The Mammoth Hunters - Jean M. Auel [154]
Jondalar shrugged. “Just a guess.”
It was more than a guess, it was another manifestation of his instinctive understanding of the physical world. He could accurately judge distance with his eye alone, and he measured space with the dimensions of his own body. He knew the length of his stride and the width of his hand, the reach of his arm and the span of his grasp; he could estimate a fraction against the thickness of his thumb, or the height of a tree by pacing its shadow in the sun. It was not something he learned; it was a gift he was born with and developed with use. It never occurred to him to question it.
Ayla thought it was a lot of digging, too. She had dug her share of pit-traps and understood the work involved, and she was curious. “How do you dig so much, Talut?”
“How does anyone dig? We use mattocks to break up the loam, shovels to scoop it out, except for the hard-packed sod on top. We cut that out with the sharpened edge of a flat bone.”
Her puzzled look made it plain she didn’t understand. Perhaps she didn’t know the words for the tools in his language, he thought, and stepping outside the door, returned with some implements. They all had long handles. One had a piece of mammoth rib bone attached to it, which had been ground to a sharp edge at one end. It resembled a hoe with a long curved blade. Ayla examined it carefully.
“Is like digging stick, I think,” she said, looking to Talut for confirmation.
He smiled. “Yes, it’s a mattock. We use pointed digging sticks, too, sometimes. They are easier to make in a hurry, but this is easier to use.”
Then he showed her a shovel made from the wide palmation of a giant antler of a megaceros, split lengthwise through the spongy center, then shaped and sharpened. Antlers of young animals were used; the antlers of mature giant deer could reach eleven feet in length, and were too big. The handle was attached by means of strong cord strung through three pairs of holes bored down the center. It was used, spongy side down, not to dig, but for scooping up and throwing out the fine loess soil loosened by the mattock, or, if they chose, for snow. He also had a second shovel, more scoop-shaped, made from an outer section of ivory flaked from a mammoth tusk.
“These are shovels,” Talut said, telling her the name. Ayla nodded. She had used flat pieces of bone and antler in much the same way, but her shovels had had no handles.
“I’m just glad the weather stayed nice for a while after you left,” the headman continued. “As it is, we didn’t dig down as far as we usually would. The ground is already hard underneath. Next year, we can dig down deeper and make some storage pits, too, maybe even a sweatbath, when we get back from the Summer Meeting.”
“Weren’t you going to hunt again, when the weather got nice?” Jondalar said.
“The bison hunt was very successful, and Mamut isn’t having much luck Searching. All he seems to find are the few bison we missed, and it isn’t worthwhile to go after them. We decided to make the addition instead, to make a place for the horses, since Ayla and her horse were such a help.”
“Mattock and shovel make easier, Talut, but is work … a lot of digging,” Ayla said, surprised and a little overcome.
“We had a lot of people to work at it, Ayla. Nearly everyone thought it was a good idea and wanted to help … to make you welcome.”
The young woman felt a sudden rush of emotion and closed her eyes to control tears of gratitude that threatened. Jondalar and Talut saw her, and turned aside out of consideration.
Jondalar examined the walls, still intrigued with the construction. “It looks like you dug it out between the platforms, too,” he commented.
“Yes, for the main supports,” Talut said, pointing to the six enormous mammoth tusks, wedged in at the base with smaller bones—parts of spines and phalanges—with their tips pointing toward the center. They were spaced at regular intervals around the wall on both sides of the two pairs of mammoth tusks, which were