June, 1923: The French paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin was traveling on mule back in the vastness beyond the Great Wall, west of Peking. He saw it from a distance: the Ordos, the inner Mongolian desert. He saw from the mule what he had seen often in Egypt years before, “the burnt stones of the desert and the sand of the dunes in the dusk.”
The Ordos is a desert plateau 3,000 feet high, from which mountains rise. It spreads 35,000 square miles. The Great Wall separates the Ordos from the fertile lands to the east and south in Shansi and Shensi provinces.
He was forty-two years old, tall and narrow, fine-featured.
He wore a big felt hat like a cowboy, and thick boots. Rough weather had cut lines on his face. He had carried stretchers during the Great War for a regiment of sharpshooters. His courage at the front—at Ypres, Arras and Verdun—won him several medals, which the surviving men of his regiment reFOR quested for him. One of his fellows recalled his “absolute contem…
Mwaka 1923 paleontolojia Teilhard de Chardin alisafiri kwa punda katika eneo la mbali zaidi ya ukuta wa China. Aliona hilo kutoka mbali: Ordos, jangwa la ndani la Mongolia. "Alikuwa ameona kutoka kwa punda kile alichokuwa ameona mara nyingi Misri miaka mingi kabla, ""mawe yaliyochomwa ya jangwa na mchanga wa vilima vya mchanga katika giza.""Ordos ni eneo la jangwa lenye urefu wa futi 3,000, ambalo milima huinuka kutoka." Inaenea katika eneo la kilomita 35,000 za mraba. Ukuta Mkubwa hutenganisha Ordos na nchi zenye rutuba upande wa mashariki na kusini katika mikoa ya Shansi na Shensi. Alikuwa na umri wa miaka arobaini na miwili, mrefu na nyembamba, sura nzuri. Alikuwa amevaa kofia kubwa ya felt kama cowboy, na viatu vikubwa. Hali ya hewa mbaya ilikuwa imemfanya awe na nywele nyembamba usoni. Alikuwa amebeba mikokoteni wakati wa Vita Kuu ya Ulimwengu kwa ajili ya kikosi cha wapiganaji wa kuua watu. Ujasiri wake mbele - huko Ypres, Arras na Verdun - ulimpatia medali kadhaa, ambazo wanaume waliookoka wa kikosi chake reFOR walimtafuta. Mmoja wa wenzake alikumbuka "mtazamo wake kamili...