#xia river

What defines a mystery? Can it be a question that no one is alive to intimately answer?

We are piecing together a mystery now, made of bits and scraps of human meat. Several of these were found in Russia. The biggest was found hundreds of miles away.

Baishiya Karst Cave. A beautiful cavern overlooking the Xia River. A sanctuary for those who practice Buddhism in the Tibetan style. When we last saw karst, it trapped a man in Altamura.

Perhaps it is true to form, then, that a piece of someone’s head was found here, too.

In 1980, a part of someone’s jaw was reported to be found in the Baishiya Karst Cave by a meditating monk. Moving between hands, it came to the desk of Dong Guangrong at Lanzhou University. It was then recorded and stored. They did not have the resources to move forward.

Decades passed, perhaps there’s more we know now. Dong Guangrong’s pupil, Chen Fahu, certainly felt so. But what we don’t know of this one can fill a book all its own. How strange to come across a hole in our knowledge, of which we hadn’t known...

Here’s what we know now.

It is a piece of jawbone, the broad curve of an otherwise chinless face, huge teeth jutting up from the bone. The piece was loose, perhaps not as beautiful as those clutched in Altamura. A carbonate crust belies stone cradling the simplest pieces of flesh - protein...

From the carbonate crust, and the scraps trapped within rock, we have a greater picture. 160,000 years ago this one died, not long before Altamura’s man. Like him, too, did their pieces preserve.

But wasn’t of the kind from Neander Valley. This one was of Cave Denisova.

The pieces at Denisova Cave - named for a Russian hermit- read like samples from a serial killer’s trophy room. A finger, a tooth, a toe described as “robust”...The jaw at Xiahe is the largest we have. In fact, all that we know depends on the soft bits pulled from rock...

Simple DNA give us so much, so little we can read. 200,000 years separated this being at Xiahe from the man at Altamura. Those who live in Indonesia carry their mark. We may even have their face - though constructed through shaky methods.

We had no idea they were here.

We never had an inkling the Denisovans lived amongst us, yet here they were for a long time. They cohabited, they intermingled in so many places.

Baishiya Cave is a high-altitude, low-oxygen environment. This being predated the oldest human to do this by 120,000 years...

The name of the monk who found this piece hasn’t been adequately recorded. We know it was Jigme Tenpe Wangchug, the sixth Gungthang tulku, who recognized that this was a piece of someone so old that those studying the earth would be interested.

But what of who found it?

He’d been in a place known as peaceful. It’d be silent, save for the wind whistling through the karst. He’d be alone with the universe.

Then at some point, the universe would bring him a sign that he’s not alone - that he’s never been alone, amongst the unknowable dead.

The research that aligned this piece with the Denisovans - at this point, too new for an agreed-upon name - was conducted last year. We’re hungry for the knowledge we didn’t know was denied us. We’ve been combing through piece by piece.

Let’s hope we like what we find.