Newsflash⚡ directly copies the world’s top headlines and imagines the stories behind them.
This story examines how work and reward affect individual lives - in the context of yesterday’s groundbreaking discovery. (Here’s a link to the news article - by the fantastic Georgina Rannard.)
There was nothing particularly remarkable about Jeremiah Andersvikk. Most people called him Jerry.
But Jerry is standing on top of a mound right now.
He is standing on top of a mound in the Amazon.
~
“Do you have any idea what this MEANS?” he shouted down to the people at the bottom.
They did - they knew precisely. The group had come exactly for this purpose; hauling with them a large plastic tarpaulin, for setting up some kind of camp, and each of them carrying machetes for path-making. Insects they did not approve of or recognise flicked at their skin. They were hardly visiting as tourists.
“This… this…” he went on, unable to fully contain his excitement, “this means we can… really begin! We can finally begin, now… all of us! We can begin it all!”
He was making a strange impression on a team of people that, in fact, had never met him before. Of course, they knew of his name; of his status. He’d been flown out, after the drones had made the initial discoveries, on the basis that he was now the world’s leading authority on Amazonian archaeology. And for a man in his sixties, he had raced up the hill at remarkable speed.
“Okay, Jerry,” called up one member of the team. “How is it looking up there? We’re going to make our way up now.”
“Ha-ha! Absolutely! Alright!”
The facts of the discovery were the excuse for his fantastical behaviour. In his mind, there were very few things more significant. He was, at this point, a man with more memories than dreams - no shame in admitting that, he told himself - memories whose contemplation had rushed him several thousand miles from his hometown, at the age of sixty-eight, and subsequently, rushed him up a hill. It was only fair that he now acted a little foolishly; he was experiencing something of an ecstatic crisis. And all because of his life as a man named Jerry.
Jerry had lived a life in the swivel-chairs of academia. Once, when he had been young, he had seen an element of romance in it - bookcases lined with the great editions - Renfrew, Bahn and Whitley; leather armchairs, and library desks with green lampshades; exotic digs in the Andes, Tikal and Mexico. But the romance had been shown to him. It consisted predominantly of white lampshades, printing paper and swivel chairs.
It was, in fact, from one of these stale environments - during one of his earliest professorships - that he had initially proposed research into the region. No substantive survey had yet been conducted, and the dominant assumptions concerning Amazonian civilisation had been drawn from the evidence of only a single site. Jeremiah saw the issue in this, and pushed for some kind of grant, some kind of approval, or some kind of break in his teaching. He had received the usual, cold, academic no, and settled back into his chair.
Here he had remained sitting for some four and a half decades, staring at cork-boards, fiddling with window-blinds, and publishing some of the most respectable works within the field of archaeological research: Late Quaternary Environmental Change: Physical and Human Perspectives in 1987, The Making of the Middle Sea in 1997, and the hugely influential Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy, considered his crowning achievement, in the fall of 2014. He was happy with his work, of course - as any man with a quiet regret tends to be - but there remained a feeling… those works had been made in an office. Those works had been written in swivel chairs. And, on the spines of even the finest editions, and in each and every bibliography, there was his name: Jerry Andersvikk.
~
“I think we’ll set our camp here,” panted a group member, summiting the mound themselves, and interrupting Jeremiah’s train of thought.
“Yes, yes,” said Jeremiah, “this is quite the perfect location… a raised platform, clear and level - clear and level, can you believe! For god only knows how many years!”
“Quite right,” said the group member “I am sure that what we are going to find from now on -”
“From now on!” the old man echoed, in happy disbelief.
“Yes, yes, from now on, what we are going to find…
… I am sure, it is going to be quite remarkable.”
Read the original story (Georgina Rannard - BBC News):
Huge ancient city found in the Amazon - BBC News
A Final Note:
Thank you for reading newsflash all the way down to here. You utter legend. If you liked this story, you might enjoy some of my other articles about people at the edge of modern discovery:
(disclaimer)
The views expressed in this publication do not reflect the views of the author. The stories themselves are based on imagined events. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is fictitious and should not be taken as representative.
Sounds a bit like America being discovered by Columbus in 1500! How many years had the land existed1 So it was not discovered. A new pair of eyes had seen it. Likewise in the Amazon I am sure that many eyes have seen the place and many natives walked through it since it's existence ! But along come some programmed scholars and announce to the people of the world that they have found an ancient city. How long has the city been there? Before the city being there it could have been a small settlement! Who knows?