteen Scrolls

scroll

The Temple scroll is the thinnest of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Discovered in 1956, it contains God’s instructions on how to run the Temple. Credit: The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

“This exciting excavation is the closest we’ve come to discovering new Dead Sea scrolls in 60 years. Until now, it was accepted that Dead Sea scrolls were found only in 11 caves at Qumran, but now there is no doubt that this is the 12th cave,” said Dr. Oren Gutfeld, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology and director of the excavation.

“This is one of the most exciting archaeological discoveries, and the most important in the last 60 years, in the caves of Qumran.”

-Dov Smith, February 8, 2017
“Hebrew University archaeologists find 12th Dead Sea Scrolls cave”
Arutz Sheva

Martin Fields wasn’t at the press conference, but he did read this and other news reports about the remarkable discovery.

Actually, he wasn’t all that impressed, but Isis was.

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Tracks Across Time

time machine

Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells in the 1979 film “Time After Time

“The Temporal Event Indicator’s lighting up. Looks like we have another trip in our near future.”

“Or our far past, Josue.”

Wyatt Ellison walked over next to where his partner Josue Hunter was gazing down at the screen of the Indicator. It actually wasn’t a screen in a conventional sense. Both men were looking at a holographic projection inside a spherical depression about the size of a bowling ball (and they were among a very small group who still knew what a bowling ball was) set in a table top.

“The Sky Disc of Nebra, Hunter mused. “We can’t actually let these two morons find it.”

“That’s our job. Suppress revolutionary discoveries that would take the course of this time line on a different trajectory, Josue.”

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