Jordi Serrallonga does not need a business card, but a banner. Humble to the point of calling people light years his size a teacher (the chronicler, alas!, attests to his generosity), he presents himself as an archaeologist and traveler. Or as "a nomadic primate and domesticated by culture." Humble, no, very humble. Adventurer, naturalist, lecturer and explorer, no one wears fedoras better.
Nobody?, the reader will wonder, no doubt with the image of Harrison Ford's totemic character in mind. But that Indiana Jones who never loses his hat is fictional. Ours, flesh and blood. It is no coincidence that the great Mexican writer and journalist Ricardo López Si, author of El viaje romántico (UOC), baptized this university professor (Barcelona, 1969) years ago as a true Indiana.
His latest book, A nomadic archaeologist in search of Dr. Jones (Desperta Ferro), appeared a month ago and is already in its second edition. In the play, she shows off his passion for archeology and cinema. Actually, the alter ego of Harrison Ford and our author only have in common their vocation as globetrotters. Jordi Serrallonga is a wise man who does not destroy. And Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Indy, plunders and lays waste when he has what he wants.
Jordi is a big boy (he's very tall) who retains the look he had at age 12, when his quintessential hero (with Han Solo's permission) inoculated him with the poison of adventure. Tanzania, and Lake Natron, in the Great Rift Valley, is his second home. He is always well received among the Maasai people (whom he calls Maasai out of an anti-colonialist drive and because that is the real name of the Maa-speaking people).
The Galapagos are also part of his life. On one of his last visits to the archipelago, he photographed himself next to a corner that does not appear on the maps as a tribute to his friend Polo Guerrero (1955-2021), who died of covid. This guide and park ranger named a small cave in Cerro Brujo “Cristina's cave” because an expeditionary with that name used it as a shelter from the sun while Jordi brought her a first-aid kit and supplies.
Collaborator of the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona (where he promoted the Club de los Lunaticos y Lunaticas, which among other things honors "heroines and heroes of science"), Research Award from the Spanish Geographical Society and founding member of the Nova Societat Geogràfica alternates university teaching with work in the jungles, savannahs, deserts and mountains of Africa, America, Oceania and Asia.
His presence is also common in Atapuerca, where his hat rivals the pith helmet of another great scientist, Eudald Carbonell. But today we do not bring this author here to praise him. Yes, Jordi, confess. What did you do with the pot? For years, in the house of l'Hospitalet de Llobregat of the parents of a very young field researcher, he planned an unfathomable mystery. Where the hell was one of the family pans?
We know the answer thanks to another of his books, Gods with feet of clay: the human challenge to the laws of nature... and its consequences (Critical). Students of medicine, biology, archaeology, paleontology or prehistory should enjoy it. It will give them a push if they falter. Like A Nomadic Archaeologist... it reads like an entertaining novel or like the lucid diary of a globetrotter.
He has traveled the Atacama Desert and the great salt marsh of Uyuni, in America. The Land of Arnhem, Australia. And the forests of Kibale and Ubongo, in Uganda. And Madagascar and Patagonia, the hills of Tugen, Lakes Baringo and Tanganica, the mountains of Mahale... Not bad for that boy who, along with his brother Lluís and his friend José Luis Serrano, dug in the park of Can Buxeres in search for fossils and other treasures.
Our Indy from l'Hospitalet de Llobregat has felt like a microscopic drop in the ocean of the universe many times, especially in the company of peoples that others call primitive or, worse, savages. He never, for example, recognized his incapacities more than in the company of the Hadzabe of Lake Eyasi, in Tanzania. In the 19th century, and well into the 20th, they were considered barbarians.
In reality, these nomadic hunters and gatherers are superwomen and supermen, perfectly adapted to their environment. Their bodies are lactose intolerant almost from the time they are weaned, but they can digest meats that would put any other human being to the grave. He verified it in one of his expeditions. His friends from the forest people found the stinking pelt of a wild cat.
They turned it over, there was little meat left, but they seared it a little and ate it. The archaeologist then remembered the day he borrowed a pot from his house to boil dead animals and recover his bones. The effluvia were so unpleasant that he concluded that it was impossible for anyone to feed on carrion. He did not yet know the Hadzabe well.
The one he did know well was his mother, Mrs. Atset. She made the pot disappear in the hope that neither she nor her father would miss it. After one of her work trips, Jordi went to visit her mother and freed himself from her remorse. After hugging and kissing her, he explained to her the reason for the mysterious disappearance of her saucepan. And she smiled, like Sean Connery with Harrison Ford: "I didn't realize... Was it a long time ago?"
This report updates the version that our website published on Friday, December 24, 2021
