"Dad, why are you so certain there were really giants on the earth?" Joshua was having a bowl of cereal in the salon with Caleb, while Teddy and Bones reviewed the video from the rover.
Everybody was avoiding the elephant, or beaver, in the room... the creature on the beach had been creepy and nobody wanted to talk about it.
"Dude, you didn't see the size of those stones, how closely they fit together and how massive they were—it was unreal!" Caleb was still living the high from all of the excitement of the day. Finding the previously undiscovered structure at eighty-eight feet had been icing on the cake.
"Joshua's got a good question, Caleb. He may not have seen any of the underwater structures up close and personal, but his question is still valid." Teddy stared at the grey rover video on the screen. "Let's see what he thinks after he dives with me tomorrow."
On the screen, everyone watched as Teddy was swimming around the temple from the backside and the rover was getting a close-up of the stonework. "Pause it! There, take a look at that block right there." Teddy used a laser pointer to outline a single block that tied into the corner pillar.
"That block weighs at least four to five hundred pounds and it's one of the smaller stones used. Think of what it would take to hew that stone out of the side of a mountain, in most cases miles away from the building site, cut perfect right angles, smooth and polish the stone to the texture we see before us, manhandle it to the top of a very steep pyramid…"
"Wrong. Not very steep, incredibly steep. Tourists visiting Chichen Itza regularly faint from the exertion required to climb to the top of the pyramid to catch the view." Bones broke in.
"That's right. And we are talking about one single stone, when most of these megalithic structures are made up of hundreds and thousands of these stones. Then you come to the truly massive blocks weighing hundreds of tons—in the case of Baalbek in Lebanon the largest stone is twelve hundred tons—we can't shape or move such a stone with modern technology."
"But I've seen pictures of thousands of slaves pulling on ropes with stone blocks rolling along on top of logs." Joshua was a reader and like all readers, he had a vast archive of knowledge to pull from.
"Yeah, the drawings even have little kid slaves splashing oil on the logs and carrying water buckets." Caleb added.
"You are both right. Accepted academic opinion teaches us that ancient man was extremely primitive and we slowly developed to the level of sophistication we see today. This view dovetails conveniently with the simple to complex development theory of evolution."
"Your father may be crazy, boys, but he makes some good points." Bones, at his helpful best.
"These larger than life stones are what makes these megalithic sites so intriguing—how could so-called primitive man precisely cut such massive stones and move them to make such intricate structures." Teddy was warming to his subject.
"Keep going, Dad, I still don't see why we aren't just talking about a massive slave labor force." Joshua had his father's taste for truth.
"Let's think about that for a moment. The academy paints a picture of primitive man running around with wooden bows and spears with points made of chipped stone. He's expending massive calories to just feed his family, much less build shelter and store food for the winter—which regularly kills off half or more of his village." Teddy paused to make sure his students were tracking.
"Large scale agriculture improves the ratio of calories expended verses calories ingested, but not by much, especially if you start to add megalithic building projects on the scale we are exploring to primitive man's honey-do list." Teddy's face begged the question.
"No. Megalithic societies were made up of a few elites at the top sucking the life out of a vast number of citizen slaves—not unlike our current government." Bones couldn't help injecting his political views.
"You still have to feed a slave. You can starve him to death but he's not doing very much work on the scale we are talking about while he's slowly dying. Think about it: one dying slave is also distracting everyone in his family from their work."
"But we know the Egyptians used huge labor forces to build the pyramids." Caleb was emphatic.
"Do we?" Teddy cocked an eyebrow. "Look at the big picture. I mean the really big picture: the bigger the stone, the longer the ropes get in those pictures, right? The longer the ropes, the more logs, the more slaves to pull the ropes, the more little slave kids to grease the logs, the more slave kids to water and feed the slaves— are you following me?" Teddy was just getting started.
"Who makes the ropes? More slaves. Who cuts the logs? More slaves. Who waters and feeds the rope makers and the log cutters? More slave kids. Who grows the food and collects the water for the stonecutters, stone pullers, log cutters, rope makers, oil distillers? More slave moms. Longer ropes and more logs don't answer the question of larger stones because as you lengthen those ropes and enlarge the logs, you increase the labor force required exponentially. Above a certain number, more people actually decreases efficiency."
"Dad? What was that thing on the beach?" Inquisitive Joshua couldn't wait any longer so he asked the question no one else in the room was willing to ask.
"Why were the cops so upset?" Caleb started to get his phone out when they all felt the trawler shift against the waves, just once, but it clearly went against the natural rocking motion of the boat.
They all sensed it and went silent—Teddy pointed up toward the deck as they heard the almost imperceptible scuff of a shoe. He motioned Bones to slip out the port side of the cockpit while he headed starboard, turning he emphatically motioned for the boys to stay put and be quiet.
Teddy turned the corner slowly, tiptoed past the cockpit, peeling his eyes searching for any signs of intruders by starlight. He stopped behind the superstructure before walking out onto the exposed forward deck and listening. That is when he heard it. Labored breathing—someone was hiding against the front of the superstructure.
Teddy jumped out and tackled the intruder at the same time as Bones, knocking heads with one of them and almost knocking himself out. The man struggled to get away, but he didn't lash out aggressively. Bones hit him in the stomach and the wind rushed out of him in a gasp. That one blow seemed to rob the intruder of his will to fight and he lay limp.
Teddy grabbed the intruder by the lapels and pulled him closer to see his face.
It was Jimmy from the beach cabana.
"Jimmy? What are you doing here?" Teddy was surprised and helped the restaurant owner to a sitting position. His face was covered in bruises and he was bleeding from his mouth and nose. "Get him some water, Bones."
"No. No, Senor. I come to warn you. Peligroso! They come for camera—somebody tell them I have camera—pictura! My son… he try to stop them hitting me. They shoot him! They kill my son!" Jimmy lost control and began to shudder as the tears came.
"Let's get you inside. You can rest and we will clean your wounds." Teddy motioned to Bones to grab his other arm
"No. No. I go. Danger! Very danger! You go home!" Jimmy took two steps, jumped from the gunwale to the dock and stumbled off into the dark.
Teddy and Bones turned to see Joshua and Caleb standing wide eyed. Teddy didn't know how much they had heard, but whatever it was, it was too much.
"I thought I told you to stay put?"
"Sorry, dad."
"Forget what you saw. Let's go to bed."