The Khara Baatar and his warriors went never again on victorious campaigns,
for they encamped upon the boundary between their ancient land and that of the Chinese
to let themselves be buried under the advancing wave of sand.
Kara-Hot - The Black and Dead City
Shirchin Baatar
...leans into the dry wind not far from the reaches of the torpid Black Ezen. Powdered mountains cement his long black hair into speckled magnetite locks. Spine secreted gently, softly saturates every fissure and pit of the sandstone. Wasting legs lie akimbo. Deliquescent leather shards fade into the sand. Sun bleaches his bone eyes. Visions of a favorite daughter's airy laughing floats nearer, further. Blanched petrifieressent knuckles twitch the shattered remains of a desiccated scimitarra in fury. Torn paper lips lisp out black curses in an endless sibilance. Synapses too outraged to fail completely fire a sporadic tattoo that serves in recompense of the beat of his black heart.
Far below a Chinese dog path leads over buried outskirts of the stronghold of Gurvansaikhan. A thin Han herd boy drives half starved goats. Never feels the ancient eyes resting upon him.
An interdisciplinary approach to the investigation of Mongolia's earliest prehistory,
including the application of the latest available remote sensing technology, has again
this year yielded a range of archaeological, paleoecological, paleogeographic, and geological
data that collectively describe a complex, changing pattern of prehistoric human occupation
of the Gobi.
The expedition's 1998 reconnaissance of the Black Gobi and adjacent outlying ranges of the
Mongolian Altai massif yielded scattered traces of prehistoric occupation that warrant further
investigation.
THE PALEOLITHIC ARCHAEOLOGY OF
THE GOBI DESERT, MONGOLIA
1998 FIELD REPORT
A Preliminary Description of Activities of the
Joint Mongolian-Russian-American Archaeological
Expedition (JMRAAE) Accompanying Explorer's Club Flag 141-A
by
Professor John W. Olsen,
The University of Arizona (FN '89)
Academician Anatoly P. Derevianko,
Russian Academy of Sciences, Siberian Branch
and
Professor D. Tseveendorj,
Mongolian Academy of Sciences
September 1998
. . . .. .... yet another praetorian nodeshell rescue... . .
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