hi in the remote desolate borderlands of
Nepal and Nevada there is this ancient
kingdom far beyond the reaches of the
modern world it feels like it has this
great expansive spiritualness to it
this is Mustafa here’s the Tibetan
Plateau what would we do without NASA I
mean they produce some of the most
absolutely stunning images on the planet
and what I want to bring you to your
attention is that this is Mustang right
here and if you look at it carefully you
can see that it’s a very natural
corridor from the South Indian plain
through the foothills of the Himalayas
up onto the plateau and it’s quite well
known as P pointed out to you earlier as
a major corridor of Trade primarily of
salt but other objects as well salt
coming down from the plateau goods from
the southern Indian plain going up onto
the plateau and it’s been known as a
major trade corridor for at least
fourteen hundred years or so but it’s
quite clear that there’s an antiquity
here that goes well beyond that that is
other projects other ideas had been
proposed to suggest that that this
region is not simply a relatively recent
addition to prehistory but in fact has
some very substantial antiquity that
goes way back perhaps as many as oh I
don’t know 20 to 25 thousand years
fortunately we have some data that might
suggest that’s the case that’s a
different project and I’ll get into that
at some other point in the future right
now just be clear where we’re at in the
world and get a sense of what this
plateau actually looks like one of the
most important features though of our
project and this is something that I
really think that Pete needs some some
really some great applause for as well
is that among his his romantic interest
if you will in the the mystery of this
place is also the sense that he brought
to the project early on that this is a
fragile cultural heritage that really
demands a significant degree of
preservation the nepali state is very
poor they have very limited control over
the activities that take place in the
hinterlands and so there’s a
difficut amount of damage and
destruction and looting of these
archaeological sites and even though
there are thousands of caves out there
in the in this region many of them have
suffered the depredations of people
coming through and and literally going
through things like this getting to them
before we the archaeologists and the
explorers get there what you’re looking
here is a scientist in the middle
charles ramble from now at the Sorbonne
that is actually studying the
manuscripts that we recovered in 2008
from one of the cave complexes called
Mars on so this was actually a rescue
project that brought these things back
out that is part of our project as well
and you can see the effects of the
looting that have taken place here what
you’re looking at is a what’s called the
Cobham it’s a shortened or a reliquary
that had once the remains of an
important personage probably a lama
perhaps a very important monk buried
inside after cremation often buried then
with objects that were important to that
individual and you can see that these
things have been looted substantially in
the past one of our team members sucrose
auger of Nepal is looking somewhat but
mused about what do I do with this but
part of our project has been an outreach
effort to try to get involvement with
the local community to say look this is
part of your heritage you need to be
thinking about preserving these objects
and these sites insofar as you’re able
to do so our hope is to provide them
with some of the resources museums that
we can build with them as well to create
this context of preserving their own
past for the future but not what I want
to do is bring you back to the science I
think that’s you know that’s certainly
my that’s my love I’m going to say this
I hope that I don’t Apollo
I wish I have been the one who actually
said this but I’m not a very famous
archeologist at a plenary session of our
american anthropological association was
giving this wonderful speech and he was
pronouncing the wonders of archaeology
said you know archaeology is the most
fun you can have with your pants on and
and I I really believe that I have so
much fun doing this archaeology even if
I am being dangled on the end of a rope
someplace you know hanging for my dear
life while I’m you know being coached by
Pete but in any case I’m going to take
you to Sam Zog and I’m going to give you
some background to samseong in a moment
but one thing to be clear on is is that
you’re looking at now are not caves they
look like caves they might smell like
caves in some sense but really what they
are and you’ll see this in a moment are
shaft tombs and if you saw that video
that Pete produced for us in the in his
discussion
those were the apartment complexes of
later migrants to this region they came
in sometime around oh let’s say twelve
to thirteen hundred ad and populated
very large numbers of these cave
complexes what you’re looking right now
though is a burial chamber a set of
burial chambers that dates to the dates
you see up there that were created in a
very special process and let me give you
the animation that you can see on the
iPad version of the National Geographic
