00:00:00,000	S1:
And for those of you to meet Liesel and her family and learn all about their trek to to Tibet and to the kingdom of Mustang. And we're going to see a film about that. And, um, there's always going to talk about what that experience was like. But before we do that, I would first like to thank the friends of the Hamilton One library for providing this program and making it possible for us. They're always very generous and, uh, and help us do the wonderful programs that we do here at the library. And I just have a couple of quick announcements. One is we are starting a writers group. We have a number of budding writers in our midst, and they're going to have their first meeting Tuesday, January 26th, from 9 to 11 a.m. in the local history room. And yes, 9 a.m. and that is before the library opens. But we will be here to let people in and it will be a really good group if you're interested. There are flyers on the side table over there. I'm also, we've been doing this whole series about skin cancer and melanoma and the prevention and treatment, and we have doctor who's a dermatologist from the North Shore Physicians Group of Danvers. She will be coming Thursday, January 28th at 7 p.m.. No registration necessary. Um, but she's really wonderful. They're going to do a PowerPoint presentation, and, um, you know, if you're interested, please do come. Then I want to introduce our community read, which is going to take place or span the months from January to April. And it is called A Treasure of Books for two Towns. And our selection for 2010 is everything I need to know. I learned from a children's book by Anita Silvey. So if you saw in the foyer all the children's books and I know many of them are probably familiar to you. Um, her book talks about there are politicians and celebrities and authors and people from all walks of life and how children's books impacted their lives. And Anita Silvey is going to speak on April 8th at Gordon College. All about that. But in the meantime, we'll be having all these other events. We have a, um, there will be a panel of speakers and educators about the importance of an early literacy for children that will be on March 10th. And then our kickoff event is Saturday, January 23rd for everybody from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.. You can come dressed as your favorite children's book character, and we will have prizes that will be awarded for the most innovative costumes. And this is for everybody. And if you want to see what I am going to be, you'll have to tell me to find out because I'm not telling people. So without further ado, I know you did not come here to hear me speak all night. You came to hear Liesel and to meet her family and Liza. Why don't you come up and introduce your family and introduce the film that we're about to see? Thank you for another.

00:03:45,367	S2:
Member of our family. Thank you, everyone, for coming. This is such a pleasure to see so many people here. And And mainly because this is it's always a thrill to come home to your hometown where you were. One spent the important young years. I went to Cutler School starting from third grade and winter up. This was Bessie Booker at the time when I came here. And uh, and then, uh, of course, the Hamilton went to regional high School and I recognized some faces from those days. Um, one tends to when you're making a film produce in a, in a bit of a vacuum, you, uh, write a treatment for a film idea and or have a dream and idea that this is my experience that I would pitch to, um, PBS and National Geographic or Nova. And, uh, sometimes they're quick to pick up on the idea and say, yes, yes, yes, and sometimes they're not. And yet you know that you have a story that is compelling, that is going to tell us more about a region, uh, in, in the world that, uh, that needs to be uncovered, about human history. And that stretches back 6 or 7000 years. So here we were, sitting on some discoveries that we made in 2007, having gone and just filmed on our own, because no one thought that they wanted to fund us and take a chance on us. In 2007 to go on this journey. So we took our own camera and got a volunteer cameraman who we just happened to run into when we were in Nepal a few weeks before. And miraculously, he he said, I'll come. And he came my expenses. And he had his own camera, a high, high definition HDTV, high High-Definition Video Camera, which is three chip broadcast quality. And then we had our little one three chip, not so great DV camera and some audio equipment and our kids in tow. And this dream to go and uh, and a permit that took about 13 years and all but for us for years to get us with the Department of Archaeology in Nepal to gain access to never before explored, uh, caves in a region called after Mustang in Nepal. So we we just went ahead and on our own dime and, uh, took a chance and started our, our research. And this film is what you're going to see. This film was not supposed to be made. We actually came back.

00:06:40,167	S1:
With.

00:06:40,567	S2:
This footage and we showed a little bit. We put a trailer together, we showed it was a five minute trailer to the at a film festival. And there were some folks at National Geographic who saw it, and they went back and said, why didn't we fund this and talk to their executives? And to make a long story short, we did get funding to go back. They didn't want this story. They wanted us to go back and and continue the research, but, um, to develop the story further. So they wanted a completely different, very slick film. Well, you know, well shot within high definition in full HD, which is a very heavy camera package and it involves a lot more money. And so we're more than happy to go back and do this. So that meant year two, and that was the film that was to be made. But we went ahead with just a little bit of extra funding and cut this film in four weeks and just, just did the little film that could and, and just went ahead and made our own story. It's very we call it the renegade, the back story, the kind of homegrown the duct tape productions family Almost home video, some of it finally production. And you'll see Finn here who is six. He's in in the town. Our son Finn and Leo, um, who's now four in the six now. But he at the time was, uh, was three, and she was 18 months, uh, on our first trip into Upper Mustang. And they are the youngest expedition members to have ever gone on an expedition in the in Nepal, let alone perhaps the Himalayas. And then, of course, my cousin is Pete Arthurs, who is the star of the film, of course. And the shining star of my life, of course. So, um, without further ado. Okay. Love for you to have a Tallulah. And we'll, um. Julie, shall I? Do I need to, um.

