A prehistoric site of megaliths was discovered in Tibet's Chang Thang in the 1920s. A traveller who goes in search of it seventy years later comes up with chortens, and more chortens. What had happened?
Tibet is a land that popular imagination has associated with magic and mystery. Even at an age when science dominates and the frontiers of the planet are clearly delineated, Tibet still shrouds a number of mysteries. This is nowhere more true than in the field of prehistory. While the first Tibetan historical documents, the Dunhuang manuscripts, date back to the 8th century, the Tibetan human legacy extends deep into the stone age. Bronze, Neolithic, Mesolithic and Palaeolithic sites have been discovered scattered across Tibet, from Ngari in the far west to Muni and Amdo in the east.
One of the first scholars to explore the prehistory of Tibet was George Roerich, the Russian-born son of the famous painter Nicholas Roerich. Between 1925 and 1928, George Roerich embarked on an ambitious journey to survey the prehistoric sites in the nomadic areas of the Asian hinterland. He mounted expeditions in search of prehistoric monuments to the Altai, Mongolia, Eastern Turkestan and Tibet. A major objective of these journeys, which together came to be known as the "Central Asiatic Expedition", was to explore "nomad barrows" (barrow = ancient grave mound).
Among the extensive discoveries of Roerich were 'slab graves' in Mongolia and Namru in the Chang Thang, and the widespread incidence of a genre of ornamentation found throughout the nomadic regions in Central and North Asia which Roerich called the "Central Asian Animal Style". In addition, his expeditions discovered megaliths in Mongolia and on the Chang Thang.