Mongolia Opens Door To Research

As a boy, Philip Currie dreamed of digging for dinosaur fossils in the vast deserts of Outer Mongolia. Currie was inspired by the books of Roy Chapman Andrews, who led the American Museum of Natural History's expeditions to Central Asia in the 1920s. Years later, as head of his own dinosaur program at the Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Alberta, Canada, Currie attempted to pursue his dreams. "In 1982, we approached the Mongolian government and ran into a bureaucratic brick wall," he recalls. "They appeared pleasant, but nothing came of it - another way of saying no. It was like throwing paper into a vacuum." But that was before Mikhail Gorbachev and the era of openness in the Soviet Union and its Communist allies, which has spread to include antigovernment rallies in Outer Mongolia last month. Last fall, Currie's dreams came true - at least in part. His letters and telexes to Ulan Bator, capital of the People's Republic of Mongolia, led to an invitation. He spent nearly two weeks in Ulan Bator's Paleontological Institute poring over fossils, and paid a brief visit to Bayanzag, the famed Flaming Cliffs in the southern Gobi, where Andrews and his team had enjoyed their greatest successes. "I was given assurances that when I come back they'll show me a lot more sites," Currie says. "They also invited me to put in a proposal" to perform a dig in 1992. Currie's warm reception is but one example of the recent thaw in scientific relations with the People's Republic of Mongolia. As a satellite of the Soviet Union since the mid-twenties, Mongolia has been largely closed to Western scientists. (Its neighbor, Inner Mongolia, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China.) Mongolian scien- tists were trained in Moscow or Eastern Europe, and scientific exchanges were limited to Soviet-bloc nations. But last year, in addition to Currie's success, an agreement between the Mongolian Academy of Sciences and the American Council of Learned Societies broke the Soviet monopoly on exchanges. Mongolia sent a biochemist to Rutgers, a physicist to Syracuse University, and - because the program also involves the social sciences and humanities - a Buddhist philosopher to both Harvard and the University of Washington. In exchange, two anthropologists, Cynthia Beall and Melvin Goldstein from Case Western University in Cleveland, will go to Mongolia to conduct a three-month study of pastoral nomadism and an archaeologist, Larry Moses from Indiana University in Bloomington, will be surveying archaeological and historical sites. Moreover, George Schaller, the eminent field biologist from the New York Zoological Society, reached an agreement to join in radio-collar studies of the endangered Gobi brown bear and the snow leopard, and to explore the creation of a Great Steppe National Park. "Mongolia appears refreshingly keen to study and protect its varied wildlife," Schaller reports from Mongolia, "and I had the impression that [our] collaboration can have a meaningful impact on conservation in the country." The closed-door policy evidently originated in Moscow, not Ulan Bator, according to both Currie and Allen Kassoff, director of the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), which is administering the exchange program. "My impression is that prior to Gorbachev, the Mongolians were eager to establish relations with the United States," says Kassoff. "When we finally did go to Ulan Bator to negotiate the exchange, one official said, `You would not be here if it were not for glasnost.' " What do American scientists get from the deal? Apart from the chance to study Mongolia's wildlife, its paleontological and archaeological riches, and its culture (and a recorded history that dates to the era of Ghenghis Kahn), there is much that they might learn about range management and veterinary sciences. Mongolia's chief resource is its 22 million head of livestock - camels, horses, goats, sheep, and, of course, yaks. Nor is that all. "You might expect this to be a backward country," Kassoff says, "but that is not the case. We found a remarkably sophisticated group of experts. They demonstrated surprising strengths in unexpected areas." For their part, the Mongolians are delighted with the detente. "With perestroika there is an acceleration in the sharing of our ideas throughout the world," says Khavtgain Namsrai, the physicist at Syracuse. Adds Banzaryn Dorzhpalam, the Mongolian biochemist, "It is very far from Mongolia to America, but despite this distance our relations will be broadening." IREX is soliciting applications from scientists to work in Mongolia, and in particular has grant money available for a linguist and computer scientist to help translate Mongolia's great books from Russian back into the Mongolian alphabet - a sign of the growing nationalism among the Mongolians. For more information on the program, contact IREX, 126 Alexander, Princeton, N.J. 08540; (609) 683-9500. Michael McRae, an Oregon freelance writer, spent two weeks traveling through Mongolia last fall.

Mongolia Opens Door To Research

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of