article on this project tomb five is
located among the Sam’s own caves in the
Moose dong region of Nepal exposed when
the cliff face collapsed these mortuary
caves were once reached by narrow access
tubes
in this artist’s reconstruction we can
explore the contents of tomb five
the man buried here was likely a local
leader and has surrounded by clues to
his high status there are sacrificed
animals wood and bamboo cups and a
copper vessel that may have held a
barley beer there is ground flour on the
floor one mystery is the presence of a
child’s skeleton perhaps 10 years old of
whom little is known the burial coffin
is carefully painted with a man horses
and trees inside there are iron daggers
and the skeleton shows cut marks on the
bone possible evidence of the ritual
removal of flesh adorning the remains is
a small bronze mirror and over the face
a painted mask made of gold and silver
this chamber answers some questions but
poses many more it also suggests that
other caves may be hidden nearby
awaiting discovery the key to this
though is thinking that these are tombs
not caves they were dug into the shafts
as I pointed out and what’s important
about them is we never would have seen
them had we simply walked by them that
is if that earthquake had not capped off
those those cliff faces we simply
wouldn’t have known they were there one
of the things that we do know about
though is that this part of the Himalaya
in general and much of the Tibetan
Plateau for that matter is an
extraordinary cultural linguistic and
genetic mosaic that is we know that
there are many different kinds of
cultures here that that thrived in this
region but we really know very little
about them in great detail that is we
can take ethnographies and take a look
at different different groups that
reside in different parts of the
Himalaya but one thing that’s very clear
is that the the population history of
this region is far more complex than
just getting a snapshot of different
cultures as they live right now in this
region and so one of the things that
motivated this project one of the major
themes that I’m about to address right
now is going to be the migration theme
that is I’m really concerned about
thinking about
when did people get here first what were
those people like where were they from
what parts of the Himalayas what parts
of India what parts of the Tibetan
Plateau could they have possibly
originated from so much of our research
then looking at Sam Zhang and then
looking at sites that are somewhat
earlier than that as well that are
actually two more cultural entities that
we know about that are before this what
can they say about this remarkable
cultural mosaic that we have in this
region today what you’re looking at on
the left is a Tibetan on the other side
is a Sherpa but if you go down into the
foothills you see a variety of different
mixed groups of people that have very
different characteristics their
phenotypes and their cultures for that
matter as well as their languages are
something extraordinarily different we
want to understand that process one
other theme though I’d like to address
before I conclude tonight then is that I
want to talk about objects things that
connect our region of Mustang to the
rest of the world and as you’ve got a
sense from Pete that is there’s a sense
that yes Mustang is there but also
Mustang looks isolated in some ways as
well but yet we think it’s quite
connected watch this video please
the expedition takes place in Nepal in
an ancient kingdom called lists on here
the Kali Gandaki River carved a
migration route through the Himalaya
connecting China and Tibet with India
mark believes mu stone was once a
crossroads and suspects this River
corridor was an important artery linked
to the famous east-west trade route
further north
Silk Road we know that we have clear
connections to Tibetan Buddhism to
artistic motifs and designs in
iconography that connect this part of
Mustang to the Western Himalaya to
further north as well and the other side
of the Taklamakan desert and you’re
looking at Luigi fini he’s not part of
our project but he’s been working in
Mustang for a number of years doing
extraordinary reconstructions and
restorations of Tibetan Buddhist art and
important monasteries and temples in the
region so it’s clear that there is a
connection here that is we know there’s
some kind of connection but the
character of that connection is really
somewhat unclear history only takes us
so far they say well of course there was
trade up and down this valley but what
do we know about the antiquity of this
trade how well does it connect anything
that we would want to talk about in
terms of the Silk Road so it’s easy to
talk about the idea but the until
recently the empirical evidence for
connecting this part of Nepal or any
part of Nepal for that matter to
anything about the Silk Road simply did
not exist so I bring you back to tomb
five again I suggested I’d be back and
here we are
tomb five is a tallit barrel that we
wrote located at samseong I’m going to
show you some of the artifacts that come
out of tune five because they’re
absolutely critical and key indicators
of this connection about the Silk Road
