"You don't think the river gets up that high, do you?
Because if it does--"
Schallenmacher shook his head. "There just isn't enough watershed,
and there's too much valley. I'll be very much surprised if that
stream, there"--he nodded at the hundred-power screen--"ever gets
more than six inches over the bank."
"I don't know what those houses are built of. This is all alluvial
country; building stone would be almost unobtainable. I don't see
anything like a brick kiln. I don't see any evidence of irrigation,
either, so there must be plenty of rainfall. If they use adobe, or
sun-dried brick, houses would start to crumble in a few years, and
they would be pulled down and the rubble shoved aside to make room
for a new house. The village has been rising on its own ruins,
probably shifting back and forth from one end of that mound to
the other."
"If that's it, they've been there a long time," Karl Dorver said.
"And how far have they advanced?"
"Early bronze; I'll bet they still use a lot of stone implements.
Pre-dynastic Egypt, or very early Tigris-Euphrates, in Terran terms.
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