Prolog.

My name is Krall. I am a caveman; an ignorant savage. I communicate with grunts and chew my meat raw. Birds could nest in my hair and I am too stupid to use a toaster. And I smell.

Since I was brought back from the dead six years or so ago, these are the misconceptions I have had to deal with - and more. This is the prejudice I have suffered. Did I ask to enter your society? No. Did I have any choice in the matter? No.

I am writing the story of my life now, because of ignorance. Not mine - yours! Over the last six years I have learnt your language. I have learnt to read and write. I cut my hair and I have even had a bath. I still look at aeroplanes with amazed wonder, and I love watching Star Trek on your televisions.

But I am still judged a primitive. People talk slowly to me, as if I might have difficulty understanding them. They step carefully around me in case I might get violent. They ask me how grateful I must be to be living here, and how hard it must have been living all that time ago.

I am writing this story because I am sick of the condescension and the pity. I am sick of the ignorance. This is my reply; my story. Consider it an education

I am Krall. I am the man who lived twice. Eight years ago, I was discovered in the Siberian permafrost by Dr John Jabobs, one of the geologists on the Edmund expedition. The Edmund expedition was a privately funded British scientific expedition to Siberia in search of frozen woolly mammoth. They were looking for intact DNA with which they were intended to try to re-create a live mammoth. Very Jurassic Park. They came back with me, which was more than they had bargained for.

I was discovered by Jacobs as he was preparing some ground by a deep frozen lake. He was intending to sink a drill in order to take ice cores when something caught his eye below the surface of the ice. It was me.

I'll tell you later how I came to be there, but it is a matter of record now, and fairly well known what happened next. In a rare moment of fate, the right mix of scientific no-how just happened to be on hand to prevent my body being destroyed. Just digging me up and allowing me to decompose would have been sufficient to make my sleep permanent. As it was, looking for mammoth, they had come prepared.

You might well have read how I was carefully dug up, still encased in ice, and smuggled back to the UK. That got the expedition into some trouble - they had negotiated export licenses for bones and mammoth skeleton - not for deep frozen boy. But by the time the story broke it was too late for the Russians; I was in a lab in England.

Then came the expeditions next shock - my condition. I was perfectly preserved. You sometimes hear of plants and animals being perfectly preserved, but usually this isn’t actually correct. It might look in good condition, but generally there is anything from cell damage, mould and bacteria damage as well as the problems of dehydration and mummification. What this means is that even though the organism might look good, actually there is a lot of hidden, deep down damage and decay.

This was not true in my case. Due to a bizarre series of coincidences - extreme cold, the odd chemical soup I'd fallen into, and the fact that I had not been disturbed, my body was in the same state it was in as the day I died. Apparently the initial chemical balance killed off all the bugs that could get at me, and the salt balance stopped my body dehydrating. In effect, I was pickled like a gherkin and then deep frozen.

It was my excellent condition that gave Dr Philips the bizarre idea of trying to revive me. Initially it was just to thaw me out. All the better to poke and prod me. But as she cleared me of chemicals and gradually warmed me up, she had the idea of trying to start my heart, apparently just to see what would happen. Good science, crap morality. Amazingly it worked, though it must be said she didn’t expect my brain to kick-start as well.

She has since sold her story to the press and I'm not going to comment here on why she did what she did. It's really not all that important to me now. I've simply got to accept it. Suffice to say it lead, five and a half years ago, to me waking up in extraordinary pain, in a harsh white laboratory just outside of Milton Keynes.
And that lead to their last problem; what to do with me. Until then I was a thing; their exhibit; their property. Suddenly, however, I had developed a mind of my own and therefore rights. I was a human being and no longer simply an experiment.

I suppose I did get an element of revenge - they did lose an extraordinarily valuable tourist attraction!

But here, I'm getting ahead of myself. This is my story. My attempt at setting the record straight. To head off all those tedious people with their tedious question - always the same - 'What was it like to be a cave man?' Well, read my story and then you'll know.


Chapter 1 - My first memories.

I've no idea where or when I was born. I know it was somewhere in central Europe. That's not what the scientists say who found me - they have me as being Russian - but back in the so-called stone age, we knew more about the shape of the world than you might suppose. It was central Europe, probably somewhere a little north of Switzerland - so my family always led me to believe, anyway.

As to when, the scientists tell me between 22,000 and 24,500 years ago and I can't disagree. Since then, the Ice has come and gone. Of the land I knew; of my people, our settlements, artefacts and lands, nothing now remain. A couple of miles of solid ice is pretty good for scouring old canvas, ready for a fresh start

So my past is gone, but I do have my memories. And the earliest ones are happy ones.

My earliest memories are of being carried around by members of my family as we travelled the land. I think first I should describe my family. It was quite large - you might consider it a tribe, but actually we were all part of one extended family, we saw no difference in the idea - and we were wanderers.

In those days there was a very relaxed social order – not like today, and family was very important to us. Some families were farmers and tended not to travel around. They stayed with their herds or crops and even grouped together into small villages. Some families became artisans. They stayed on one place and became expert in the making of beautiful things - our tools and utensils, jewellery and other things. Others moved around, living by trade. They were the lifeblood of the land, supporting the more static families and spreading news and culture. My family were of this latter sort. We moved from place to place as the whim took us; exchanging salt, news, tools, jewellery and people wherever we felt the need.

Yes - we also traded people. Sometimes, one of us wanted to settle. Perhaps they were old, or injured or tired, or perhaps they'd met a woman or a man and wanted to marry. But a settlement would not take on the burden of an injured man without recompense. Likewise, a settlement could really use a good strong back. It was all very pragmatic, all very sensible and good-natured. We looked out for each other in those days. That's what a family was - a group of people who looked out for one another.

As I say, we were wanderers. We had been as far west as the great sea, and as far east as the great plains - steppes as you would say. We went north in the summer, and naturally came south when the snow came. Sometimes we would pause in a settlement for months at a time, but always, when the weather improved or the food or our welcome looked as if it was running out we would be off.

It was a good life. Game was plentiful, and forage, in season, was varied and rich. We lived well and had no words for war or slavery.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression here. Rabbit didn't climb into the pot, it still had to be caught, and there was there ever present threat of injury, wild animals and disease. But we were a sophisticated people. We were good at hunting, farming and protecting ourselves. If you survived to your teens - and many did not - then there was a good chance of you living to a very healthy old age.