Linden - Deep Past

Praise for Eugene Linden and his books

The Parrots Lament

Wonderful, humane, touching. You cannot read it and remain unmoved.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of When Elephants Weep

THE WINDS OF CHANGE

A lucidly written guide to the near future and a provocative manual of public policy.

Edward O. Wilson

The Winds of Change is fascinatinga tour de force. Linden has accumulated a greater comprehension of paleo-climatic and oceanographic issues than all but a very few scientists. I have nothing but admiration for this book, which is just what we need right now.

George Woodwell, Founder of the Woods Hole Research Center and former president of the Ecological Society of America

The Future in Plain Sight

May well be the most important book of the decade.

Rocky Mountain News

Silent Partners

Mr. Linden knows the minefield well and guides us through it with intelligence and unfailing good humor A great display of science as snake pit, and those who liked The Double Helix can get the same evil glee from it.

Ursula K. Le Guin in the New York Times Book Review

The ultimate fate of a group of primate research animals in Silent Partners poses deeply disturbing questions about science and society. Eugene Lindens handling of this important material is poised, compassionate, and insightful.

Barry Lopez, author of of Wolves and Men and Arctic Dream s

The Ragged Edge of the World

The Ragged Edge of the World is a call to armsalbeit one that may already be too late, given humankinds astonishing ability to destroy the environment. It underlines the need for those organisations most concerned with understanding the natural world and its fragile complexities to do much more to reverse the tide.

Financial Times

Thoughtful and compelling.

National Geographic

The Ragged Edge of the World offers a fascinating tour of vanishing places. Eugene Linden is a keen observer who never loses sight of the bigger picture.

Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe

In days of yore, our explorers had vast tracts of wild and often very little in the way of self-awareness. Our world has shrunk, but Eugene Linden goes to its farthest corners with a great deal of hard-earned wisdom, not to mention constant good humor.

Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth

Deep Past
Copyright 2019 by Eugene Linden

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information, please contact RosettaBooks at , or by mail at 125 Park Ave., 25th Floor, New York, NY 10017

First edition published 2019 by RosettaBooks

Cover design by Mimi Bark
Interior design by Janet Evans-Scanlon
Illustrations by Diana Wege

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018960907
ISBN-13 (print): 978-1-9481-2237-5
ISBN-13 (ebook): 978-0-7953-5223-2

www.RosettaBooks.com

I dedicate this book to all those researchers who have gone to live in the far corners of the planet in order to understand nature and, once there, discovered a deeper mission in protecting earths last remaining wildlands.

if consciousness is important to us, and it exists in other animals it is probably important to them.

DONALD REDFIELD GRIFFIN
(19152003)

TRANSTEPPE

INTRODUCTION

There are places on the planet whose scale reminds us that we are but a crushed bug on the windshield of time. The great Kazakh Steppe is one such place, bounded by the endless grasslands of Mongolia to the east, the formidable mountain ranges of Russia to the north, the arid deserts to the south, and the Caspian Sea and Europes forests to the west. It stretches over one thousand miles, and travelers making their way across this landscape encounter interminable empty vistas to remind them of their insignificance.

There are also places on the planet where the weather serves as a constant reminder of just how tenuous is our hold on life, places that serve notice that the clement circumstances that permit us to grow crops and prosper is not a right, but a lucky break. In the Sahara, its the heat and aridity that provide this useful lesson; in Antarctica, the cold; while on the Kazakh Plain, its all of the aboveand the constant wind. The scale of the place, its uninterrupted expanses, its position between the cold north and the hot south, and the very turning of the planet combine to channel and augment the winds into an implacable force.

And when these winds hit, say, the Quonsets erected for the camp of an archaeological expedition, they give voice in protest, rising intermittently from a moan to a shriek and then fading, but never dying. The sound is desolation itself.

The wind also shapes and scours. Carrying dust over thousands of miles, it buries the present and, very rarely, uncovers the past. Most often its the near past thats revealed, scrap from Soviet-era military maneuvers, a fire pit from a nomadic encampment. Rarer still, the wind might uncover the long-buried detritus of the ancient cultures that transited the plain: a weathered sword sheath worn by one of Genghis Khans warriors, an ornament from the Botai culture, the first nomads to leave any trace of their presence.

Rare is a term that has no meaning when the wind has had eternity to remold the plain. In this context contradictions collapse, and the impossible becomes the inevitable. And so, amid an epic storm, the wind blew the last bits of dirt off a mound lying where scrubland gave way to desert, and something that by any probability should never have seen the light of day lay exposed to the sunlight; something impossible, but alsoit would later come to be understoodinevitable.

By expedition standards, the Quonset was relatively snug, albeit stiflingly hot. The wind from the steppes howled outside as it had for three days, confining the archaeological team to their huts. It was late May, a time of year when temperatures were soaring and dust storms frequent as the winds picked up dirt and sand from the desert.

Still, only stray bits of grit blew in on those occasions when Claire had ventured out to the mess during the storm. The hot air in Claires hut was dry enough to mummify the plum she had left sitting in a bowl. She had pretty much stripped down as she sat at her plywood desk. She thought back on the whirlwind of events that in a few short weeks had brought her from a well-established life doing research in Florida to the searing heat of the Kazakh Steppes. It had all begun with a site visit from her funders, a visit that had gone welltoo well, as it turned out. She thought back to the day.