Inspirations for Indiana Jones

Reportedly, Tom “Magnum PI” Selleck was originally up for the role of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but he couldn’t get away from the TV show.

This is something I choose to laugh hysterically about, saying things like “HA! YOU SURE HAVE A GREAT SENSE OF HUMOR! HA! HA!” too loudly, scaring the neighborhood. Much the same reaction, in fact, to the story that Ronald Reagan was the original choice for Rick Blaine in Casablanca, but with fewer helpless convulsions on the floor.

That Tom Selleck factoid is one of a bunch you can find in the Wikipedia article on everyone’s favorite archaeologist. I was poking around looking for which university it was that the character taught at (you know: serious research) when I got sidetracked by this list of “Models” — apparent and claimed inspirations for Dr. Jones.

I clicked these guys’ articles into new tabs for later perusal, but here are some tidbits and links for you to enjoy. Makes for some inspirational reading. :)

Roy Chapman Andrews (1884-01-26–1960-03-11) was an American explorer, adventurer and naturalist who became the director of the American Museum of Natural History, primarily known for leading a series of expeditions through the fragmented China of the early 20th century into the Gobi Desert and Mongolia.

Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778-11-15 – 1823-12-03) was an Italian explorer of Egyptian antiquities. He stood 6 ft 7 in (2 metres tall), broad in proportion, and his wife was of equally generous build. They were for some time compelled to find subsistence by exhibitions of feats of strength and agility as a strongman, at fairs and on the streets of London.

Hiram Bingham, formally Hiram Bingham III, (1875-11-19 – 1956-06-06) was an American academic, explorer and politician. He rediscovered the Inca settlement of Machu Picchu in 1911. Later, Bingham served as Governor of Connecticut and a member of the United States Senate.

Sylvanus Griswold Morley (1883-06-07 – 1948-09-02) was an American archaeologist, epigrapher, and Mayanist scholar who made significant contributions toward the study of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in the early twentieth century. Morley is particularly noted for his extensive excavations of the Maya site of Chichen Itza. He also published several large compilations and treatises on Maya hieroglyphic writing, and wrote popular accounts on the Maya for a general audience.

Robert John Braidwood (1907-07-29–2003) was an American archaeologist and anthropologist, one of the founders of scientific archaeology, and a leader in the field of Near Eastern Prehistory.

Sir William Jones (1746-09-28 – 1794-04-27) was an English philologist and student of ancient India, particularly known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among Indo-European languages.

While we’re on the subject of scholar-adventurers, I’ve recently been reading up on Sir Richard Burton who deserves a movie series all his own.

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS (1821-03-19 – 1890-10-20) was an English explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, linguist, poet, hypnotist, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia and Africa as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke twenty-nine European, Asian, and African languages.

Burton’s best-known achievements include travelling in disguise to Mecca, making an unabridged translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (the collection is more commonly called The Arabian Nights in English because of Andrew Lang’s abridgment) and the Kama Sutra and journeying with John Hanning Speke to discover the Great Lakes of Africa in search of the source of the Nile. He was a prolific author and wrote numerous books and scholarly articles about subjects including travel, fencing and ethnography.

He was a captain in the army of the East India Company serving in India (and later, briefly, in the Crimean War). Following this he was engaged by the Royal Geographical Society to explore the east coast of Africa and led an expedition which discovered Lake Tanganyika. In later life he served as British consul in Fernando Po, Damascus and, finally, Trieste. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and was awarded a knighthood (KCMG) in 1886. Burton was considered a controversial figure in his day and, while some considered him a hero, others considered him a scoundrel.