00:08:39,968	S1:
Rise for the fan who was part of the HVAC? It can not be turned off. If you have a difficult time hearing, you need to not be a back seat pew sitter, as they say. You need to come forward so that you can hear them. And I apologize about them. Then it's the. It's, uh. There's nothing we can we can.

00:09:00,100	S2:
Really move on.

00:09:00,968	S3:
Well, it's.

00:09:02,100	S2:
Up to the teams. The one the Yankees see, where they have the feeling. They have the hanging caskets with you. Yes. The Dunhuang caves and the caskets.

00:09:12,868	S4:
They don't how they ever place that buy up of no room to them. And they're still nagging, right? You know. Yeah, that goes right there.

00:09:22,567	S2:
Hasn't there hasn't been any, um, correlation, any research done on the correlation between the Don Juan caves and these because, I mean, let's face it, we just basically have returned with, uh, from there, with a team of scientists, we went back with an American archaeologist, doctor Mark Alden Duffer, and he's just grappling with all of the data, but it's really hard to hear. Okay. Sorry, I should scream a little more. And were you able to find me? You weren't. He's probably in the children. I think so. Um, just let me.

00:09:56,267	S1:
Say if you want to see the.

00:09:57,400	S2:
Secrets. Yes. There's my sister. How you need to be back. If you want to.

00:10:03,167	S1:
See.

00:10:03,367	S2:
The other film, the library has it. So you can. You can borrow it. I was hoping this was a sleepover, but.

00:10:12,501	S2:
Not.

00:10:15,000	S2:
The more than, the more I can talk. Bones. And so are these. So amazing. Such a joy to see this. Okay. Thank you. I really appreciate your going out there. Great advice. Everybody who's in wrestling or even potentially wrestling. Mm. Well thank you. It's been a long haul. Um, just pretty much we're still still finding ourselves and going over and just just doing it because we believe in it. Our permit lasts two more years with the Department of Archaeology, and so we feel an urgency there, as we say in this film. There are thousands of caves. And we on this first trip we were only able to inventory ten. So we went back and have been back now three times and we were now up to 60. But, uh, it's a daunting mission that every one of them has, that every one of them has the objects. Some of them are costumes, right? Many are empty, but we still inventory them. We go in and we photograph them as best we can. We mount them and document anything that is that is remarkable about them. And are you taking very few that have, uh, artifacts that are removable? Because that would be a problem, because we couldn't remove that thing if it became known or understood that there were there's any statuary or anything that's removable, then that that would really be problematic.

00:11:51,000	S5:
Well, I was wondering if any of the villages might be setting up a museum or a repository for any of the materials.

00:11:58,367	S2:
Um, Gillian's asking if there are any of the villages are setting up a museum. That's really our aim is to turn our inventory, which is now just in digital form, a compilation of all of our notes. Um, we have a each for each cave that we go into. We have a cave inventory sheet that we all fill out. And then of course we photograph. We use video. We use whatever we can. Um, and my thought is that we could turn that into a digital virtual cave, that or a series of caves that anyone could explore, really as a means to deter people from going into the caves themselves. We really don't want anyone to not only risk their lives, but to to try to do any exploration of the case. The thought is to have this virtual museum sit in. One of the villages, the main village that trekkers go up to and have that benefit the community in some way. There are also conservation efforts to. That's a big part of our fundraising is to conserve what we are finding, in particular the snow leopard caves. And you saw where the pug marks are inside the cave. Um, those that cave is really has some cracks on the ceiling and is threatened with collapse. So we keep going back and measuring and measuring and, uh, we're not sure if anything can be done. We're working on hiring a geo engineer to go in and do some sort of assessment of whether we can actually construct something to save the cave from collapsing in on itself. And then you had a question.

00:13:42,100	S3:
Can you talk about the latest thing that came out and all that on earth? What is it that's like?

00:13:51,667	S2:
Yes. You want to tackle that?

00:13:55,801	S3:
Mystery trajectory of Tibetan Buddhist culture in a sentence. Do I get two sentences?

00:14:01,400	S2:
The connection between.

00:14:03,467	S3:
The Raja.

00:14:04,601	S2:
And the rest of Tibet.

