The 2013 annual general meeting of the Jumbo Creek Conservation Society will feature an exciting illustrated lecture by modern-day explorer and part-time Invermere resident Paul Bauman.

Archaeology is inherently a destructive science; once excavated, an archeological site is essentially destroyed. Geophysicist Paul Bauman, the technical director of the geophysics group at WorleyParsons, in Calgary, uses sophisticated geophysical investigation techniques that allow a site to be explored without being disturbed, working as a radiologist does in a surgical team.

Admission to the event on Monday, November 18 at 7:30 p.m. at the David Thompson Secondary School Theatre is by donation. Paul will take us to some of the sites that proved pivotal in defining Western Canada, Western civilization, and even humanity.

In his presentation, Paul will rediscover the architecture of a Hudson Bay Company trading post that was burned to the ground in 1861. In Israel, he will locate a previously unknown cave at Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.

And along the Dead Sea coast, he will explore a remote cave near the Dead Sea, the Cave of Letters, lived in by rebels of the Roman Empire. It was in this cave that the largest collection of Roman glassware, Roman period clothing, and papyrus scrolls found anywhere in the Roman Empire, was recovered. In Nazareth, he will identify a building beneath the marble floor of a renowned art shop, and then smash through the floor with a sledge hammer to find whatever lies beneath.

In Europe, geophysics will be used to reconstruct the architecture of the Nazi extermination camp of Sobibor, destroyed and buried by the Nazi SS after a desperate revolt in 1943. And in the vast Donana wetlands of southern Spain, Paul will assist archaeologists in locating what they believe to be the lost city of Atlantis, and to help determine where the people of Atlantis went after their city was destroyed.

Paul Bauman is an avid hiker, climber and skier. Aspects of his archaeo-geophysical work have been the subject of a NOVA documentary (Ancient Refuge in the Holy Land), a National Geographic movie entitled “Finding Atlantis,” and numerous newspaper and magazine articles including in Time, National Geographic, and the Reader’s Digest. He was recently invited to present at the first ever TEDx talks in Canmore.

Submitted by Pat Morrow of Jumbo Creek Conservation Society