Read Online Human by Hayley Camille - Free Book Online

could. She threaded the amulet on and closed it behind her neck. I.C. read against the small of her throat. It felt unusually warm against her skin, despite the cold morning. Skipping breakfast, Ivy ducked down the cracked concrete stairs. Her palm brushed lightly across the mass of tiny daises at the entrance of her apartment building. The outstretched fingers of autumns hand seemed to be grasping for something to hold onto this morning.
    She was late, as usual. Entering the Residue Analysis lab, Ivy pulled on an old stained laboratory coat and attempted to tie back her uncooperative hair. Jayne was already preparing blood samples for DNA amplification.
    “Hey hon!” Jayne looked far too chirpy for this time of day. “I've done a preliminary analysis of the first blade from the Flores dig. Red blood cells all over it.”
    Ivy returned Jayne's victory smile, settling down on a nearby bench. “Brilliant. Let me know if you need any help.” Surreptitiously, Ivy noted Jayne's slow and methodical progress and was pleased. A small collection of control samples was already waiting to her left. Tiny vials of solution would be spun in the centrifuge for hours to filter unwanted particles from the genetic soup-mix. DNA replication would follow, and then reference comparison. Finally, she would identify the animal that fell victim to the blade.
    From these tiny samples, Ivy could determine the subsistence patterns of this long extinct and tiny hunter Homo floresiensis. The stone tools told her what animals had been butchered, birds killed, plants crudely chopped, which roots and tubers slowly cooked. It was an emerging specialisation with a complex methodology. Ivy forged through its boundaries. In small laboratories across the world, other scientists kept the race alive. Competition was fierce, academic criticism was rife and the stakes for success were high.
    Flicking on the radio and pulling on gloves, Ivy peered into the cardboard box. Within it were a dozen small clear bags holding dirt-sifted stone tools. Each was labelled with an identification number corresponding to the stratigraphic layer in which the tool was found. She pulled out a large volcanic flake of black chert and took up her position at the electron microscope. An image of the roughly triangular stone flickered up onto a large screen above her desk as she focussed. She was surprised by what she saw. Although the excavating team had given her a description of the tools they had found - suggesting they were comparable to those of much more modern Homo sapiens , she couldn't help being cynical. But the technology of this stone was modern, or at least, too modern, and not what she had expected.
    It was widely accepted that stone tools got more sophisticated, technically and functionally, the further up the evolutionary tree they appeared. It made sense. From nearly two million years ago, early hominids first started using crude stone choppers to break into marrow and sever the flesh and joints of their prey. Culminating with modern Homo sapiens , tools had progressed to delicate instruments and finely formed stone blades. Each tool was specialised for its use in processing vegetation, meat or decorative functions, skinning, carving or fighting.
    The stone tool magnified on Ivy's monitor was supposedly created by a tiny-brained, chimp-like hominid, surely as evolutionarily distant from their modern large-brained cousins as humanly possible - yet the similarity in technology was remarkable. Ivy checked the box label again, looking for a mistake. Liang Bua Sector IV; Layer 8; Section E (12 items). She definitely had the right box. It seemed the evolutionary tree was about to be severely uprooted.
    Ivy began photographing the microscopic hills and valleys of the stone. They were littered with remnants of ancient blood cells and the flesh of chopped plants. Cellulose plant fibres were draped in miniature desiccated ropes across the surface. After a while, a detailed