Point Lay Alaska is located at 6944'28 North, 1630'31 West (69.741023, -163.008613)GR1. According to the United States Cenus Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 89.3 km2 (34.5mi2 ). 78.9 km (30.5 mi) of it is land and 10.4 km (4.0 mi) of it is water. The total area is 11.66% water.
I was sitting in a U. S. Mail cargo plane, small in size, and we landed quickly and quietly at Point Lay Alaska; we had picked up the mail from Barrow, Alaska, it was 1996, June, and the weather was beautiful for this rough country; as I was saying we landed and perhaps the whole village showed up some twenty-feet in front of our plane, there couldnt have been more than two-hundred in the whole town-ship, if so only a few more and they all seemed to be here, standing by our plane to see the new passenger, me (I know in 2000 there were 247 inhabitants at Point Lay, and as I say, I doubt it was even that much now).
The American Indian race accounted for about 85% of the population, a f ew whites, a few other races I couldnt tell, perhaps Russian related, because my pilot was, and they looked a bit like my pilot; and a family or two of Hispanics. So there was a cross-cultural agenda here. The weather was cloudy, isolated snow showers were forecasted for the evening, it was 15 to 20 degrees (colder than Barrow), some Northeast winds.
My Russian pilot, whom I paid to fly me on his route, down to Point Lay that is, was taking the cargo off now. Barrow was to the North, and Kotzebue to my south, the Sea to the West of me. I had been talking to an archeologist on the plane to Barrow a few days ago, he and his fellow comrades made a discovery in the areathe Point Lay area, he had told me whereabouts of his discovery, but was reluctant to pinpoint it. They had found a mummy, taken a few hundred pictures of it in its abode, a cave like abode, and nearby an underground cave as well with old whalebones holding the tundra in place. Perhaps it was a dwelling, o r grave, he didnt tell me at the time, only showed me a few pictures of the mummy, more like a frozen body wrapped in old furs.
As I stepped out of the plane, and got into the village, there was a family that helped me on my voyage, or call it exploits to be. His wife had one older child (perhaps three), and she had an infant in her amaaq, she was small, and very cut, young Eskimo, or as they are called in this area Inuits.
I had arrived on a whim, I was going to stay in Barrow, but this story intrigued me so, I had to take this to its end. I had done some extensive traveling, and archeology was a hobby of mine. I had quickly learned Toornag, some kind of evil spirit to be taken into consideration, as they are sensitive to certain things. They do believe there was kind of a local flood that took place; thus, some principles of Christianity were superimposed on the older ancestral beliefs here.
I paid the family what they wanted, for room and board, for me to live in their shack of a house, getting acclimated, and revitalizing myself for my journey. I had stayed at the Top of the World Hotel, in Barrow for a few days before I had walked down to the airstrip, along side the Chukchi Sea, and ventured to make a deal with the pilot.
(Let me insert this before I go on with my trip: its amazing to stand at the end of Point Barrow, and on one side you see the Beaufort Sea all frozen, and on the other side the Chukchi Sea, unfrozen, at least for six weeks out of the year anyway, and I was within that time period.)
I didnt really care to jump into this new adventure, it just kind of took root, slow paced, as it seeped into attention: one thing leads into another, does it not.
The family went bear hunting with the elders, and I went once in my six weeks stay with them, and found they felt the bears liked to smoke, yes I said smoke, it troubled me at first, but I had learned many things from the folks I lived with thos e weeks; leaned the folks I was with believed the bear assumed human shape, or could, was capable of it. In a like manner, the bear believed in a kind of hospitality I think, I mean, a generosity they had toward captured animals, they believed the animals let their selves be killed for the sake of the human brothers, to help them. A kindness I had a hard time digesting.
I do not remember how to spell my hosts name, but I will try and leave it at that for this story: Umanaq and her husband, I shall call him as I can only remember the sounds of his name, Qaviangaq.
The midnight sun came out each night, and other than that, life was great, no igloo stuff, just huts. Completely different than Barrow who had a population of some 3000-inhabitants, a metropolis you might say, in the sterile arctic; a pear in the store was $4.00, here at Point Lay, you ate what they had available.
