137: Dig update

Well, the last one certainly was interesting. The walk through the hills nearly killed me after an early winter of illness. Still, we made some progress as a team using a new system of disposal until...

We hit a wall. Both literally and figuratively. The tube should veer off to the left, (you can clearly see the tube roof at the top) but that appears to be a solid wall (admittedly not completely dug back to the wall) but the soft fill still lies ahead where the right-hand side wall should be. The floor gently rises up but the ceiling dipped slightly until...

...the roof curved upwards and as we dug away it we noticed it rise at an angle of eighty degrees. In the picture above where the light is, the roof curves upwards. At the head (the furtherest digging point) is goes vertical. First of all digging upwards is dangerous. Secondly its is extremely uncomfortable both in angle of the body in a tight space, and having stuff drop down your neck while you are twisted on your side looking up. Thirdly the tube should NOT be going upwards, certainly not at that steep a climb over such a short distance. We discussed the possiblity of being able to dig standing up for the first time in four years if we can clear enough of the softish loose clay away from the sloping roof until...

...using a spade, I loosened enough clay for a hole to suddenly open up - directly overhead. The pic above is looking straight up from the 'head' in the previous picture. This hole revealed a pile of rock or similar that looked as if it was part of a jammed roof collapse. Poking something further up we managed to dislodge what looked like karst fragments but turned out to be consolidated clay fragments, and they fell down. What consolidated broken clay is doing up there is a mystery, they are certainly not of the same type of rock that the tube or the hillside was made of. One has to bring their head back quickly to avoid being hit if any fragments fall. With three or four belts with the hand axe, these lumps could be broken the same way big lumps of consolidated clay we found further back in the fill 6 months ago could be broken in two. As a side note - you could use a pick to bash the solid tube walls for 1/2 an hour and make no more than a small dent about 10mm deep in the rock. The fact that the fragments were consolidated clay has opened up many questions, one being if this is dry clay then it is not part of the fill, but what is it doing above the loose clay hand-fill of the tube, and how did it get there? Was it part of an old flood thousands of years ago before the landscape changed? Did the people filling the tube in the 1950's cause it to fall? Regardless, the plan now was to simply dislodge the rest until...

...I pulled by head back to talk to those behind me when a 20kg lump dropped where my head had just been...from about 2 metres up. You can go back and see the lump in the first picture. It's about 50cm long. Quite simply, I cheated death on that one.

vertical view

What ensues as a result is the need for a completely different digging plan. We need longer tools, hard hats and even a ladder. The plan also changes because every question we get answered, raises more questions and this has been going on for so long we are sick of the surprises. Make no mistake; this is no ordinary tube. It holds the most amazing historical and archaelogical prize ther world has seen since 1922; and maybe including. The fill in this tube is not natural. The fill isn't there to hide ordinary skeletons (not when we and many others can find countless other sites without any such protection - all of which are left undisturbed for they do not hold what we seek). The fill doesn't hide Polynesian skeletons either; these ones are much older than that, (especially when you need to know we have verbal confirmation from an archaeologist of some long bones he viewed that were, as he said - 'Pre-Polynesian'). The fill doesn't hide skeltons or ordinary stature. The fill changes every 3-4 metres as if filled in many stages. The fill holds rocks that are only in one level, do not belong there, and can't naturally get in there (that we won't explain just yet). The fill holds items that came from outside the tube - cattle bones, moa bones and a human femur measuring 65cm that is charred and slightly fossilized (that means it belonged to someone who's height was 7'6" at least). So what the heck does the cave behind all this actually hold? Why such an effort to hide them instead of a grate or concrete or dynamite? How much of a shock will it be to us to view what is inside? Even more important; what will the worlds reaction be to an orchestrated physical, historical and political coverup?

Are we close? Well, most of us get that feeling, but the stakes just went up because what we see makes no sense in any cave we've been in, heard of, or seen video of. One thing is now certain...the shape of the hills above do not correspond to the tube direction, and why should they? The tube was formed long before creeks, rivers, or mans efforts ever appeared or changed the lie of the land in this area. The area was formed some 20 million years ago. There have been earthquakes and volcanic activity along this coast and much of it has combinations of volcanic and limestone strata overlapped. The earth has changed over millenia and we are learning more about the randomness of our three site locations.