XENIA

Twenty thousand years had elapsed since Ursula’s death. It was now twenty-five thousand years before the present and the world was even colder. The Neanderthals were gone, and modern humans had Europe to themselves. The great plains which stretched from lowland Britain in the west to Kazakhstan in the east were bare of trees save for a few patches of birch and willow scrub on their southern margins. This was a bleak and windy place, with vicious blasts from the expanded polar ice caps sending the winter temperatures down to twenty degrees below zero for days or weeks at a time. Cold and inhospitable it may have been; but the European tundra was also teeming with life and good things to eat. Massive herds of bison and reindeer moved slowly over the plains, feeding on the rich growth of grass and mosses. Smaller herds of wild horse and wild ass were also there to be hunted. But the dominant animal, with no enemies to fear, was the gigantic woolly mammoth. No natural enemies, that is, until the humans arrived.

Xenia was born in the wind and snow of late spring. Even though it was already April, the snow that covered the land in winter was still on all but the lowest ground and lay in a thick and filthy slush around the camp site. Xenia herself was born in a round hut, about three metres in diameter, whose frame was constructed almost entirely of mammoth bones. Two gigantic tusks formed the door, which was covered by three layers of bison skins to screen the interior from the cold. The gaps between the bones were filled in with moss and soil, and the roof was made of turfs laid across a lattice of willow twigs. In a small hearth in the centre of the hut the red glow from the fire dimly illuminated the inner walls. There was no wood on the fire; all the trees in the vicinity had been used for firewood months ago. What burned in Xenia’s hut, and the first thing she ever smelled, was the sickly, unforgettable stench of scorched bone. The tundra was littered with the bleached skeletons of mammoth and bison. They made a reluctant and distasteful fuel, but suffering that foul aroma was better than freezing to death.

The camp was built on a slight rise within a mile of a large, sluggish river. Generations of bison had passed across this river, on the way to and from their summer feeding grounds. Just as Ursula’s spring camp had been close to a migration route, so Xenia’s was placed to take advantage of this predictable and dependable source of food. Since Ursula’s time there had been some technological advances. Flint-tipped spears had been improved, and their accuracy and range increased with the aid of spear-throwers, short pieces of bone or wood that cupped the butt of the spear at one end and acted like an extension to the throwing arm. Novelties and inventions like these were soon disseminated as separate bands congregated at river crossings, or met up while stalking in the tundra later in the summer.

Every year the bison crossed at the same point, where the river curved away, sending the current digging into a steep earth and gravel bank. The migrating herds had gouged a pathway through the collapsing bank, but it was getting steeper every year, making it harder for them to get out of the river. If rationality had entered into it, they would have looked for another, safer crossing; but the same route had been used for centuries, and was not going to change. This blind obstinacy and refusal to adapt, quite the opposite of human virtues, suited Xenia’s band very well. As the animals struggled out of the river, exhausted by the crossing and unsteady on the collapsing soil of the earth bank, the spearmen would find an easy target. To avoid being seen and panicking the herd too soon, they had built a hide from mammoth bones with skins to conceal them.

As well as heading for the same place, the herds always came at the same time each year. The band could sense when their arrival was imminent by the lengthening days and the arrival of the geese from the south. The hunting party set off for the river to take up position behind the barricade. When the bison came, they would come quickly. It was no use waiting till they were already crossing the river. You had to be in position first. The first signal of their approach was a faint low sound to the south-east, blown in by the wind like the continuous rumble of distant thunder. As the sound swelled, the adrenaline started to flow and the hunters checked their spears to see that the slivers of flint were securely hafted to their wooden shafts. The drumming of a thousand hooves grew louder and louder. Then the sound of splashing water announced that the lead animals had entered the shallows on the opposite bank of the river, still out of sight. The hunters waited, crouching below the screen for what seemed like an eternity but was in reality only two or three minutes at most, as the animals swam across the river.

At last the first animals, soaking wet but intent on moving ever onwards, came stumbling up the bank and into view. As they struggled to get a foothold in the unstable earth, the animals pushing up hard from behind only increased their panic; but at last the huge red-brown beasts found their footing and began to stream up the bank only four feet from the crouching hunters. Still they waited, until the crush to escape the river had slowed the herd down. Then, from between the hanging skins on their hide overlooking the path, the hunters launched their spears at point blank range into the sides of the animals. They aimed for the neck and chest. The razor-sharp flint tips sank deep into the bisons’ flanks. The wounded animals rolled their great eyes and bellowed in pain. They were hardly ever killed outright; the only hope the hunters had of that was if the flints had sliced an artery or punctured the lungs. As the stricken animals charged out once more on to the tundra, the hunters abandoned their hide and followed. With luck the wounded animals would soon collapse and could be safely despatched with a spear through the heart. If they were less seriously wounded they would travel on for miles and die days later out on the tundra.

As each beast succumbed to loss of blood or lack of oxygen, the hunters crowded in for the kill, striking with their spears deep in and out of the chest until the eyes glazed over, the tongue rolled out and the creature was dead. Working quickly with their flint knives, the hunters skinned and butchered the animals where they lay and carried the meat back to camp, sometimes several miles away. At a time of plenty like this there was no need to use every scrap of meat on the carcass, and they took only the best steaks from the flanks and shoulder as well as the liver, heart and kidneys. The rest they left behind on the tundra, only the flint spear-tip still embedded in the great neck leaving any clue for archaeologists millennia afterwards as to how the beast had met its death.

