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prehistory, and I’ve been getting some hints that he has something big to say. If you have nothing better to do, you might want to come along and listen, meet some of my friends and start to understand what’s so special about this valley.”

6
    Bruno recognized the image on the giant screen, the deep pit he had seen that morning at Horst’s dig, the flat stone with the strange cup-shaped depressions and the smoothness of bone. A small ruler, in red and white with gradations for each ten centimeters, lay alongside what Bruno could now identify as a human femur. The red spot of Horst’s laser pointer picked out the details he chose to highlight on the enlarged photograph as he spoke.
    “A new prehistoric burial site in this region is always a remarkable discovery and this one with its two adults and child may be very special indeed,” Horst was saying from the podium.
    The auditorium at the new National Museum was filled, with some of Horst’s students standing at the back and more listening to his lecture through a loudspeaker in the hall. Bruno counted well over a hundred seats, another score or so against the walls and with the overflow there must have been two hundred people in attendance, the largest audience Bruno could remember. Nor did he recall ever seeing TV cameras at the back of the hall before, and for once Philippe Delaron from the local
Sud Ouest
newspaper was not the only reporter present. Bruno sat between Pamela and Fabiola, with his tennispartner, the baron, next in the row and the new magistrate beside him. Annette had changed into jeans and a white silk shirt that looked expensive. Pamela was wearing a light green sweater that Bruno guessed was cashmere. It set off the hints of red in her bronze hair.
    The skeletons, Horst was saying, were around thirty-three thousand years old. That meant they came from the pivotal period when the Neanderthals were being replaced by the Cro-Magnons, modern mankind. Horst paused, then stepped out from behind the podium toward the front of the stage, his face suddenly illuminated by the light from the projector. His shadow fell thick and long on the screen behind him. It was a deliberately theatrical move. His eyes must have been blinded by the projector light, but he swiveled his head slowly as if to look at each part of the audience before he spoke again.
    “This is the great mystery of modern man. How did our ancestors live and prevail while the Neanderthals disappeared? Was it war or disease that wiped them out?” Horst paused again, and raised his arms and slowly let them fall, as if in bafflement. “Or perhaps it was simply evolution, or maybe the inability of the dwindling Neanderthal gene pool to adjust to rapid and repeated changes in climate. Perhaps they could not compete for limited food supplies. Each of these theories has been proposed.”
    Horst paused again, his delivery given gravity by the way the light of the projector, playing on his white beard and casting stark shadows on his cheekbones, gave him something of the look of an Old Testament prophet. He stroked his beard thoughtfully before lowering his voice to speak in almost conversational tones.
    “But we do know that almost every creation myth in human culture keeps alive the terrible and haunting possibility that our ancestors prevailed though deliberate violence, that theydestroyed their competitors. It is indeed possible that modern humankind was born through an act of genocide. Some scholars have suggested this might be the real original sin.”
    Bruno found himself sitting forward, almost on the edge of his chair, unexpectedly captivated by Horst’s narrative. This was not like the other talks by Horst that Bruno had attended, one on cave art and the other on the diet of the people who had produced it. They had been interesting but somehow passionless, as if Horst were playing the role of scholar. Now, however restrained his delivery, Horst seemed to be afire.
    Behind Horst on the