00:14:08,167	S3:
Oh, the Raja, the Russia is. He's. He is ultimately of the Shakya lineage, which is one of the four poor lineages the Shakya, the, the Kagyu, the Gelug and the Nyima. The Shakya is a reformed sect which is very unlike the Nyingma, which is the oldest sect which emanates from the Buddha who was born a historical Buddha 2500 years ago. There's always been a bit of push pull between the Gelug and the Shakya, as there's been power emanating from western Tibet and as far away as Central Tibetan. Lhasa, which is primarily Gelug and of the same sect as is wholly Nostalgie Lama. The the Raja has his own power that's granted to him by the kings of Tibet, but he has his own special lineage, the Shakya lineage, which is much smaller by by comparison to the Gelug. The Nyingma tradition is flourishing in all of Bhutan and guru who was discussed up in this film and I think with more film The Nation in the first film. The sequence of Shangri-La is one of the great saints who actually brought the teachings of the Buddha, the Nyingma tradition, into Mustang, and then continued throughout all of Asia. And one of his last places was actually in Bhutan.

00:15:26,200	S2:
And they found a connection through the art that we recently found in a cave close to the Tibetan border that looks a lot like the, um, some of the art found in the monasteries of algae in Ladakh. And they've um. And so after doing some research with an anthropologist who specializes in Upper Mustang. Um, a very little known fact, but the kings of Mustang were quite connected to Ladakh, western Tibet, and they believe also the far reaches of eastern Tibet, basically China. So our conclusions are that this valley, the Gandaki River valley, was a very important migratory route for not only human migration, but for art and ideas and culture in general. It's one of the few, um, ways to pass through the impossible Himalaya and make your way down to the Indian subcontinent. So it's been an overlooked vein or artery, um, between Tibet and and India, because it was closed off to the modern world until 1990. So I know it helped you some people to get the hang of it. The old two cultures forever. So let me.

00:16:50,968	S3:
Keep the.

00:16:51,200	S2:
Question.

00:16:51,601	S3:
So the question, the question was if it was so difficult for all of us to climb up there with experience, this mountaineers, rock climbers. How did the original inhabitants and people who created the caves get in there? Well, it's very likely that the facades of the cave were quite different when they were first created. There were geological wasting, erosion, constant percolation of water down through the matrix of the rock. There's been so much erosion, so much. The area has really changed. Also, just along the the valley floor of the river, you know, you can imagine what the sediment is like, which is very friable and easily moved by water, that when the caves were created, some of which were upwards of 3000 years ago, the level of the ground would have been quite different from what it is now. So caves that were done at ground level at that time, but obviously be upwards of 100 or 200ft in the air. But we believe that the caves themselves also had architectural features, much like our Anasazi and Pueblo cultures and southwestern United States, where they had a series of scaffolding. They had intricate handholds, carved footholds that have been used over time. And they're also had, uh, just like we we saw in Mustang central shafts going up through the different levels of the cave, that one could put one's back against one side and one's foot against the other and push. And also there were just different handholds and footholds that carved into that matrix as well. So it's almost like a 3D climbing puzzle. As you're going up this cylindrical corridor, going up and connecting each of the individual levels. But it's a great question and one we don't we don't feel like we have the best answer to because, you know, between the changing and the impermanence of the landscape and then obviously not really finding a lot of evidence, its respect to any type of scaffolding or architecture other than really one cave. We really don't know.

00:18:41,000	S2:
The way we set up. Yes, it's about 60 miles from. The question is, where is Lamont? The royal city of Mustang, and it's a 60 miles from the nearest airport, as you can call it an airport, an airstrip. Um, so you check for 60 miles to get in there? No. Or is it 30 miles.

00:19:02,567	S3:
To 30.

00:19:02,968	S2:
Miles back? 60 rounds? No. People have recently been allowed a good start. Yes. It's nice. It's open. Usually too.

00:19:11,601	S6:
Far. There's some time when.

00:19:13,801	S3:
It's closed in the 70s.

00:19:15,501	S5:
Madness.

00:19:16,100	S6:
Pain in the face.

00:19:17,200	S2:
Right.

00:19:17,667	S6:
It picks up.

00:19:18,400	S2:
Peter Matheson, wounded in 1991 or 1990, but early the year. And then it knows that then he and Tom Lehrer went and read their not so factual book. That's a beautiful. But you have to take it with a grain of salt. He's a great writer.

00:19:36,467	S6:
I thought that was what was all about. That for seven days or something?

00:19:39,801	S2:
No, there is a book from the 70s and that's Michelle Parcell, who's a French explorer. So he was able to get special permission from the ministry ministries in Nepal to go in as an anthropologist and do some research, as it was on Professor Tucci and one other explorer a long time ago. And yes.

00:20:03,367	S3:
I wanted the ability to say this. Those who are in the caves and I.

00:20:10,300	S7:
Think you mentioned something about ten minutes.

00:20:13,567	S2:
All right.

00:20:15,000	S7:
Cool. Have you had Cristiano.

