Dinosaurs in the Attic by Douglas Preston

reading. The odor of blubber and of refuse is almost intolerable; and the inmates, intoxicated with fly agaric, add to the discomfort of the situation. The natives are infested with lice. As long as we remained in these dwellings we could not escape these insects, which we dreaded more than any of the privations of our journey.

    The pair continued their trek first to the Arctic coast and then inland again. By 1902 they had crossed the Lena River and reached the town of Yakutsk. During much of this journey, Jochelson was shadowed by secret police, on the orders of the Russian Interior Ministry, who did everything they could to hinder and thwart the success of the expedition, without much success.

    Jochelson made extremely rare and valuable collections among the Yukaghir, the Tungus, and the Yakut tribes of eastern Siberia. The material Jochelson gathered remains today one of the most thorough and important collections of Siberian ethnography in the world.

    Borgoras was the most daring of the three explorers, traversing areas of Siberia unknown even to the Russians. He left Vladivostok in the early summer of 1900, bound for the remote tribes of the Pacific. He landed at the mouth of the Anadyr River in late July of 1900, at Mariinsky Post, at that time the most remote Russian settlement in eastern Asia—nothing more than a detachment of cossacks, living in barracks next to a native village. He studied and made collections with the Reindeer Chukchee and the Ai'wan tribe, the Asiatic branch of the Alaskan Eskimo. Borgoras then made a large loop, lasting a year, following the Siberian coastline north to Indian Point, one of the extreme eastern points of Asia, then cutting inland, following the Anadyr River south and exploring the northern part of the Kamchatka Peninsula. His extensive collections were hauled by dog sled to Mariinsky Post, loaded on a steamer to Vladivostok, and finally sent to New York via the Suez Canal.

    The explorations of eastern Siberia were completed in 1902, and Borgoras and Jochelson traveled to the Museum in New York to edit and publish their results. Boas kept Laufer in Asia, directing him to make collections in China. Jochclson stayed at the Museum until 1908, returning to Russia once to lead another expedition. He then remained in New York until his death in 1937. Borgoras stayed in Russia and was imprisoned after the 1905 Revolution. Eventually he became a leading Soviet citizen, and lived a peaceful life until his death in 1936.

    The collections and ethnographic notes brought back by the Asian leg of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition are a priceless record of the fragile tribes of the area. Boas made it clear that he wanted the explorers to collect everything they could lay their hands on. A letter from Borgoras listing the various results of one expedition gives a clue to the sheer scale of the work. Borgoras shipped back to New York volumes of ethnographic notes; 5,000 objects; 33 plaster casts of faces; 75 skulls; 300 myths, tales, and legends; 150 texts transcribed in the Chukchee, Koryak, Kamchadel, and Asiatic Eskimo languages; 95 wax-cylinder phonographic records; anthropometric measurements of 860 individuals; and hundreds of photographs.

    Since Boas hoped to show a physical affinity between the American Indians and the north Asiatic peoples, physical anthropology—especially the study of racial features and types—was an important part of the expeditions. The anthropometric measurements referred to above (such measurements as the distance between the eyes, the shape of the skull, and arm lengths and leg lengths combined in various ratios) were a way of quantifying similarities and differences in appearance to determine how two groups might be related. Measured individuals were usually photographed from the front, side, and back (remember Albert S. Bickmore), resulting in a series of photographs that looked like mug shots.

    The Museum had gone to Asia just in time.

    Wherever they