About John W. Olsen

John W. Olsen, Ph.D., is an American archaeologist and paleoanthropologist specializing in the early Stone Age prehistory and Pleistocene paleoecology of eastern Eurasia. Olsen is Regents' Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Executive Director of the Je Tsongkhapa Endowment for Central and Inner Asian Archaeology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, USA. He is also a Lead Scientific Researcher at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Siberian Branch in Novosibirsk and Guest Research Fellow at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing where he is also Co-Director of the Zhoukoudian International Paleoanthropological Research Center (周口店国际古人类研究中心联席主任). Olsen has been named a Distinguished Researcher of the Nihewan Research Center in Hebei Province, China (泥河湾研究中心特聘研究员). He is also a Foreign Expert affiliated with The Yak Museum in Lhasa, Tibet (西藏牦牛博物馆国外专家).
George Bogle was welcomed by the Panchen Lama at Tashilhunpo in Shigatse

World-famous explorers of the Tibetan territory

The location of Tibet, deep in the Himalaya mountains, made travel to Tibet extraordinarily difficult at any time, in addition to the fact that it traditionally was forbidden to all western foreigners. Additionally, the internal and external politics of Tibet, China, Bhutan, Assam, and the northern Indian kingdoms combined rendered entry into Tibet politically difficult for all explorers. .