00:20:18,267	S2:
Since that time? No, but we know of five because there were three that were known. And then we uncovered, actually there were two that were known and we uncovered three. It's a little bit fuzzy at times because it's it's hard to explain. How would you say they were known? One was not known by the general public, but we only found one person who could give all two of them that could tell us. Actually, each one, it's pretty much that you find one, um, Herder. Shepherd who happened to at some point see a cave, and they point us in the general direction, and then us, and then it all comes together. So we have some lead on, some many leads to many on some. There's one legend that says there are 108 goblins going from one village all the way towards Tibet. So that's an auspicious number and that would be a challenge. But yes.

00:21:18,067	S7:
Have you been able to do any archaeological studies in the current Tibet? What is Tibet?

00:21:25,667	S2:
Well, we haven't we certainly really haven't tried that, obviously. Wisdom was a part of ancient to that. The only reason we're able to do the research we are is because it's in the palm. So it's on the other side of the border that our main archaeologist, doctor Mark Oldendorf, has done. He's pretty much the premier archaeologist who has American archaeologists doing work into that. And he spent the last 15, 20, 20, 20 years, pretty much every summer going into that and trying to answer questions about human migration across the highest plateau in the world. And where did the first peoples come from? Did they come from, uh, from Persia and, uh, the sort of western part of the world? Uh, or did they come up through China? The Chinese are now saying that it was the earliest people were Han Chinese, and that's the latest paper that's coming up. But we won't comment on that. Yes.

00:22:33,067	S6:
Actually, two good things.

00:22:34,567	S2:
Are.

00:22:36,067	S6:
Described. So please take some. Yes. Okay. And also.

00:22:40,767	S2:
In this, in the restoration of the art.

00:22:45,000	S6:
What do you think this would do with the awareness of the first? You can see his dream as I said to you.

00:22:54,868	S2:
Okay. I'll answer your second question. The second question is about the pigments and in the restoration of the art. So there has been no restoration done on any of the caves. But we do understand that the caves are that the you notice the sort of very dusty, um, reds and blacks and white. That's all from Mustang. Those are all pigments that you can find according to any that you can find in the mountains of wisdom, and that's a practice that is still continued today. There are monasteries. Everything is washed down with the pigments from the mountains. In the monasteries themselves, they do pigment analysis, and they have found that the monasteries have the highest art. In the monasteries are painted with malachite, azurite, gold, cinnabar, I mean all of the top dollar, beautiful, beautiful, ancient pigments. So, um, through, through special analysis, they've been able to determine that. And then, of course, if they're going to add, uh, well, you'll have to see a film I produce for Nova and I'm coming to you in 2002, it came out and I think it's here at the library, so you can check it out, and it tells you in detail about how the the paintings are restored in the, the great monasteries of la Montana. And it's a fascinating film just because it gets into the minutia and the questions. There's a controversy about whether the restorers should finish the paintings, as the locals believe they should. But of course, the European restorers feel that they could never match what the original master artists were able to do, and they would prefer to do cross-hatching and minimal intervention. But where you could still stand back from a distance and receive the blessing of the divinity and still see it as a completed figure. Tell them the name of the film. Oh, the film is called.

00:24:57,400	S6:
Lost.

00:24:57,667	S2:
Treasure. The problem is called Lost Treasures of Tibet because it is in Nepal. It's it's political. With the first part of the question was what are the the sacred? What is it like to step into the sacred spaces and is very eloquent about this.

00:25:15,000	S3:
So I don't know if I'm eloquent, but I'll take a stab at it because I know it personally. It's it just had the ability to take one to a completely different place, had the ability to transform my my mindset. I had the ability to almost be like stepping into a time capsule. I'd be able to, you know, to sit down in front of one of these paintings and to leave the arid, high mountain, incredibly dry aridity of the Tibetan Plateau and a mustang behind. And to look into some of those tropical paintings and to look at those, those teachers that. And it's certainly in the one case who looked like they had. They had come from the Indian subcontinent, come from obviously a long ways away, and one could only imagine the privations, what they would have suffered to have lived in that place and to have created that high art. And what was their motivation? Why did they go such a great distance and live and and endure those privations for such a long time? And I felt like I was living part of their compassion, and I could feel that they were almost like leaving a message for anyone who would go and who would sit before the paintings with an open mind, who would consider their travail to to be able to bring that great piece of art forward. And it was just just for me, a great and transformative moment, just thinking about this great lesson of impermanence, that certainly everything that's in front of us in a place like Mustang, respect to the landscape is constantly in a state of destruction. But there's this great renewal of the human spirit and this great transcendence. And I think this, this feeling that through the love and compassion of that painter, that love actually modifies, modulates, modifies the passage of time, memorialize his time, and then ultimately, the art, I think, truly is what endures then.

00:27:11,467	S6:
Yes.

