Traveling the pristine, remote regions of this planet was one of my personal highlights of the past year. Jagged peaks and deep deserts may be inhospitable today but, a long time ago, they might have been lush forests or shallow seas. Evidence of the vast changes our world has undergone over the epochs remains hidden but ready to be discovered by those with a keen eye. Discovering fossil remains millions of years old or seeing artifacts of ancient cultures was as exhilarating as opening any Christmas gift. Below are some of the fossils and ancient artifacts we’ve come across in our travels.
Mongolia
It is said Chinggis Khaan (otherwise known as Genghis Khan) found a golden horse whip atop a hill before he united the Mongol clans and conquered the known world. While the artifact I found on a long evening hike in the Gobi Desert was not golden, it might as well have been for how excited I became upon sighting it.
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- Upon closer inspection, this rock looks unlike other rocks…
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- The hand axe was small but surely man-made. The edge was sharp and likely used for cutting.
There is no way to know how old the flint hand axe was but apparently the area continuously yields such discoveries. Local nomads often collect them and then attempt to sell them to the irregular tourists. Nothing compares to finding one lying on the ground, however.
In Mongolia we also visited several Deer Stone locations. These standing stones are 3,000 year-old monoliths engraved, often enough, with flying deer. Faces or other imagery might also appear. These ancient artifacts were often place on burial mounds. The flying deer, winged creatures capable of soaring up to the heavens, facilitated the delivery of newly freed souls from this world to the next.
Nepal
Our brains, calibrated to interpret events that occur at intervals of years or decades, have a hard time imagining the high Himalayan peaks covered by water. But, with the Indian subcontinent still pushing itself into the Tibetan plateau at about 70 mm every year, we can start to see how, 50 million years ago, the dirt that now lies at dizzying heights could have been, back then, at sea level. Even today, the Himalayan range is getting taller by about 5 mm every year. Knowing this, we kept on the lookout for fossils in the high passes while trekking the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal. How delighted we both were as we stumbled on 200 million year old fossilized bivalves at 5,000 m in altitude! And then, mere days later, 60 million year old ammonites in the Mustang region north of the Annapurna Massif!
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- Bivalves, fossilized in a sheer cliff. Not convinced? Look at the next photo…
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- 200 million years later and 5,000 m above sea level, these clams still look like… clams.
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- Ammonites, from an age when asteroids caused global extinctions.
I was able to bring some such artifacts and fossils home from the places I mentioned above. Under normal circumstances, I would consider such actions to be unethical. However, the abundance of these relics made them so common that they were sold by locals at the same price as regular trinkets. And yet, how priceless such souvenirs become when you find them yourself in the most wild, remote of places on Earth!
Sorin & Lisa
Le Voyage Extraordinaire No. 55 