that are absolutely fascinating this
gold and silver mask I didn’t know what
it was when we dug it out that is you
know Pete brings it down says look at
this that’s why it’s cool I didn’t know
what it was very light it’s very thin
it’s only a millimeter thick it’s tiny
it’s only about this big and I thought
it was ten it was so light and so
fragile it turns out it’s two pieces of
metal one piece of gold and one piece of
silver hammered together our
metallurgist Giovanni Massa at the UCL
University College London is doing the
metallurgy on this and other metals from
the project this piece of this is this
is extraordinary this has never been
discovered in Nepal before it is a
unique object that has though a
resonance with other parts of the
Himalayan world in particular that is a
mask no more than about 200 kilometres
to the west from the northwestern region
of Northwest and India called malaria
the site called malari
– pure gold mask and I learned about
that two years ago compare this then to
another gold mask found in the region as
well this is from the google region
which is in western Tibet very close to
where I used to do my work discovered by
accident unfortunately not by me but by
colleagues but you get a sense of again
very similar sorts of treatment if you
continue up to the north you get
yourself into Shin Jon you find the same
kind of burial practice taking place
masks usually of gold or silver placed
over the faces of the Dead if you go
further to the west into Kazakhstan even
further beyond that you’ll find the very
similar mortuary pattern so that very
simple mask that you see in Samsung is
reflecting this broad cultural tradition
that we see stretching from West coming
to the east I’ve not seen this in Tibet
other than in Western Tibet right now it
will be fascinating to see how far that
extends into the eastern parts or other
parts of Nepal for that matter as well
humble things like beads these are glass
beads when we found them I wasn’t really
sure what they were all be honest with
you much of my work until relatively
recently has been in the Andes they
don’t make glass beads in the Andes so I
find these things and go what is this
stuff and finally it dawns on the other
glass well you can take that glass now
and you can have it you can look at the
chemical composition of that glass and
what you find is extraordinary this set
of be and that was with tomb five by the
way this is something there’s probably
draped over the head of the individual
beads from Pakistan someplace down in
the Indus Valley these beads are the
ones that really give us the big clue
Sesana it’s was a polity in Persia which
is of course now in modern Iran
absolutely smoking gun evidence of a
connection of some kind of this little
place in Nepal to the Silk Road
themselves these are even more
fascinating in some ways they’re not
directly Silk Road they’re from either
South Asia that is someplace in very far
southern India or Southeast Asia brought
over to the continent by maritime trade
and trade it all the way up into the
Himalayas for god knows what reason and
put on the dead of this individual in
this tomb this is one of our more
extraordinary finds it’s actually tiny
it’s only about five centimetres or so
in size not much to look at it’s Chinese
silk
now Chinese silk of course travels all
back and forth at some point people
start making silk outside China after
they figured out how to steal the worms
and do all that sort of thing and put
that to work what you’re looking at is a
wonderful piece of Chinese silk found in
tomb five as well dyes are being
analyzed right now the person doing this
also at University College London was
just flabbergasted she said I usually
see all the pretty stuff I don’t get the
seed that the kind of crummy stuff so
she was thrilled to see something that
was more quotidian but again look at the
connection masks beads silks that
connect us very clearly to the Silk Road
in some manner finally the last object
that I’d like to talk about is this this
bronze disc it’s in very fragile state
it’s disintegrating rapidly but what’s a
very clear indicator of where this is
from it’s not from the West it’s not
Silk Road west its Silk Road east this
is from Lhasa or beyond it’s a medallion
that’s often placed on the dead of
important religious figures in modern
Tibetan the modern Tibetan world like
those Lamas that might have been in
those columns what you’re looking at is
this object and it was placed on the
dead individual in tomb five and it’s a
good indicator of the of the status of
this and so what you’re looking at then
is another clear indicator of Mustang
being connected to this much broader
world so I’d like to conclude my
presentation by by a few comments I’ve
given you some science and I of course
get excited about that science and find
it absolutely fascinating
Coria is the you know we he takes the
dry material that I’ve talked about this
evening he puts it into a visual
framework that provides you with a way
to that kind of gets you and so with
that introduction I’d like to bring
Corey up to the stage thank you very
much for your attention it’s really been
a great pleasure
you