00:27:13,167	S2:
You, my dad, Peter Clark, he's been asking questions from the First moment we said the word mustangs. Like what?

00:27:23,601	S3:
Who's done? Ranch. We've got a.

00:27:26,267	S7:
Thousand caves.

00:27:26,901	S3:
And you've been in 60. And you're looking for some clues. And yet this is a culture with a great written tradition. You're finding manuscripts. You're fine. There's monks that.

00:27:38,567	S7:
Record.

00:27:39,067	S3:
Everything and great books that come out of the Jordans. Is there no history that tells you anything about where the.

00:27:45,868	S7:
Jordans.

00:27:46,367	S3:
Can be and what the purpose of them are? I mean, I find it a conflict in what we see is a written tradition. And yet you have to find a herder that knows about something.

00:28:03,367	S2:
Well, I'll take one quick stop, dad. And that's that, um, that, uh, first of all, we have to remember that in Tibet, 10,000 monasteries. I guess the figure is were destroyed by the Chinese Cultural Revolution. We've lost that history. So, um. It it not all of it, but that's why Mustang is so important, then. Mustang has only recently been opened, and you can't really go into the shortens and break them open just for the sake of science and see what's in there, because there could be some important sacred texts in them. Um, Charles, Doctor Charles Campbell, who joined us from the Oriental Institute, um, in Oxford, England, has broken into many charts with the permission of the locals, but certainly not all of them, and literally just maybe reaching in a little bit just to see with all the village elders there. And he has, uh, procured some interesting texts, but, um, all I can say is it is such a mystical place. Every time you go, you find it's it is. It's an incredible experience to think that. We're not the experts. What are we doing? Stumbling on all of this. I mean, he's the expert when it comes to getting up into the impossible. Really dangerous places. But as far as and I can, I can document anything, but, um, trying to translate it and explain what it's all about and making it relevant to the world is what these, the other specialists that we've brought in are able to do. And even these specialists say this is a very difficult place to work. Even the locals, they leave for the winter. Um, it's it's hard to just get permission every time you go. There are major blow ups. And you'll see in the second film, if you watch it, it happens again, yet again. Another, um, altercations. But we all come out of it renewed in a sense. Um, and it's just I can't explain it, But every stone you the cave that you see in this film, where they first go in and you see the stacked rocks and the the lattice work. We went back in a year later just because we wanted to take the Nepali archaeologist or our American archaeologist and, and um, and also just a conceit for the film. We just wanted to see, well, what's he going to see that's different from all of us. And all of a sudden, one of Pete's climbing partners starts pulling up some of the stones, um, that were just random stones lying down and then looking deeper inside the granaries. And he finds really important papers that are handwritten. And they're the tax papers. It's the a real written history that is, um, not religious, but it's more about the of the nearby villages and the dates that they were abandoned and why they were abandoned. And all of this information that's so important. primary historical documents. So, um, totally overlooked the first year. So you can go in there with the best of intentions, but you would need to spend ten years in that one to try to really understand. So I don't know that it's just your question that maybe we can template.

00:31:28,567	S6:
So yeah.

00:31:30,100	S3:
No, it's difficult to go to go back in the annals of the information that does actually exist. There are a series of four major books that would be like four books of the Old Testament that are called mullahs. And that's what what we take from the King's records and from the Campo, who was really the highest cleric of the land in la Montana. And they have to divine from that lyrical document, the myth and the fact, and they have to divine that, and they have to tease all of that out. There isn't anything like a treasure map that tells us where to find 108 or 12 or 16 or 9 or seven columns. They're not really mapped in any specific way. There may be an allusion to them. There may be an indication that they exist, but we don't know whether that's factual. We don't know whether that's that's part of a great myth. And that's something where we have to bring in the anthropologists, and we have to bring in the people who have lived with that culture for a long period of time, people like Charles Ravel and others who have, who really know these stories in and out and who have divined the truth from the fiction. And many of many of the books that we found in the one cave in mahjong are largely at least half of them were born. Some of them were copies of those original four books, and some of them are completely original documents and are completely original books. They're like finding chapters of the Old Testament. We don't really know what they are. Jeff Watt, who is our art historian from the Rubin Museum of Art in New York, said that these are some of them are in a language known as Changjiang, which is an ancient language and indicative of, if you believe the stories, part of an ancient empire that existed across all of the western plateau of Tibet, Mongolia, and extending very close to Beijing. So it's difficult to to look at a library that's 8000 folios and know exactly where that's going to, to what it's going to tell us. But right now, that's exactly what the scholars who understand, who know quantum culture are doing, and they're trying to integrate and they're trying to translate all those documents and try to figure it out and do a bit of triangulation across the documents that we already have and the books that we already have. But it's going to be someone's life work, translating all of those folios and trying to interpolate those stories against what we already know.

