A Mystifying Discovery

Their arrival to the Big Island of Hawaii had an auspicious beginning.  The plane trip from NYU began with luxurious service from an investment in first class tickets that they had agreed were worth the price.  The 5 college students’ 2 week vacation to Hawaii had been planned for months and the pre-graduation trip hopefully would be well-worth the wait.

Upon arrival they exited the plane, checked into their hotel room and hit the beach immediately.  The splendor of the black volcanic sand of the beach contrasted brilliantly with the clear ocean water. 

They enjoyed frozen Bacardi daiquiris on the beach and soaked up the atmosphere.  The beach was crowded with a collection of locals which were easily distinguishable from the tourists.  There were suffers and body-boarders enjoying the waves while the tourists mostly enjoyed the free-flowing alcoholic beverages and the warm sunshine.

A mysteriously stranger appeared intrigued in his mind concerning a seemingly cryptic misdeed that had occurred on the island weeks earlier.  The self-consumed stranger did not bother to introduce himself; rather he walked up to the group of tourists from N.Y.U. and began speaking.

With no direct conversational engagement, he said, “Apparently it vanished.  Nobody could figure out where it went.  It was their and then it was gone.  Ten minutes before the exhibition; it was gone.  They checked the vault and it was gone.”

Later that day they discovered that what was missing was a precious jewel, a 15 pound diamond had vanished.   Since it was none of their business they dismissed it and continued their vacation.  However, a week later hiking in the distant hills they made a fascinating discovery.  They came across a small cave.  On the wall they found archaic writings.  Later they ascertained that the writings were almost 1000 years old and from the natives of Hawaii. 

The writings discussed an ancient jewel which had served as an idol of worship.  From the writings, which were later to be translated by an expert in archeology, it was discerned that the jewel had mysteriously appeared to the ancient civilization some time before the writings on the cave wall.   The jewel had served as an idol of worship for the ancient tribe of the island and had inspired their entire basis of the mythology and religion.  The jewel inspired ancient epics that mirrored the Greek writings of The Iliad and The Odyssey although the island, which was distant from the shores of the mainland, had no direct contact with those civilizations. 

Just as mysteriously as the jewel was originally discovered it mysteriously vanished from the island nearly 500 years later.  The idol of worship also had prophesized the conquest of their people from distant explorers from a far-off land as well as other events in the history of this ancient people.

The college students later came across the mysterious stranger to share their discovery.  As students from N.Y.U. nearly ready for graduation they could not discern the meanings of the writings on the wall of the cave.  However, they had been able to make some sense of the paintings and drawings on the wall.  They were aware of the mystery of the missing jewel that the stranger had shared with them and the expertly crafted paintings on the wall of the large diamond were easily referenced to be similar to jewel which had vanished weeks earlier.

Upon this later meeting with the stranger, who they discovered to be an investigative archeologist, they referred him to the cave.  Apparently, the cave, which was no secret to the residents of the island, had never had such writings or drawings on the walls.  However, the investigative archeologist, well-versed in the ancient language of the natives of the island was able to translate the writings on the wall.  All that was able to be discovered was that the diamond apparently appeared mysteriously on the island more than 1000 years earlier and just as mysteriously vanished. 

Although they had never been seen in the cave before, the writings could be dated back to the time of the ancient natives of the island.  No further clues were discovered discerning the enigmatic mystery other than that the mysterious jewel seemed to appear, disappear, and reappear from past ages up to the modern times.