The artifacts were discovered forty years ago by a mountaineering expedition, but came to the attention of our geology department only recently. The mountaineers were part of a multinational coalition dedicated to exploring the polar mountain ranges and conquering peaks no human had previously climbed. On this particular expedition, they were dropped by seaplane into the northern wilderness, since the peak they were hoping to summit was isolated from civilization by a distance of twelve hundred miles. Because of the peak's isolation, and also its lack of prominence – it is the fifth highest of its neighbors – the expedition had good reason to believe that they would be the first humans, or perhaps even the first animals of any kind, to reach the summit.

This is what makes the artifacts' existence even more mystifying. At the summit, the expedition discovered several divots in shapes and sizes together exactly forming a human footprint. In fact, several of these ‘footprints' were found close together, and nearby was a similar depression in the stone, which formed an unidentifiable curved shape. Perhaps most mysterious was a large boulder, in close proximity to the footprints. This boulder was shaped, more or less, like two human figures in an embrace.

This discovery puzzled the mountaineers, and, initially, puzzled our geology department as well. Despite the hypothesis's improbability, we all reasoned that the artifacts were of natural origin. A child, standing on a beach and skipping rocks into the ocean, may stop to marvel at the way one or two might resemble a bird or a spaceship – yet of course even these rocks are of clear natural origin. For a similar reason, we did not, initially, want to believe that the artifacts were human-made.

And yet the footprints look exactly like footprints. They have clearly defined ridges and creases, and even prints on the toes. And the boulder shaped like the two human figures is windworn, but clearly identifiable. Each artifact could have been carved by a human artist. It would have been, of course, very difficult for a human sculptor to access the remote peak on their own. It is too far away from a city for a helicopter to fly, and it eludes explanation why a sufficiently audacious sculptor, even if they could have managed the trip, would have chosen the nondescript peak that they did for their work. Yet this seemed more probable, to some of us, than Nature spontaneously seeing it fit to form a series of sculptures in honor of her most beloved animals. This theory was, in time, adopted by much of the department.

Incidentally, this theory found its way to the ears of the family of one of the expedition members, who are donors to our institution. They opined, in an otherwise not-unkind message, that we as a department must have had it out for their late relative, and that we were denigrating their family member's memory by suggesting that the expedition was not the first group of humans to reach that isolated peak. Consequently the university directed an amount of funds to our now-burgeoning computational geology laboratory in order to identify possible alternate explanations for the artifacts' provenance. What they discovered was completely shocking to all of us in the field familiar with the topic.

It turns out, according to our laboratory's supercomputer, that statistically there are always at least fifty-seven boulders shaped like two embracing humans somewhere on the planet's surface. If this seems unlikely, consider just how many rocks there are in the world. Out of the quintillion pebbles, boulders, and stones to choose from, surely every possible shape is accounted for at least several times.

Our researchers concede that it is very unlikely that any human would have ever encountered one of these rocks. But this is the explanation that satisfied both the family of the mountaineer and, eventually, the relevant journals and the press. Competing theories remain, however. I myself have nursed one, which I will, hesitatingly, describe here.

The polar mountains are igneous in origin. But the boulder shaped like the embracing people, as well as the footprint-shaped divots, are of a metamorphic nature, and microscopic analysis suggests that they were originally formed by sediment. This suggests that they were formed much earlier than the mountains were. In my opinion, this fact has not been adequately considered by previous theories.

Let me be more explicit. I am proposing that, hundreds of thousands of years ago, humans did visit that isolated peak. They went there before it was even a mountain. They made those footprints and that mark in the ground, and ultimately shared an embrace. They were then swept into a flood of sediment, which hardened around them. As their bodies decomposed, more sediment could have filled the space left behind, creating a cast of their bodies. Under the pressure of the most recent ice ages, this cast would then have hardened into rock, and would have survived the subsequent formation of the mountain range to the present day.

I know this is a hard story to believe. It is, of course, extremely unlikely. I am only putting it forward because it seems like it has not been mentioned. If it is true, we still do not know anything about the lives these people lived. We only know about their death and fossilization. We have no room for anthropological speculation: millions of years and multiple ice ages would have destroyed any other evidence of their existence.

But this is the way science works. There is only so much we can do.

//

I am going to leave.

You cannot. Stay with me. It's raining so hard.

I have to fly out in the morning. I'll see you again in what, two weeks? Give me a kiss goodbye.

Please stay with me. I won't be able to fall asleep without you.

Okay, I'll give you a hug. I'm going to miss you. I am sorry I have to leave again so soon.

No. Don't leave. This is important.

What?

Have you ever thought about the way Glen Canyon Dam almost collapsed? They say that they didn't sand down the spillway tunnels the right way. There was a little concrete pebble, the size of a freckle. It stuck to the rough spillway pipe and stayed there for decades.

What happened then?

Well, imagine. Gallons upon gallons of water. Rushing by every minute, every day. Little things make big things. Erosion. Cavities forming. Collapse.

Okay.

So look how long time is. Big things don't make it.

I don't like it when you speak that way. I can't understand you.

Hm? But I'm telling you the truth. Come here.