Unknown 9 by Layton Green (each kindness read aloud txt) 📕

oddly mirrored the aims of the LYS—Andie wasn’t sure what to make of it. She moved to the next display, which appeared to be a smooth bowl made of iron, slowly rotating in midair inside the case. Again there were ancient Brahmic inscriptions on the object, which seemed at odds with the relatively recent appearance of the bowl. Andie would have pegged it at a few hundred years old, maybe produced in the heyday of the Raj—until she read the placard and learned the artifact was two thousand years old, and made of 99 percent iron. It was named the Maharashtra Bowl, after the region of India in which it was found.

A two-thousand-year-old piece of perfectly shaped iron with no rust? And almost no alloy?

Andie knew very little about the development of iron and the corresponding artifacts, but those claims seemed impossible. The placard further claimed the object was similar in construction to the famous twenty-two-foot-tall Iron Pillar of Delhi found in the Qutb archaeological complex of New Delhi. Similar to the bowl, the pillar was 98 percent pure and had almost no corrosion, despite standing in open air for millennia in a subtropical climate.

Andie would have to verify the existence of the Iron pillar of Delhi. If it was real, and the bowl was of similar importance, then how the hell had the bowl ended up here?

The third exhibit went even farther back in time: two square stone seals, or stamps, as Andie discovered by reading the placard. Each stamp was about the size of a cracker. Carved on the first was the same symbol of nine dragons forming the circle she had seen on the sandstone pillar. The second seal depicted a bovine creature with a single curved horn spiraling out of its head. The perimeters of both seals were covered with plantlike markings and sharp lines and wedges that she assumed were inscriptions, and which she again found similar to cuneiform.

Wondering if the placard would claim that unicorns and dragons once existed on the Indian subcontinent, she read that the seals were companion pieces to one in the National Museum in Karachi, and that all three objects had been unearthed with the remains of a forty-six-hundred-year-old city in the Indus River plains. The archaeologists who excavated the site in the 1920s were shocked. It was previously thought that Indian civilization extended only a few hundred years before Alexander the Great, but they now had evidence of an ancient city called Harappa that rivaled or even surpassed the sophistication of the Egyptians and Mesopotamians. Not only that: the Harappan Empire was likely twice their size.

Odd. Why had she never heard of Harappa?

The placard claimed no one had deciphered the script on the seals or any of the other pieces found at Harappan archaeological sites. Was there a rival to Mesopotamian cuneiform as the world’s first written language? Or, given the similarity of the markings, was there an older common source, unknown to linguists?

She also read that, unlike with other early empires, there was no evidence the people of the Indus Valley built extraordinary monuments that reached for the heavens. What the Harappans did build was just as impressive: raised foundations for protection from seasonal floods and wastewater; grid-like street patterns of remarkable uniformity; brick buildings and houses equipped with wells and sophisticated drainage systems. All of which evidenced a high degree of city planning unheard of for the time period.

Andie thought about the lack of sanitation prevalent in so many areas of India. If the placard was to be believed, the Harappans had even provided plumbing for the houses on the outskirts of town—indeed, for every citizen within the city’s walls.

I get the message loud and clear, Dr. Corwin. Some of us were better off five thousand years ago. And while humanity’s technological advancements might be shinier and more sophisticated in modern day, we certainly don’t have a patent on invention.

But you’re glossing over a lot of dark history. What were infant mortality rates in the ancient world? Which barbarians slaughtered the Harappans so thoroughly that only scraps of their civilization remain?

And how about those women’s rights? I’m thinking they weren’t such a high priority.

Still, Andie understood the point. Humanity had a short collective memory. We are all too quick to think our own civilization is the pinnacle of human achievement and will never end.

Andie did not long for the good old days of patriarchy and slave labor. She put her faith in science and technology, in pasteurization and antibiotics. She loved her iPhone and her Fitbit and a working air conditioner on a hot summer day.

But she was beginning to understand there was a story untold in the history books, one forgotten or ignored by the collective hubris of so-called modern society. Not only that, but there was a treasure trove of suppressed and hidden knowledge, such as the ideas of Democritus, that might have changed the world had they taken hold with the mainstream—and that might have survived in secret. These artifacts she kept seeing in the possession of the LYS hinted at even deeper mysteries.

Someone touched her on the shoulder, and she jumped.

“Sorry,” Cal said. “Find anything useful?”

“Interesting, yes. Useful, no. You?”

“Not really. You’re taking a while, and I’m getting nervous.”

“I’ll try to hurry,” she said.

“We can always double back through the exhibits if we need. Why don’t you try the Star Phone again? Maybe our walk-through triggered something.”

Andie put a hand to her forehead. She had been so engrossed by the peculiar exhibits she had forgotten to check more carefully with the Star Phone. She retraced her steps, and then completed the circuit.

Still no change to the device.

After an anxious glance at the revolving door and the guard, who was engrossed in his newspaper, she moved on to the next exhibit: a block of barnacle-encrusted coral from Rama’s Bridge, part of a chain of shoals extending thirty miles from Sri Lanka to the southern tip of India. Seen by air, the uniform curvature of