Nepal and Nevada there is this ancient
kingdom far beyond the reaches of the
modern world it feels like it has this
great expansive spiritualness to it
this is Mustafa here’s the Tibetan
Plateau what would we do without NASA I
mean they produce some of the most
absolutely stunning images on the planet
and what I want to bring you to your
attention is that this is Mustang right
here and if you look at it carefully you
can see that it’s a very natural
corridor from the South Indian plain
through the foothills of the Himalayas
up onto the plateau and it’s quite well
known as P pointed out to you earlier as
a major corridor of Trade primarily of
salt but other objects as well salt
coming down from the plateau goods from
the southern Indian plain going up onto
the plateau and it’s been known as a
major trade corridor for at least
fourteen hundred years or so but it’s
quite clear that there’s an antiquity
here that goes well beyond that that is
other projects other ideas had been
proposed to suggest that that this
region is not simply a relatively recent
addition to prehistory but in fact has
some very substantial antiquity that
goes way back perhaps as many as oh I
don’t know 20 to 25 thousand years
fortunately we have some data that might
suggest that’s the case that’s a
different project and I’ll get into that
at some other point in the future right
now just be clear where we’re at in the
world and get a sense of what this
plateau actually looks like one of the
most important features though of our
project and this is something that I
really think that Pete needs some some
really some great applause for as well
is that among his his romantic interest
if you will in the the mystery of this
place is also the sense that he brought
to the project early on that this is a
fragile cultural heritage that really
demands a significant degree of
preservation the nepali state is very
poor they have very limited control over
the activities that take place in the
hinterlands and so there’s a
difficut amount of damage and
destruction and looting of these
archaeological sites and even though
there are thousands of caves out there
in the in this region many of them have
suffered the depredations of people
coming through and and literally going
through things like this getting to them
before we the archaeologists and the
explorers get there what you’re looking
here is a scientist in the middle
charles ramble from now at the Sorbonne
that is actually studying the
manuscripts that we recovered in 2008
from one of the cave complexes called
Mars on so this was actually a rescue
project that brought these things back
out that is part of our project as well
and you can see the effects of the
looting that have taken place here what
you’re looking at is a what’s called the
Cobham it’s a shortened or a reliquary
that had once the remains of an
important personage probably a lama
perhaps a very important monk buried
inside after cremation often buried then
with objects that were important to that
individual and you can see that these
things have been looted substantially in
the past one of our team members sucrose
auger of Nepal is looking somewhat but
mused about what do I do with this but
part of our project has been an outreach
effort to try to get involvement with
the local community to say look this is
part of your heritage you need to be
thinking about preserving these objects
and these sites insofar as you’re able
to do so our hope is to provide them
with some of the resources museums that
we can build with them as well to create
this context of preserving their own
past for the future but not what I want
to do is bring you back to the science I
think that’s you know that’s certainly
my that’s my love I’m going to say this
I hope that I don’t Apollo
I wish I have been the one who actually
said this but I’m not a very famous
archeologist at a plenary session of our
american anthropological association was
giving this wonderful speech and he was
pronouncing the wonders of archaeology
said you know archaeology is the most
fun you can have with your pants on and
and I I really believe that I have so
much fun doing this archaeology even if
I am being dangled on the end of a rope
someplace you know hanging for my dear
life while I’m you know being coached by
Pete but in any case I’m going to take
you to Sam Zog and I’m going to give you
some background to samseong in a moment
but one thing to be clear on is is that
you’re looking at now are not caves they
look like caves they might smell like
caves in some sense but really what they
are and you’ll see this in a moment are
shaft tombs and if you saw that video
that Pete produced for us in the in his
discussion
those were the apartment complexes of
later migrants to this region they came
in sometime around oh let’s say twelve
to thirteen hundred ad and populated
very large numbers of these cave
complexes what you’re looking right now
though is a burial chamber a set of
burial chambers that dates to the dates
you see up there that were created in a
very special process and let me give you
the animation that you can see on the
iPad version of the National Geographic
article on this project tomb five is
