Last Ape Standing Dispatch #4: South Africa, Making for Camp, and the Earliest Symbols

This post was originally published on November 15, 2019 on a previous version of ChipWalter.com.

This is the coastline just beyond our camp. This is where the archeological work is done. The base camp in Potberg is two hours away, “at the end of the road.”

Christopher Henshilwood is talking about the best way to keep the baboons under control. He is the scientist in charge of this excursion to the coast of Africa, and one of the top archeologists in the study of prehistoric life. He stands 6 ft. 5 inches, with long, stilt-like legs that carry a slender, rectangular frame in long strides wherever he goes. He is South African but has the fair, Germanic looks reminiscent of Max von Sydow. His hair is cropped close to his head, and his voice is deeper than God’s. It rumbles from his long, echo chamber of a torso without the slightest effort. Between his voice and size, he can appear dour even imperious, until, a broad, boyish grin splits his face, as it often does. Then it’s all sunshine.

He is holding a meeting of the team the night before we head off to an archeological dig in a coastal African cave the team has been working the past two weeks. (I am not allowed to get into a lot of detail about that. You’ll have to read the National Geo article to get the low down.) We are to spend the next five days camping along the rocky shore of the very western edge of the Indian Ocean, a half mile and one very rocky, wave-dashed jetty away from the caves. Accommodations will be supplied: tents to sleep in, some portable toilets, food and a place to eat. It’s not back packing into Katmandu, but it’s not trailer park accommodations either.

Henshilwood is asking questions of his young team, graduate students and post-docs from South Africa and Zimbabwe. He is father-like and they nod to his paternal reminders to make sure they bring this or that piece of equipment or baggage or tool. They’re on it—veterans of these sorts of expeditions. Much of what Henshillwood offers is for my benefit as a newbie and a handful of scientists who are joining the team just this week – two from Norway, one from England and another from France. All but one of these, a French Post-Doc named Katja, have joined his team on similar expeditions in the past. Together we comprise quite the international team, with me as the American rube.

Henshilwood is getting into the issue of baboons, more specifically how they have twice invaded the beach camp and trashed tents, equipment and the portable toilets. One day more than $1000 worth of equipment was torn to shreds leaving the team with nowhere to eat, shower or relieve themselves without heading into the bush, which is also where the baboons spend their time. The troops number around 40 or so animals, and simply overran the place, snatching up whatever they could get their hairy hands on, grabbing and flinging it like an airport baggage handler all over. To keep the baboons under control, Henshilwood has now bought a paint ball rifle and whistling, banging bottle rockets. This isn’t to hurt the monkeys, just keep them at bay. The paint balls sting, but don’t injure and the rockets scare the crap out of them. It’s all perfectly legal.

I knew there were baboons involved in this trip because the photographer on the project, Stephen Alvarez, had been with the team the previous week and had emailed me asking that I bring paint ball ammo with me. He was afraid he had depleted its supply while using the rifle to fend off the baboons that had sometimes harassed him when he was scouting and shooting (pictures not baboons). I brought 100 rounds.

The baboons, I was relieved to hear, didn’t attack the camp when anyone was actually in it (this becomes important later in our story). I had this image of a handful of timorous humans being overrun like the characters in a Planet of the Apes  movie by huge baboons with long, nasty snouts, fangs bared, dangling their callosities from their baboon bottoms, and tearing the hapless Homo sapiens into confetti. I didn’t like the idea of me going back to my wife and family in a bunch of plastic bags. Of course, the fact that Henshilwood and all of his minions were still here with me at the Potberg compound clued me in that no one had been drawn and quartered, yet. That was reassuring, but then I recalled an email from a friend before I departed Pittsburgh on the trip. “Don’t worry,” he wrote, “I’ve heard that baboon rape only hurts the first couple of times.”

There can be worse things than death.

Magnus, one of the students, said he had been working earlier that day in the lab and noticed the shadow of a hand appearing over the artifacts he was examining. When he turned, he was looking right at the extended digits of a baboon as it reached inside the window to open it. More than once baboons had just walked into the kitchen refrigerator and lifted whatever food they could and then walked blithely right back out. But it’s not as though you don’t know they’ve been there. They smell horrible.

Just to prove the point, one of the crazy, sneaky baboons showed up right before dinner shortly after our survival lesson was completed. “That one is crazy,” Jerome, a South African doctoral candidate said. Henshilwood quickly retrieved the paint ball rifle and fired a few rounds in the baboon’s direction. He disappeared instantly.

Sometimes, Henshilwood pointed out, the baboons get the worst of it. One night after an attack, with the creatures perched on the cliffs above the camp waiting for another opportunity to trash the place and make off with its goodies, a leopard slipped into the rocks,  and snatched one of the troop’s less vigilant members. “There was a snarl and horrible screaming, and then silence,” Henshilwood recounted. “And that was it.” Goodies, apparently, are a relative thing in the animal world. One creature’s snacker is another one’s snack.

The cliffs from which the baboons liked to keep and eye on camp, after a good day of trashing it.

Henshilwood’s point was clear enough to me: Once we depart Potberg, be careful. Part of his pre-dinner homily included telling us that if we wanted to take a dip in the Indian Ocean, we should venture into the water no farther than up to our waists. The rip tides are strong and nasty, and you could find yourself swept out to sea in seconds. There were no life guards on this beach. He said he had almost drown twice himself which was disturbing when you considered his size.

There were other fascinating ways to be undone too: puff adders, usually well camouflaged, like to sun themselves on paths. They don’t like to be stepped on and if you do that, you won’t be able to jump away because puff adders are the quickest strikers in the snake world. Additionally, watch out for cobras, which are also indigenous, and of course scorpions. They, it turns out, like to creep into the warmth of your shoes at night and are pretty unhappy when you try to put them back on while they are still inside. There were also no shortage of cliffs and rock falls which tend to be hard on limbs and noggins. The adder and cobra bites, Petro, one of the scientific team, told me the next morning won’t kill you very fast, but they can kill you. “As long as you get to hospital in a reasonable time,” she said, “and get the anti venom, you’ll be all right.” Still the bite hurts like the devil. I imagined the drive in a Land Cruiser to the nearest hospital (two hours from Potberg, a good four from camp) over the ruts and washboard road, blowing out a tire, then dying a slow AND painful death.

I walked back into the house to double check my backpack before departing, wondering, was there no end to the ways this place could mangle you?