We all love Indiana Jones movies. This charismatic treasure seeker (and adventure on a famous body part) has long and firmly settled in our hearts. But is this character completely fictional?
It has long been dominated by the belief that Harrison Ford's character is based on a gentleman named Roy Chapman Andrews. No one on the production team has officially confirmed this, so it is likely that the connection between them is not direct. George Lucas was probably inspired by adventure films from the 1940s and 1950s, and Roy Andrews was the inspiration for these very films.
Andrews' life in general, in a surprising way, resembled all films about Indiana Jones at once. He was born on January 26, 1884 in Beloit, Wisconsin, and from an early age showed a keen interest in the world around him. He later wrote: “I was born to be an explorer … And no decisions had to be made. I couldn’t do something else and be happy”. He spent all his childhood in the forests of Wisconsin, and learned to shoot accurately and make stuffed animals. It was taxidermy that helped him pay for college.
He began his career at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He worked … as a cleaner. More precisely, an assistant to the taxidermy department, but in fact he washed the floors and was responsible for household goods. Moreover, the director did not want to hire him at first (well, really, a person with higher education cannot wash floors!). At the same time, he studied to earn his Master of Arts in Mammalogy (the study of mammals). He also displayed effigies of his work to the Museum staff.
And his time has come. In 1908, the museum invited him to go on a long business trip to study whales. Andrews jumped at the opportunity and spent the next eight years on whaling ships. He circled the globe twice, and in so much time could not but be in danger.
In his book On the Trail of Ancient Man, Andrews writes: “In the [first] fifteen years, I remember a dozen times when I really was on the verge of death. Twice I almost drowned during a hurricane, once our ship was rammed by a wounded whale, once my wife and I were almost eaten by hyenas, once we were endangered by Buddhist monks, twice I almost fell off a cliff, once I was almost eaten by a huge python and I could have been killed twice by bandits."
But it was not the whales that made Andrews famous. And she.
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In 1922 he set out on his first expedition to the Gobi Desert. The main tasks of the expedition were to create a map of the area and find fossil remains, or even living creatures, in order to prove the theory (by the museum director, by the way) that life originated in Central Asia. Subsequently, until 1930, Andrews went to the region four more times.
Andrews often used unconventional methods on his expeditions. He rode not only camels, but also used cars - which paid off, although he was called crazy. When excavating in the desert, he wielded a pickaxe rather than a brush, and that also worked. His team found many dinosaur remains, the skull of an early mammal, and - for the first time in the world - a nest with dinosaur eggs. This find proved the hypothesis that dinosaurs laid eggs.
Andrews brought 25 eggs with him and donated them to the museum. However, he later sold one of them at an auction to finance further travel: the scientific (and not only) community wanted to know what else the Gobi sands were hiding.
Of course, trips to the Gobi are not the only thing Andrews is famous for. Otherwise, no one would have compared him to Indiana Jones, right?
In fact, it was almost like that.
Here I will note his behavior. There is a known case when, while on an expedition, he descended a narrow winding road from the mountain, and saw a group of four armed bandits waiting for him at the foot. There was no way to climb back, and he did not want to give supplies to the bandits. What did he do? I did it exactly in the spirit of cinema. I rushed forward with all my might. The bandits' horses got scared and threw three riders off. The fourth remained in the saddle, but Andrews crept up to him, drew his weapon and fired. True, he missed and shot through the hat when he was already sparkling with his heels.
And once poisonous pit-headed snakes climbed into the camp of researchers. Someone raised the alarm, and after destroying everything that crawls, it turns out that Andrews' team killed 47 snakes. The archaeologist himself that night, walking to the bed, stepped on something long and soft, and, of course, screamed. But he was lucky, and it turned out to be just a rope. Fortunately, no one was hurt then - except perhaps the pride of the researcher.
Unfortunately, with the arrival of 1930, the Gobi Desert was closed to Andrews forever. The Great Depression set in, and it became impossible to raise funds for new expeditions. Then came the war, then the Cold War, which finally destroyed all hopes for a trip.
However, Andrews' story did not end there. From 1931 to 1934 he was president of the Explorers' Club in New York, and in 1934 he became director of the American Museum of Natural History. Not a bad promotion from a janitorial position, right?
He retired in 1942 and moved to California, where he lived until his death in 1960.