located among the Sam’s own caves in the
Moose dong region of Nepal exposed when
the cliff face collapsed these mortuary
caves were once reached by narrow access
tubes
in this artist’s reconstruction we can
explore the contents of tomb five
the man buried here was likely a local
leader and has surrounded by clues to
his high status there are sacrificed
animals wood and bamboo cups and a
copper vessel that may have held a
barley beer there is ground flour on the
floor one mystery is the presence of a
child’s skeleton perhaps 10 years old of
whom little is known the burial coffin
is carefully painted with a man horses
and trees inside there are iron daggers
and the skeleton shows cut marks on the
bone possible evidence of the ritual
removal of flesh adorning the remains is
a small bronze mirror and over the face
a painted mask made of gold and silver
this chamber answers some questions but
poses many more it also suggests that
other caves may be hidden nearby
awaiting discovery the key to this
though is thinking that these are tombs
not caves they were dug into the shafts
as I pointed out and what’s important
about them is we never would have seen
them had we simply walked by them that
is if that earthquake had not capped off
those those cliff faces we simply
wouldn’t have known they were there one
of the things that we do know about
though is that this part of the Himalaya
in general and much of the Tibetan
Plateau for that matter is an
extraordinary cultural linguistic and
genetic mosaic that is we know that
there are many different kinds of
cultures here that that thrived in this
region but we really know very little
about them in great detail that is we
can take ethnographies and take a look
at different different groups that
reside in different parts of the
Himalaya but one thing that’s very clear
is that the the population history of
this region is far more complex than
just getting a snapshot of different
cultures as they live right now in this
region and so one of the things that
motivated this project one of the major
themes that I’m about to address right
now is going to be the migration theme
that is I’m really concerned about
thinking about
when did people get here first what were
those people like where were they from
what parts of the Himalayas what parts
of India what parts of the Tibetan
Plateau could they have possibly
originated from so much of our research
then looking at Sam Zhang and then
looking at sites that are somewhat
earlier than that as well that are
actually two more cultural entities that
we know about that are before this what
can they say about this remarkable
cultural mosaic that we have in this
region today what you’re looking at on
the left is a Tibetan on the other side
is a Sherpa but if you go down into the
foothills you see a variety of different
mixed groups of people that have very
different characteristics their
phenotypes and their cultures for that
matter as well as their languages are
something extraordinarily different we
want to understand that process one
other theme though I’d like to address
before I conclude tonight then is that I
want to talk about objects things that
connect our region of Mustang to the
rest of the world and as you’ve got a
sense from Pete that is there’s a sense
that yes Mustang is there but also
Mustang looks isolated in some ways as
well but yet we think it’s quite
connected watch this video please
the expedition takes place in Nepal in
an ancient kingdom called lists on here
the Kali Gandaki River carved a
migration route through the Himalaya
connecting China and Tibet with India
mark believes mu stone was once a
crossroads and suspects this River
corridor was an important artery linked
to the famous east-west trade route
further north
Silk Road we know that we have clear
connections to Tibetan Buddhism to
artistic motifs and designs in
iconography that connect this part of
Mustang to the Western Himalaya to
further north as well and the other side
of the Taklamakan desert and you’re
looking at Luigi fini he’s not part of
our project but he’s been working in
Mustang for a number of years doing
extraordinary reconstructions and
restorations of Tibetan Buddhist art and
important monasteries and temples in the
region so it’s clear that there is a
connection here that is we know there’s
some kind of connection but the
character of that connection is really
somewhat unclear history only takes us
so far they say well of course there was
trade up and down this valley but what
do we know about the antiquity of this
trade how well does it connect anything
that we would want to talk about in
terms of the Silk Road so it’s easy to
talk about the idea but the until
recently the empirical evidence for
connecting this part of Nepal or any
part of Nepal for that matter to
anything about the Silk Road simply did
not exist so I bring you back to tomb
five again I suggested I’d be back and
here we are
tomb five is a tallit barrel that we
wrote located at samseong I’m going to
show you some of the artifacts that come
out of tune five because they’re
absolutely critical and key indicators
of this connection about the Silk Road
that are absolutely fascinating this