The meat from the bison kills lasted for several weeks as the final snows melted from the tundra and the days lengthened. Geese, ducks and curlew that had migrated from wintering grounds further south to breed on the tundra began to build up their nests among the coarse grass and moss. For a few weeks life was easy; but before long the band would have to strike north to follow the herds. Moving from one temporary camp to another had always been the way of life for Xenia and her band. The most urgent need was to make sure there was enough food over the summer for the band’s members to build up enough fat to last through the lean winter months. Xenia’s band relied completely on the migrating herds and followed them throughout the summer. There was no wheeled transport, not even sleds, so everything had to be carried. The mammoth bone frames could be left where they were and used again next year, but the skin coverings never lasted more than one winter. There was very little spare capacity, and anyone who was unable to walk on these long marches – the sick, the old, the weak – was left to die. Only when children were old enough to keep up with the band and no longer had to be carried would their mothers conceive again.

Xenia, a precocious girl, had inherited the fair hair and blue-grey eyes of her father. She ran with the other children in the band, helping her mother to organize the camp. Just occasionally she was allowed to join her father in the summer as he went out alone to hunt wild ass. On the rare occasions when he was successful, she helped him to skin and joint the meat. From time to time on these enjoyable forays they would meet up with people from other bands who patrolled the adjoining territories. These were usually friendly encounters, and members of different bands came to recognize and remember one another from previous meetings. They would exchange news, mainly about the weather and the hunting, but also about their families. Their language was not elaborate, but quite sufficiently developed to impart this basic information. Sometimes a young man would go back to another’s camp and even stay there for a season. In these small ways, information and people ebbed and flowed across the vastness of the frozen wilderness.

In time Xenia became pregnant. It was a difficult pregnancy and towards the end she could barely move. Though she was a strong girl, even she could scarcely walk as the bulge in her abdomen got bigger and bigger. First her mother and then the other women in the band began to be concerned. Fortunately, they were in their summer camp, the game had been plentiful and they would not need to move again for several weeks. It was not shifting camp that worried the women, but the fact that Xenia was about to give birth to not just one child but two. This was a terrible thing to happen. A mother could never nurse and carry two children at once. That was the whole point of delayed conception, so that until the first child was fully weaned a mother could not conceive another. The hormonal adaptation just simply would not allow it, precisely to prevent this eventuality. And yet, every hundred or so births, a mother produced twins, just as Xenia was about to do. It had happened before, and there was a strict rule in the band that the smaller of the two twins must be killed at once. The only exception was in the rare event that another woman in the band had lost her own child but was still producing milk. But the other babies born that year had all survived.

Xenia herself was unaware of this cruel but necessary tradition, or even that anyone ever had more than one baby at once, for the smaller twin was always killed straight after the birth and the body concealed and buried. But, although Xenia did not realize she was about to have twins, her mother was convinced of it. Unusually, she confided her fear to Xenia’s father – unusually, because all matters of childbirth and rearing had always been the unspoken monopoly of the women. He had not known the rule about twins, but agreed with it when it was explained; he was also extremely concerned that Xenia might not survive the birth. Again very unusually, he mentioned the problem to a hunter from another band that he met on the tundra, and who he knew from last season had a daughter about the same age as Xenia. This girl, it turned out, had just given birth to her first child a few days before, but the boy was small and sickly, and was not expected to survive. That evening Xenia’s parents hatched a plan. If they could smuggle out one of the twins and give it to his friend, he might agree to take it to his own daughter if she had by then lost her own baby. It was a great risk, because there was no opportunity to get agreement to this in advance.

Later that night Xenia’s twin daughters were born. She held them both briefly to her breast before her mother made a swift decision and took one of them outside. She wrapped it in a soft rabbit skin and gave it to Xenia’s father who was waiting. He set out at once for the neighbouring camp, nearly twenty miles to the east. It was early morning before he reached it and his friend greeted him. Yes, his daughter’s baby boy had died two days ago. Xenia’s father held the baby out to him as he considered the proposal. If he did not accept, then Xenia’s father would have no choice but to kill the baby. After a few moments weighing up the distress his own daughter felt at the loss of her baby son against the possibility that she might refuse to accept another woman’s child, he agreed and carried the now starving bundle to his daughter.

Xenia never knew what happened to her second twin. Nor did she ever know she was a clan mother. The daughter she kept with her started a long line that carries on to the present day in Europe, with about 6 per cent of today’s population tracing their maternal ancestry back to Xenia through that branch. The identical twin that was adopted also flourished. Her band and their descendants moved further east in successive generations across the endless steppes of central Asia and Siberia, and eventually joined in the migration into the Americas. Today about 1 per cent of native Americans are the direct maternal descendants of Xenia. Within Europe, three branches fan out over the continent. One is still largely confined to eastern Europe, while the other two have spread further to the west into central Europe and as far as France and Britain.