On May 24, 2018, Phil and Natalia Stephenson and the Stephenson Foundation hosted a cocktail buffet and wine tasting featuring a presentation by filmmaker Trevor Wallace about 3,000 year old Scythian tombs recently discovered in Siberia.
Trevor and his expedition partners
The Scythians were nomadic horse warriors who predated the Mongols by 2,000 years, famous for their gold ornaments and iconic artistic style. Trevor and his expedition partner Dr. Gino Caspari discovered the oldest, largest Royal Scythian tomb in Siberia last summer and will be returning shortly to unearth precious artifacts and mummies preserved in the permafrost — very cool stuff. They received the ‘New Explorer of the Year Award’ presented at the Explorers Club Annual Dinner in New York City for documenting the tomb and investigating the illegal antiquities trade.
Stephenson
ECWG thanks to the Stephensons. It was a great evening!
New Smithsonian Exhibit: “Narwhal, revealing an Arctic Legend”
The Narwhal Discoveries team is proud to announce the opening of the “Narwhal, revealing an Arctic Legend” exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History on Thursday August the 3rd.
Martin Nweeia DMD, DDS, content curator for the new exhibit at the Smithsonian, is a full time dentist who developed his research interest in the function of the narwhal tusk as a passion of curiosity.
Rarely do curators at the nation’s leading Museum come from the citizen science community, but Nweeia has been persistent and successful in his passion. With his unique perspective of including Inuit elders and hunters with myriad groups of scientists, his work was cited in a “Highlight’ to the US Congress as “a model for science as it seeks to better understand our world.” Collaborations formed under his direction as Principal Investigator are Narwhal Tusk Discoveries, The Narwhal Genome Initiative, and The Narwhal HoloLens Experience with an augmented reality vision of live narwhal swimming and an Inuit elder describing observations of traditional knowledge.To continue exploring these academic avenues of interest, Nweeia was appointed academic positions on the faculties of dental medicine at Harvard and Case Western Reserve Universities, and research associate positions at the Smithsonian Institution, Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
“Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend, also for youth ”
It took Dr. Nweeia sixteen expeditions to the Arctic to accumulate his knowledge on the Arctic world of the Narwhal as well as the interconnected relationships between humans, arctic mammals and their changing environment. Environmental economist Pamela Peeters joined him on his last expedition to Pond Inlet (Baffin Island) and engaged in community outreach, film and photography. She wrote a book for children about the experience entitled “Eco Hero goes to Canada” inclusive of a teachers manual. She has now also developed the “ECO HERO trail” as to enrich the experience for youth interested in this exhibition.
The museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (closed Dec. 25). Admission is free.
In October, ECWG Board Member and retired U.S. Army Command Sergeant Major Eric Fies, FRGS MN’16 will lead an expedition comprised of combat-wounded military veterans to East Africa. …
Lew Toulmin, Ph.D., F.R.G.S., MN ’04 just returned from a successful Flag Expedition to the Republic of Vanuatu in the SW Pacific, where he and a team of Explorers Club members interviewed, studied and documented the previously unknown “Female Chiefs of Vanuatu.” For 102 years anthropologists and writers had contended that there were no female chiefs in Vanuatu or the entire region of Melanesia, but the Expedition found a number of female chiefs who had never before been described in the anthropological literature.
According to Lew, “The female chiefs are concentrated on north Pentecost island in Vanuatu, and also exist on Ambae (the “real Bali Hai” – the subject of a previous Flag Expedition), Efate (the capital island), Pele island, and the Shepherd Group of islands, where an ‘Association of Female Chiefs’ actually exists.” He explained that, “The female chiefs usually have a graded system like the male chiefs, wear chiefly insignia, go through a sacred-pig killing ceremony like the male chiefs, and earn chiefly titles. On most islands their powers are less than the male chiefs, but on Pele and Efate there are some female chiefs who take on all the powers of the male chiefs, for a period of two to seven years.”
Lew stated that, “The highlight of the Expedition was interviewing Chief Hilda Lini, who had served in Parliament for eleven years, twice held a Ministerial portfolio, won two international peace awards, and holds eleven chiefly titles! She is likely the highest ranking female chief in Vanuatu.”
Other members of the Flag Expedition included Michael Wyrick of the ECWG Chapter; Daniel Huang, Theresa Menders and Sophie Hollingsworth of the New York Chapter; Dalsie Baniala, the Telecom Regulator of Vanuatu; and Corey Huber, a development consultant and ex-Peace Corps Volunteer in Vanuatu.
Daniel Farber Huang.DFHuang@yahoo.
After the Vanuatu Expedition, Lew went on to Thailand to try to find a missing temple cave once searched for by Jim Thompson, the legendary “Silk King of Thailand,” who himself went missing back in 1967. Lew said that, “In 1962 Jim Thompson found and documented a temple cave in north central Thailand, with beautiful Buddha statuary dating back over 1100 years, that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC has described as ‘one of the most important in SE Asia.’ But Jim always thought that there was another temple cave nearby – this has never been found. I haven’t found it yet, but I did get enough clues to now know that there is a second cave, that might, perhaps, be another important temple cave. Wish me luck!”
Lew Toulmin will lead Expedition “Female Chiefs of Maewo”
ECWG member Llewellyn “Lew” Toulmin, Ph.D., F.R.G.S., MN ’04 is leading a Flag Expedition of Explorers Club members and others to the remote island of Maewo in the Republic of Vanuatu, in the southwest Pacific, in August 2016. He and his team of Club members from various Chapters are documenting the female chiefs of Maewo. For over 100 years scholars and anthropologists have thought and written that there were no female chiefs in all of Melanesia, but Toulmin discovered them while working for three years in the Vanuatu Prime Minister’s Office. This Expedition is the first scientific effort to study them. (See “Female Chiefs of Maewo” on Facebook. GoFundMe and other social media.)
Lew is also investigating and documenting the disappearance of the legendary Jim Thompson, the “Silk King of Thailand,” who vanished in 1967 in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia. He has written a massive report on the case and is giving lectures on the mystery to the Siam Society, the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand, the International School of Bangkok, the International Spy Museum, the DACOR-Bacon house, and chapters of The Explorers Club. (See www.themosttraveled.com under “New Land Adventures” for more information.)
While working on this project Lew found previously unpublished Thompson letters, and these led him to also pursue a lost temple cave filled with large Buddhas in central Thailand which Thompson looked for but was unable to find, and which is still unknown to spelunkers in Thailand.
In October, ECWG Board Member and retired U.S. Army Command Sergeant Major Eric Fies, FRGS MN’16 will lead an expedition comprised of combat-wounded military veterans to East Africa. 