gold and silver mask I didn’t know what
it was when we dug it out that is you
know Pete brings it down says look at
this that’s why it’s cool I didn’t know
what it was very light it’s very thin
it’s only a millimeter thick it’s tiny
it’s only about this big and I thought
it was ten it was so light and so
fragile it turns out it’s two pieces of
metal one piece of gold and one piece of
silver hammered together our
metallurgist Giovanni Massa at the UCL
University College London is doing the
metallurgy on this and other metals from
the project this piece of this is this
is extraordinary this has never been
discovered in Nepal before it is a
unique object that has though a
resonance with other parts of the
Himalayan world in particular that is a
mask no more than about 200 kilometres
to the west from the northwestern region
of Northwest and India called malaria
the site called malari
– pure gold mask and I learned about
that two years ago compare this then to
another gold mask found in the region as
well this is from the google region
which is in western Tibet very close to
where I used to do my work discovered by
accident unfortunately not by me but by
colleagues but you get a sense of again
very similar sorts of treatment if you
continue up to the north you get
yourself into Shin Jon you find the same
kind of burial practice taking place
masks usually of gold or silver placed
over the faces of the Dead if you go
further to the west into Kazakhstan even
further beyond that you’ll find the very
similar mortuary pattern so that very
simple mask that you see in Samsung is
reflecting this broad cultural tradition
that we see stretching from West coming
to the east I’ve not seen this in Tibet
other than in Western Tibet right now it
will be fascinating to see how far that
extends into the eastern parts or other
parts of Nepal for that matter as well
humble things like beads these are glass
beads when we found them I wasn’t really
sure what they were all be honest with
you much of my work until relatively
recently has been in the Andes they
don’t make glass beads in the Andes so I
find these things and go what is this
stuff and finally it dawns on the other
glass well you can take that glass now
and you can have it you can look at the
chemical composition of that glass and
what you find is extraordinary this set
of be and that was with tomb five by the
way this is something there’s probably
draped over the head of the individual
beads from Pakistan someplace down in
the Indus Valley these beads are the
ones that really give us the big clue
Sesana it’s was a polity in Persia which
is of course now in modern Iran
absolutely smoking gun evidence of a
connection of some kind of this little
place in Nepal to the Silk Road
themselves these are even more
fascinating in some ways they’re not
directly Silk Road they’re from either
South Asia that is someplace in very far
southern India or Southeast Asia brought
over to the continent by maritime trade
and trade it all the way up into the
Himalayas for god knows what reason and
put on the dead of this individual in
this tomb this is one of our more
extraordinary finds it’s actually tiny
it’s only about five centimetres or so
in size not much to look at it’s Chinese
silk
now Chinese silk of course travels all
back and forth at some point people
start making silk outside China after
they figured out how to steal the worms
and do all that sort of thing and put
that to work what you’re looking at is a
wonderful piece of Chinese silk found in
tomb five as well dyes are being
analyzed right now the person doing this
also at University College London was
just flabbergasted she said I usually
see all the pretty stuff I don’t get the
seed that the kind of crummy stuff so
she was thrilled to see something that
was more quotidian but again look at the
connection masks beads silks that
connect us very clearly to the Silk Road
in some manner finally the last object
that I’d like to talk about is this this
bronze disc it’s in very fragile state
it’s disintegrating rapidly but what’s a
very clear indicator of where this is
from it’s not from the West it’s not
Silk Road west its Silk Road east this
is from Lhasa or beyond it’s a medallion
that’s often placed on the dead of
important religious figures in modern
Tibetan the modern Tibetan world like
those Lamas that might have been in
those columns what you’re looking at is
this object and it was placed on the
dead individual in tomb five and it’s a
good indicator of the of the status of
this and so what you’re looking at then
is another clear indicator of Mustang
being connected to this much broader
world so I’d like to conclude my
presentation by by a few comments I’ve
given you some science and I of course
get excited about that science and find
it absolutely fascinating
Coria is the you know we he takes the
dry material that I’ve talked about this
evening he puts it into a visual
framework that provides you with a way
to that kind of gets you and so with
that introduction I’d like to bring
Corey up to the stage thank you very
much for your attention it’s really been
a great pleasure
you
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