Transcript:

Ambience: Car going over rough terrain.

“It was a spectacular drive. Switchbacks, wide-open mountain vistas with the Himalaya in one direction and the interior mountains of Tibet in another, vast open plains at 4500 meters in elevation.”

Welcome to Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries, a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. Mark Aldenderfer is an anthropologist at the University of Arizona. He’s in Tibet to learn more about the early people who inhabited this geographically isolated region. A long drive though the mountains was a source of inspiration for him.

“The drive made me think a great deal about mobility and getting around this place. The fact is that communication took place. There were of course isolated places, and in fact, most people probably never saw more than twenty kilometers or so from their own personal villages, but on the other hand there was long distance trade that went across the plateau. There was conflict, warfare, political movements back and forth. And then there were individuals, of course, who went back and forth, primarily Buddhist monks or other important figures in the importation and development of Buddhism, made many trips across the plateau here and there from different places. Moving here is difficult; one should never underestimate the difficulties of moving up valleys, across valleys. So, the drive was instructive. We got some insights into some of the difficulties of transportation, communication and movement on the plateau. All of these things inform the research that we do, because it's not simply us looking for archaeological sites; it's us trying to understand how human beings could move across the landscape, and then do the things that they did once they got to the places they wanted to go.”

Please visit our website at pulseplanet.com. Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.