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The tribes living on the coast were generally small and lived by hunting and fishing. Rivers ran through the Sahara and emptied into the western half of the Mediterranean. The river mouths were plentiful with fish and seal and porpoise, and inland were the elephants and rhinoceroses, antelope and deer and goat, horses, aurochs, and even bison. There were also lions and bears and leopards. Although the great snow leopards existed in France and Iberia, Gribardsun had never seen one in those regions. But he had not been in Africa more than a week before he glimpsed three at a distance.
The natives were larger than the Arab-Berber type of the modern era but somewhat smaller, thi
'It's too late, even in 12,000 B.C., to determine the origin of the Negro race,' Gribardsun said. 'I don't suppose we'll ever know if it's true that they arose somewhere in southern Asia and then migrated to Africa and Austronesia and were killed off or absorbed on the Asiatic mainland. Or if they originated in Africa and then, somehow, some migrated to New Guinea and Melanesia, leaving damn few traces along the trail. Even so, we might learn something if we could explore East Africa now and learn what types are living there. I suspect there'd be some Caucasoid and Capsoid types and perhaps some Negritos.'
'You surely aren't thinking of taking us down there?' Rachel said.
'I would object,' von Billma
Gribardsun smiled but shook his head. 'You're the greatest linguist of the twenty-first century, Robert, and you have a very high intelligence. But I have to keep reminding you that those rivers are buried under vast masses of ice. If you ever did find your proto-I-H-speakers, it would be somewhere to the south. Maybe in Italy. Or in France, a few miles from where the vessel emerged. Or maybe on this coast, a few miles ahead of us. Or behind us, a few miles inland.'
Von Billma
'Next year, if circumstances permit, we'll go. to Czechoslovakia,' Gribardsun said. 'We have to study the edges of the glaciers, anyway. And if we can go to North Africa, we can certainly go to central Europe.'
Von Billma
The tribes moved on slowly eastward. By now they could communicate fairly well with signs and a mixture of each other's vocabulary. The structure of the two languages was dissimilar, and each contained sounds difficult for a no
'If the two tribes stay together,' he said, 'they may abandon their own language and substitute the pidgin. That would be the most economical and logical course.'
Though the two tribes were of somewhat different physical type, and their way of looking at the universe differed greatly in many respects, they shared many similar customs. Their attitudes toward marriage and their sexual habits were near identical, their methods of hunting were identical, and their governmental systems were much alike. They ate practically the same foods; the tabus of each were few, and neither objected to the other tribe eating its tabu animal
Then Tkant, the big man whom Gribardsun had defeated in the snow arena, decided that he could provide for two families. So he asked for, and got, Neliska, Dubhab's daughter, as his second wife. Gribardsun, as her protector, gave her away. He had one less obligation, though Neliska had asked him, before she accepted Tkant, if he intended to marry her. Gribardsun hesitated and then said that he thought it best if she married Tkant.
Laminak, Neliska's sister, was happy at this decision. She had just gone through her rites of passage and so was, theoretically, eligible at the age of twelve for marriage. In practice, the young females did not marry until they were fourteen; some not until they were sixteen. Most of the early married did not bear children until they were eighteen or even older. This was not because of any method of birth control; the women did not become fertile until relatively late.
On the other hand, some of the tribes along the coast had many females who bore children at the age of twelve. The rate of death at childbirth was higher for both infant and mother in these tribes.
The two tribes walked eastward, encountering peoples who either fled or were easily awed by the display of Very lights or a few shots fired over their heads. No lives were lost on either side in these encounters, and after Gribardsun shot a rhinoceros or two or some wild cattle for the natives, a peaceful if sometimes uneasy relationship was established.
About the middle of January, the group arrived in what would be, someday, Tunisia. Actually, they were in an area that would be underwater off the Tunisian coast in the modern age, but the scientists made a number of treks from their base camp into the interior. Here the snows lay not too deeply on the winter grass and on top of the many trees. A broad river wound through the land and poured down into the Mediterranean. Gribardsun followed its course for two hundred miles before reluctantly turning back.
'I get the same joy from seeing the vast herds of many different types of animals and the great predators that feed on them as Robert does when he finds a new language,' he said to Rachel. 'This is the way a world should be. Few human beings, many animals, plenty of water and grass. I would like this even better if there were many more trees, but I know that these do exist further south. The air is pure, and nature works unhindered by man.'
'I long for the day when I can return home,' she said. 'But you sound as if you dread it.'
'Far from it,' he said. 'I look forward with joy to the day that the vessel returns.'
That was only one of the many puzzling statements he made. Rachel did not ask him what he meant. By now she knew that he just would not reply.
After a month and a half at their Tunisian camp, Gribardsun gave the word to march again. They set off toward Sicily. The stealing of water by the great northern glaciers had not only resulted in a land bridge across what would be the Straits of Gibraltar. There was another, and far greater, land bridge between Italy, Sicily, Tunisia, and part of Libya. The Mediterranean was, at this time, two smaller seas separated by the extension of Italy.