00:33:49,567	S6:
That's a good thing.

00:33:50,968	S3:
I'm not sure it's going to be mine.

00:33:55,167	S5:
It seems to me that this is such important work that you're doing. And so I would say cutting edge in this field, that I'm surprised that you don't have people wanting to fund your Exploration. Is this really a challenge for you to find people to support? This really.

00:34:16,267	S6:
Is.

00:34:16,667	S3:
I think I think in this day and age it's there's there's such great competition and but I think that there's, there's, there are. I think there are definitely funds available for doing these types of this type of research. But I think that there's there's been some difficult times in the past. Most recently respected to to going out and doing. I'm just going to say adventurous field work where where we can't really verify what we're going to find. We don't know definitively. I mean, for every cave where we found something, we probably would need 20 others where we didn't find a thing. So it's really difficult to convince people to to support you when really you're going off into the unknown. You have a fairly, fairly good word of someone who's traveled through that area that there might be something X cave, or perhaps there's artwork in that case, but going to the National Science Foundation and asking for three quarters of $1 million on the word of a horseman out in the middle, it's another story. But fortunately, we have three years of track record behind us now, and some significant findings and some exciting findings as well. So, you know, obviously, we're hoping that this will snowball and we'll be able to bootstrap this up quite a bit as well. And we'll try to engender further support from Nepal's Department of Archaeology and try and bring in some of their their young archaeologists who are interested in high mountain archaeology, because this is really the advent of, of of that exploration and that and that science. And they've been spending most of their time excavating Lumbini and the birthplace of the Buddha. There really hasn't been nearly the type of of excavation in northern, on the northern border as there has been in the southern. So it's really all opening up. And I'm very excited for the people of Nepal. I think they're going to. They're just going to learn such remarkable things about the people who travel through that, that remarkable and dramatic country.

00:36:19,367	S7:
That is. Do you have, like, that story about this sort of migration of people? It's a group of people that came from India in quite that way. I mean, listen to what the crew was doing. There was just like for New York, the setting, also Chinese side of things. So they ignore it and decide to think. Do you have any idea what you discovered or heard or stolen?

00:36:52,100	S2:
Well, we have we have better than a hunch based on the, um, some of the DNA evidence that we have. And now we're returning our proposal with the NSF is to do strontium testing, which I'm really excited about because it has to do with the enamel in your teeth that embedded in your. Beneath the enamel would be information that will tell you about the origins of your birth. Basically your your your birthplace, where you were born, the region. And it has to do with the water you drank when you were a baby and and its connection to the geology, the local geology we have found through the DNA of the four individuals that we found in 2008, in the caves that are from the 14th century, that they were not from wisdom. So they're foreigners. Okay. And then we, um, the conclusions of Doctor Oldendorf are that they are not coming up from the south, which has been the the predominant thinking. Certainly the Nepali archaeologists believe this. As to the Germans. However, the Germans found that their individuals that they found the 28 bodies were a mongoloid. That's the only term they use. Origin. So. But they didn't. Their DNA testing was inconclusive. But this was through doing and analyzing the the shape of their heads. The cranium anthropometric. Thank you. He's someone else. But that's why he's always on camera.

00:38:34,367	S2:
Um, but, uh, and the, uh, it's a little bit of a debate in that our German scientist is going to join us on this next trip, which we hope to get funding to do a film as well. Um believes very strongly that these people came from India. And, uh, the American team and British team believe they were from probably western Tibet. More towards Ladakh. Um, I don't know if you have anything to add to that.

00:39:07,868	S2:
Interesting for us. We get into the minutia, but, um, the the studies that will be done will include the strontium testing, which I think is very exciting. It'll be the first time if we get this funding to, then a team will do this kind of testing. Uh, relevant to a broad question about human migration dating as far back as, um, basically 20,000 years ago is what Doctor Altdorfer was able to find in Mustang. No human remains, but evidence of um, tombs and tent, um, circles and pit houses. So of course, then he showed evidence of toolmaking. And I mean, I look at these stones and just.

00:39:55,801	S6:
Think.

00:39:56,367	S2:
Well, yeah, I'm impressed with what he can see. It didn't translate well on film. So we didn't we didn't we weren't able to do that part of the story. But those people are it doesn't really relate to this question about the people who were from the the Germans found people who were as old as, um, from a thousand BC. So that was the earliest date. And then from some, uh, chaff that we took from the snow leopard cave with the 55 panels, we found that that chaff dates back to, um, 4000 BC. So we're talking BC that means that humans, it's in the plaster that the humans used to actually, uh, make the facade for this cave. So it's very exciting. And that is one piece of evidence, but luckily we have two others. The Germans also got a date quite similar to that in another cave, as did another one other German scientist that was an independent who has a similar date. So it's not a random thing. So that's actually been put into our proposal to the NSF. So we think that's quite exciting.