I had learned they even had a High school, a few folks with Bachelor degrees, and perhaps I was the highest at the Graduate level, but no one paid much attention. In Barrow they wanted to hire me for a Chemical Dependency Director of a clinic, I had to turn it down, but it was getting my attention. Employment seemed to be good during my stay, a few drunks not working, and I do remember it was a dry area for alcohol, during those days. It also seemed to me, almost half the folks were not married, a few divorced.
Assut was the little boys name, deep dark eyes, and a face that always had a clammy smile on it. He was always looking for small holes it seemed, to see if any creatures would pop out I think. The weather got to be at the end of the month in the 30s to 40s, and it was warm compared to my first few days there, I suppose summer was breaking into the land.
The Find
I had drawn a map from the conversation with the assistant young archeologist (in my mind at first, and at the hotel in Barrow later). It was now July, and I knew him a nd his team would be gone, he had told me so, it was just a matter of days he said, and thus, I had give him 25-days, I knew Id find something, but not what I did find; matter of fact, I now understand why he wanted to hide the site from me. But Qaviangaq and Umanaq would be the best-gifted hunters, guides Id ever know, and their two children of course came along.
The trip was hard, and enduring, and I couldand may at a later date, get into that more, but I wish to get to the premise of this story, and it is a story indeed worth its salt. I have shared many of my trips, and exploits with people, and found many things, such as foot prints in stone on islands off the coast of Brazil, human footprints, with animal prints beside them, and stones carved into bulls at other sites, and never told a person, it will be for them to find (once in New Hampshire) but this was even more of a find.
We had found the spot the team had excavated, I guess Americans and Venezuelan scientists is what the team was made up of, it was a primitive site indeed. I am not sure what to call them, but ape men might do; not the mummy the young lad showed me a picture of, the mummy was put back into its original place inside the cave (I saw it), and the bones of the whales were sticking out a foot when I got to the site, below the cave. This was a different site, not sure if they saw it or not, but it wasnt far from theirs: maybe I thought they were so engrossed at their find, and covering it, they didnt see this one; everything seemed to be unmoved for ages. If indeed they did find this site, I was not as careful as they, I moved much of it here and there, took nothing, but moved it, touched it, examined it.
I told myself: I found a Galapagos of bone, of strange creatures in a cave; artwork on the walls; one species was of a frog, the bones were small, a carving was of that on the wall; perhaps some of these bones dated back when South America, North Am erica and Alaska were all solidly embedded with Asia/Europe and Africa, also on the other side fused together as one continent. Look at any map, it shows a ripping apart of the continents on the Atlantic side anyhow.
I had no scientific fact for anything, but there was volcanic dust in the cave, perhaps from the Ordovician age, when life emerged from the sea as they say, to gradually develop into amphibians, as they say.
These bones were old, as others were perhaps somewhere around five million year old. I find most anthropologist are narrow-minded (Ive known a few, and then a few too many), or fixed on their own concepts, or too much wedged into a book, with no room for compromise, but be that as it may, the question arises, nonetheless, when did the lineages of ape and humankind diverge?
As a Christian I do not have a hard time with that, simply read my story on pre humans (Before Eve ((an Epic poem)); but here I was faced with fact in front of me; not evolutionary fact (I do not believe a banana will ever make a monkey into a larger primate and then onto mankind), but species fact. I was not like so many scientist try, to try and fit a jaw bone part into a skull, and call it Peking Man, or Java Man, and link it to mankind in particular, hence, my guess work is as good as theirs: although with this find and the hundreds of bones I saw, and skulls, and bear bones, and so for and so on, and carvings on the wall, it would not be hard to do.
Consequently, I have to take modern scientists beliefs that species eventually developed into whatever they feel like theorizing in 5 to 10-million years, and break it down to more sensible concept. These bones were real, fossils looking were some, old sediments, very primitive; but I did not see anything in the world that tells me people turn into fossils, not even buried by mudslides. So I must assume these species were from a time before humanity existed. A pre human stage was d eveloped perhaps, and in the process devoured by superhuman beings, and a lower species survived the age somehow.
Here I found mysterious ear holes in skulls, small nostril holes in the skull. I couldnt do any scientific dating, so I will never know. Whatever the bones were, and from what era, they were not of my Gods human creation I assure you, it was perhaps on some creation prior to that which man seems to have so prophetic, profound negative concepts against.
Written at home, Lima, Peru May 8, 2006
See Dennis' web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com
Author:: Dennis Siluk
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