The Mystery of Wandering Caveman - M. V. Carey [3]
“Our first guest today is Dr. James Brandon,” said Engel. “He’s the man who discovered the fossil remains of a prehistoric man in a cave right here in southern California.”
The camera pulled back, and the boys saw a lean, rugged-looking man with close-cut fair hair. Next to him was a shorter, rather paunchy man wearing a cowboy shirt, a wide belt with an ornate buckle and high-heeled boots.
“Today Dr. Brandon is accompanied by Mr. Newt McAfee. Mr. McAfee is a merchant in the town of Citrus Grove, and he owns the land where the cave man was discovered.”
“Right!” said the chubby man. “And that’s McAfee: Mack-like in Mack truck-Afee. A fee’s the money the dentist charges you to yank a tooth. Don’t forget it, ‘cause you’re going to be hearing that name lots from now on.”
Bob Engel forced a smile, then turned his attention to his other guest.
“All right, now, Dr. Brandon,” he said. “Could you give us a little background, in case some of us haven’t read about the discovery of the fossils?”
The fair-haired man straightened in his chair.
“It was pure luck that I found them,” he said. “I went out for a walk a week or so ago, just after the rains stopped, and I noticed that there had been a small landslide on the hill above Newt McAfee’s meadow. Part of the slope had come down, and, there was an opening in the side of the hill. When I got closer, I saw that there was a cave, and I could see the skull inside. It was nearly buried in the mud on the floor of the cave, and I didn’t know what I had at first, so —”
“You don’t have nothing, buddy,” interrupted the man next to Brandon. “I’m the one that’s got it!”
Brandon ignored this. “I went back to the Spicer house to get a torch,” he said.
“And when he got back to my field, I was waiting with a shotgun,” said McAfee.
“Come trespassing on my property and I’ll take notice!”
Brandon took a deep breath. He seemed to be controlling his temper with difficulty. “I explained what I’d seen,” he said. “We looked closer, and I knew for sure that it was a skull!”
“An old one!” cried McAfee. “Been there for thousands of years.”
“In addition to the skull,” said Brandon, “most of the skeleton remains. I haven’t been able to really study it yet, but there are similarities to very old fossils discovered in Africa.”
“And is it a man?” asked Engel.
Brandon frowned. “Who’s to say exactly what makes a being a man — a human?
There are definite hominid characteristics, but it isn’t what we would recognize as a modern man. I’m almost sure that it is older than any hominids found in America so far.”
Brandon leaned forward. His tone now was enthusiastic. “There is a theory that the American Indian descended from Mongolian hunters who migrated from Siberia to Alaska during the last ice age. That was about eight thousand years ago, at a time when so much ocean water was frozen into ice that the level of the sea was quite low.
The ocean bottom in the narrows between Siberia and Alaska was exposed, so Asian tribesmen could simply walk across from one continent to the other, following the game they hunted to the New World. The theory has it that they then spread out and settled in various places, and some of them kept going until they reached the tip of South America.
“That’s the accepted theory. It’s the one you’ll find in most schoolbooks. But now and then someone pops up with a different explanation. Some of these mavericks say that man lived on this continent long before the time the nomads are supposed to have crossed that land bridge. Some even claim that modern man really originated in America, and that he migrated the other way, to Asia and Europe.”
“And do the fossils in the cave at Citrus Grove support this theory?” asked Engel.
“I can’t say right now,” said Brandon. “At this point I can’t even be sure how old those bones are. But we have much of the skeleton, and—”
“You mean I have the skeleton,” said Newt McAfee. He glowed with perspiration and delight. “And that little guy