00:41:05,567	S6:
I'm just.

00:41:06,000	S7:
Curious about one thing which I have accrued.

00:41:08,000	S6:
Yet. What happened.

00:41:08,701	S7:
In 1992? Open up. Let's hope. Yeah.

00:41:11,667	S3:
Maybe other people know, but I just.

00:41:13,501	S6:
Yeah. Okay. Do you want to explain here?

00:41:17,000	S3:
I think that there was there was just a bit of a backlash respective to the amount of time that they actually kept it a restricted zone. It. Uh, I'll try to. I'll try to condense it, but ultimately in the in the mid to late 1960s, there was an insurrectionist movement that was launched by people of eastern Tibet from the region called calm and a number of their warriors, and probably the fiercest warriors that would ever have ever come out of Tibet, are the compass. And they essentially have camps all throughout the kingdom of Mustang in the late 60s and early 70s. The compass were trained by the US, CIA and Seikan, and also in Fort Hale in Colorado. There were there were literally, literally hundreds of camps in this area. And it really, really was effectively a place where the Copper Warriors would lead insurrection trips against the Chinese and try to target bases, military installations, uh, any road building activity, things of that nature. So the place was very, very unstable. If one were to read Michelle Purcell's travels going in there in the 1960s, people were very wary and gave a very wide berth to the camp of warriors because they were very unpredictable and and very fierce, and many of them standing six, 6.5ft tall, very wild, very nomadic people. And they also, uh, you know, ultimately many, many of the people who believe that they were in some ways responsible for the plundering of some of the ancient monasteries in, uh, in Montana and in other areas. But in any case, the region was just completely unstable. And finally, through the efforts of of the Nepalese government in collusion with the Chinese, the armies were dispersed and and the leader of that that movement killed. So this would have taken place roughly about the time that that Nixon first went to, to China in the 70s and ultimately had his dialogues with Mao. Ultimately, the CIA, working with the with the conflicts, completely dissolved at that point. So there was no longer an American intervention in Woodstock to support the campus and to do airdrops and to further train those armies to, obviously to resist the Chinese. So what ends up happening at this point is Nepal effectively has this this restricted zone where they were still trying to deal with soldiers and renegade groups that were traveling through this area, and this went in. This went on for another, effectively another 15 years, 16 years. Then finally, because the area seemed placid. The Nepalese police at Had several bases established. And ultimately Nepal is is a country that has a revenue stream, chiefly out of tourism. So they wanted to open up some of these regions. They also realized the cultural importance of a place like Mustang and the the economic viability of the whole Gandaki Valley. So, so now it's open. And ultimately one can and probably will be able to go continuously from the Tibetan border all the way down to the village of Beni at the southern southern end of the Kali Gandaki, by a road, and that is being filled with the the efforts of both the Nepalese and the Chinese.

00:44:34,868	S7:
And those on the desert to give a group of warriors, I mean that.

00:44:38,467	S3:
It's.

00:44:38,667	S7:
All.

00:44:39,868	S3:
Up there. I'm not sure exactly, but there's some pretty fierce guys out in hot in eastern Tibet. Many of them are. Maybe a lot of it might be here.

00:44:51,601	S7:
If the Raja maintain his The ascendancy.

00:44:54,567	S3:
During that time.

00:44:55,367	S7:
Period.

00:44:57,267	S3:
He did. He was he. He stayed. I mean, I think I think that politically they were the people of Mustang who were in support of the compass. Unfortunately, the many of the many of the, the compass were were not as perhaps noble minded as, as many of the others. So unfortunately, they were. I mean, ultimately there was just a lot of division amongst the compass. Some were definitely a bit of adventurousness in their their own personal gain, which happens with a lot of troops like that were standing.

00:45:33,367	S7:
Yes, yes, no. But it is like back to him the the hurting the heroes lol. It seems that the issue is called what you best. Yes, it's like the gist of that particular in the sky. Yeah.

00:45:47,667	S3:
That's a great question. That site and really all of Mustang is only a shadow of what it, what it formerly was. There's a huge collapsed fortress at the top of the hill. Before you, you know, actually, before you would rise from the snow leopard cave, getting up to the top of the hill. It very likely it was, was either a small city or perhaps a large monastic community might have lived in that place, as there are many smaller cells that are there. That cave is also known as the cave of the 84 mosquitos. That cave, what exists now is only really one half of it. So there's still, you know, the other 42 sites thought size, which just fell off. So this would have been an extensive and huge complex at one time. But why it was there just given its lack of proximity to water, obviously none of the none of the land there was really arable. It people would have had to have support that community that was there. Why was it there? You know, ultimately there may have been, you know, a series of signal towers by which people could communicate up and down the valley from that high. Place they would have had access to perhaps a vision of other signal towers throughout this region. But this was a high, desolate, lonely place. I mean, a remarkably inspiring place, but remote. So it definitely was.

