BIRTH OF THE DESERT

The excavations in Toliana had been underway for a long time. Archaeologists had uncovered the city’s streets, houses, and the narrow passages between the ruined buildings. They had gained important information about the arrangement of the buildings, the points where the streets connected, and the interior layouts of the houses. But the human skeletons found in the streets had changed the direction of the investigation.

As Ekin walked through the excavated section of the site, she came to the skeleton in the middle of a street. The soil around the remains had been cleared away, and the positions of the bones had been preserved. Aras was farther down the street, while Deren was examining the other skeletons in a narrow passage between two buildings.

Ekin looked at the position of the remains before her. The skeleton was not inside a house or beside a wall. It had been found in the middle of the street. The arrangement of the bones suggested that the person might have been moving before dying.

Aras called out from where he stood.

“The skeleton here is lying in the same direction, too,” he said.

Ekin stood and went over to his street. Although the second skeleton was in a different location from the first, it was in a similar position. Both people might have been moving along the street in the same direction. But it would not be right to conclude that everyone had been fleeing together based on only two skeletons.

“Let’s look at the passage where Deren is, too,” Ekin said.

The narrow passage lay between two buildings. Deren had cleared the area around the remains and examined the skeleton without disturbing its position. When Ekin and Aras joined her, she pointed to the part of the passage that opened onto the street.

“This person was moving in the same direction, too. But unlike the others, this one may have been trying to get out of the narrow passage,” she said.

Aras looked at the point where the passage joined the street. The skeletons had been found far apart. Even so, there was a notable similarity between their positions.

“We think they died during the same event,” he said.

“We don’t know that yet,” Ekin replied. “But their directions of movement are consistent.”

The three researchers walked through the streets where the skeletons had been found again. They assessed the position of each set of remains in relation to the surrounding buildings. The entrances to the houses, the intersections, and the narrow passages were important in understanding which way the people might have been moving.

After a while, Deren stopped in one of the streets.

“It’s hard to believe these people died while leaving their homes to go about their daily work,” she said.

Ekin had noticed the same detail. The skeletons had not been found inside houses, in work areas, or in places where people ordinarily spent long periods of time. They were scattered at different points in the streets. The positions of some suggested they might have fallen while running, while others suggested they had been trying to get away from a danger behind them.

But no clear trace indicating the cause of death had been found.

Aras examined the remains of a wall near one of the skeletons. Parts of the wall had collapsed, but they were not evidence of a major attack at the time the people had died. Nor was there any clear finding indicating that a weapon had been used in the street.

“If there was an attack, we haven’t found its traces yet,” he said.

Deren looked farther along the exposed streets.

“They don’t look like people who died amid widespread destruction. They look like people trying to flee between the buildings,” she replied.

Ekin did not immediately turn this assessment into a firm conclusion. The skeletons in the streets offered clues about what the people had been doing when they died. But they did not show why they had been fleeing. There was no trace of an explosion, no distinct weapon remains, or sufficient evidence of buildings collapsing simultaneously to suggest that a major disaster had taken place in the city.

The researchers compared the locations of the skeletons once more. A few people moving in the same direction along one street could be considered a coincidence. But the similar positions of remains found in different parts of the city strengthened the possibility of a shared danger.

“First, we should work on the possibility that they died while fleeing,” Aras said.

“Yes, but we can’t infer the cause of death from that,” Ekin replied.

Deren looked again at the position of a skeleton in one of the streets.

“We’re also assuming they all lived here. Yet we have no findings that show that,” she said.

At Deren’s words, Ekin looked at the surrounding houses. Human skeletons in the city’s streets did not necessarily mean the dead had been residents of Toliana. These people might have encountered a danger while living in the city. But there was another possibility. Toliana might have been abandoned earlier, and those who died in the streets might have arrived afterward.

This distinction would change the course of the investigation. If the dead were residents of Toliana, they needed to investigate an event that had forced the city’s people to flee. If they were later arrivals, they first needed to understand why and when the city had been abandoned.

Ekin wanted both possibilities kept open.

“We know where the skeletons were found. We can also make an assessment of their directions of movement. But we still don’t know who these people were,” she said.

Aras turned toward the street where the first skeleton had been found. Deren also left to finish her examination in the narrow passage.

The investigation in Toliana was no longer directed solely at understanding how the city had been built and how people had lived there. The identities of the people who died in the streets had become crucial to explaining what had happened here.

Before leaving the excavation site, Ekin looked again at the place where the first skeleton had been found. There were traces suggesting that these people might have fled from a danger. But neither the nature of that danger nor whether the dead had been residents of Toliana had yet been determined.

These two possibilities would need to be examined separately in the next phase of the investigation.