Do you know Indiana Jones? The famous archaeologist traveling across
the world exploring ancient temples with his whip, constantly running from his
enemies?
Well, you may be surprised that this fictional character created by
George Lucas has experiences which are pretty close to those lived by a real
person.
Roy Chapman Andrews was an American explorer and naturalist. He was born
on January 26, 1884, in Beloit, Wisconsin. The early years of his life were
spent in the surroundings of his house, enjoying the time in the wild and
learning the basics of taxidermy.
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| Here is a photograph of Roy Chapman Andrews on his horse Kublai Khan in Mongolia about 1920, as from Wikipedia |
This ability allowed him to save some money to buy the ticket to travel
to New York, where he started to work as a janitor at the American Museum of
Natural History. Due to his ability as a taxidermist, he started to assist the
curator of the exhibitions, and later he received his first quest as a museum
employee: collect a giant whale skeleton. This first expedition was the first
of many, which lead him to the mysterious Asian continent. First, he was
enrolled in the study of whales, later he started a series of expeditions which
culminated in 1922, with the first motorized expedition in the Gobi Desert,
Mongolia. This was the first expedition to use cars and had a huge resonance, not only for the important scientific discoveries, but also since it opened new
routes of commerce between China and Russia. These expeditions resulted in the discovery of famous extinct animals, such as the dinosaurs Protoceratops and Oviraptor; specimens of Paraceratherium, the largest terrestrial mammal, and the only known skull of Andrewsarchus monogliensis, the largest carnivorous terrestrial mammal. Despite these remarkable discoveries, his expeditions were really successful since he found the first dinosaur nest with dinosaur eggs preserved intact.
After the Asian explorations, he became director of the American Museum
of Natural History and in 1942 he retired to private life. He died on March 11,
1960.
This book, Under a lucky star - A lifetime of adventure, is the autobiography of Roy Chapman Andrews, wrote in 1943, it can be found easily since it has been published and reprinted several times.
In this book are narrated the first years of life around Beloit, then
the years in New York, the explorations in the continent which
completely stole his soul, till the early years of the 1940's.
During these chapters, he describes the cities and
the environment of East Asia during these romantic years, when the most part of
Asia was still unexplored and local people were bound to their traditions in
the deepest way. He dedicates time to describe the study of whales, the hunt
for a man-killer tiger, and the explorations, ranging from tropical islands to
the Asian jungle till the Gobi Desert, where he faced sandstorms, dinosaur
excavations, and bandits.
It is a clear picture of the Asian world in the eyes
of an occidental person in the early decades of the past century. Definitely a
book worth to be read if you love the spirit of adventure and exploration; beware: you may fall in love with Asia as well.
References:
Roy Chapman Andrews, Under a lucky star: A lifetime adventure, 1945, Blue Ribbon Books.
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