00:47:12,367	S2:
And I will say that.

00:47:16,200	S2:
Just to jump on it, to say, and you should take it back with it. Because that's the point. Because it's so remote. Um, that's why they put it there, is our thinking. I mean, when you're going up there, you just you can't imagine that a group of people would have decided to stay there overnight or or for longer than just a few hours, because you really want to get back to dodge. You want to get back to where? Where the if you can call them creature comforts. Ah. So, um, and so the thinking is that it's the journey. You know the quote, right? It's it's the journey to that location and the the struggle and the difficulty in actually getting to these places and living in these places. That is the teaching. That's a big part of the teaching. And then once you actually get there, imagine there's some very important teacher that resides in this retreat, this perhaps monastic complex. I just imagine some some, you know, the wonderful community led by a monk, just or lama sitting in this cave and they're waiting for you, and you've come from anywhere, and you've taken three months to get there. And just like today, Mustang is a there are parts of the Mustang that are still very important home revenge sites. So you'll see sadhus who are Hindu and, uh, Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims who are barefoot, going up to these very, very remote places. And so we think it's the same practice, um, as the Saudis do today, that people would have undergone this journey. We found evidence of very old Jordans dotting the route, like, you know, this was a yellow brick road and and the Jordans would just gleam in the distance. And that would lead you this path to the west, to this important, um, site called Kundali. There's another one that we uncovered that's called retelling with beautiful paintings. And then there's a third called Ganden Ling and the Lings are considered, um, uh, there's sort of the points up on the compass, but also they're also another translation is that they're, um, islands in the sky. So that started to make sense to me because they are all islands and retreats in the sky. And somehow if you made that journey just to get up there to list them, then there would.

00:49:43,267	S6:
Be.

00:49:43,367	S2:
These, these destinations, and you receive your teachings and you'd go through a transformation you do on the journey, but you would do the same when you stay there. And then you can return back to your regularly scheduled programming.

00:49:57,767	S6:
How do you know that there was hours for me? How do you know that then?

00:50:02,767	S2:
Along with the lush.

00:50:04,467	S6:
Place with lots of water. Especially if you have paintings. Plaster, right? And they had a mix of somehow. Right.

00:50:12,100	S3:
Well, as far as the preparation of the of the mud to, to finish the surfaces. Absolutely. They had they had water available to them. How the, how it was transported there. Who really knows. There's definitely been significant geological events. Some geologists have suggested that the colleague on Rocky River actually at one time floated north. How far back? This this actually took place? Difficult to say. And in some of the the images of of the ancient monasteries that are there in la Montana, the built in 14th century. There are. There are. Are these pillars in the in the huge immediate halls, some of which are about about a metre in diameter, and some of them appear to be from cut from a single tree. So where did that come from? How did they get there? Some of them definitely were carried in sections. How far down the valley did they come from? How far up did they go? How did they get up there? We don't have the answer to that question, but as far as taking it back into antiquity, we don't know when this major geological map would have taken place. But obviously this is a place that has significant geothermal activity and definitely moves around quite a bit and is subject to erosion. We have to add all of that now. But you're absolutely right. It looks probably quite a bit different now than it would have big like.

00:51:33,567	S3:
Yeah, something like that.

00:51:35,100	S2:
I mean, you add water to this.

00:51:37,167	S6:
Environment.

00:51:38,200	S2:
And the villages are actually their oases. They're absolutely stunning against that backdrop of dust and battle and rock. So our feeling when we then started to find these caves filled with beautiful paintings was, I mean, this was the Florence of Tibet. Artists or artist came here, um, because it it is quite livable in the valleys and the artists would come here. I think part of the fun, if you could call it that, would be to go and live in a cave, and that's high and impossible to reach, but that would maybe inform you and help you with your, um, depiction of the database or whatever it is that you're painting. So, I mean, that's sort of us filling in the blanks, but, um, Doctor Charles ramble will say, no, we shouldn't think of it as arid and dry. Look at all. I mean, when you go there during harvest time, there's plenty of food, plenty being harvested. And obviously the Communities were sustained. Communities had to move when the water would change. When those streams would change. So we know that. And we know there was an event that's pretty similar to the in date to the little Ice age, I believe, and in Europe. But it was the monsoon, Indian monsoon, a major change in the monsoon in terms of the amount of rain that happened in the I was 16, 17. I don't have the date, but we know through core samples that there was a big change and then that affected communities in a big way, that they had to literally move from where they were, and they changed sort of the whole, um, mapping and trajectory of many of the, the big enclaves, uh, in most, um, and possibly even the course of the college. And these are the sorts of things that some of the scientists are saying.

00:53:34,767	S7:
Be.

00:53:36,667	S2:
Okay. Thank you so much for hanging out between.