The Ghost of Glencoe

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About the Author

Growing up in East Africa gave the author early exposure to travel and foreign countries. Qualifying in medicine, he worked in Solomon Islands for the next ten years during which time he undertook research which lead to a programme of eliminating filariasis from the world. Returning on leave, he was able to extend his journeys and include South America, starting his continuing interest in this part of the world. Posted to Tanzania as Medical Coordinator of an aid programme, he completed his second travel book. In 1985, he joined the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where he taught until retiring to Scotland in 1999.

Also by Roger Webber

Solomoni, Times and Tales from Solomon Islands.

Return to Zanzibar, Travels Through Africa.

From Past to Future Life.

Disease Selection, The Way Disease Changed the World.

Copyright Information

Copyright © Roger Webber (2019)

The right of Roger Webber to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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Map 1

The Journeys

Introduction

South America is a continent of contrasts, from the highest peak of the Andes, one of the longest mountain chains in the world, to the greatest flood plain of the mightiest of all rivers. A world of intriguing ancient civilisations, to some of the most modern and progressive societies of any nation. It is a continent of extremes, a place that has within it the full range of what is to be found in this world, there is no better place to begin a journey of exploration.

My travels through South America began in the 1970s, continuing through the succeeding two decades, and although they will never be finished, this account goes up to the last one in 2017. The journeys extend from the most northerly part of the continent to the southerly tip, and from west to east across this land’s widest point. They pass through the length of the Andes, to the furthest point in the southern hemisphere that can be reached by travelling all the way overland — to down the Amazon, a river so vast that it is like an inland sea. But this is not just an account of travels through this most scenic and impressive of lands, it also looks at the history of the people, of the many cultures that developed, which although unique, bear some unexpected similarities to others found in the old world.

Travelling brings many challenges, but also unexpected rewards. No matter how well the route has been planned or background reading done, there are always surprises. Such was my visit to the Cuevas de las Manos in Argentinean Patagonia, where there are stencil hand paintings thought to be some 10,000 years old. These particularly impressed me because I had seen others of almost an identical kind in Europe and Australia. Was it just a coincidence that ancient man should use the same method to make stencil hand paintings or had there been some contact of which we are unaware?

It is tempting to tell the stories of journeys soon after they have happened so that the freshness and uniqueness of the experience are captured. It was partly my inability to narrate them in an interesting way, as well as the absence of any special feature, that meant this was not done. But put together, they now cover the whole continent and form a comprehensive picture that is of more interest. So rather than describe them in a chronological order of the various journeys, South America will be divided up into geographical areas.

Although these are accounts of journeys made over many years, there is always much to be found in this fascinating land. Some things will have changed and others will be remarkably similar to how they were those many years ago when I travelled that way. Where change has taken place then a part of the past is captured for comparison with that found by today’s traveller.

Both geographically and historically, the soul of South America is high in the Andes, just a short way south of the equator. The Andes are the most important physical feature of the continent, stretching from one end to the other, determining the climate and the livelihood of the people. To the west of them it is largely the seasonal rivers that determine where habitation takes place, whereas to the east are vast areas of jungle and swamp. In the area around Lake Titicaca the Andes are at their widest, with many high peaks from which descend streams that join up to form the greatest river in the world. But also in this area (which comes within present day Peru and Bolivia) are found the beginnings of civilisation in the continent. So this will be the starting point, going then north and south, as well as following down the Amazon to the east.

If the soul of South America is in the west then its heart is in the east, that great concentration of people in present day centres that are the driving force of a modern South America. Here is the newest part of the New World changing at such a phenomenal rate that even living there one cannot keep up with all that is going on around you. From this concentration of energy on the coast, the lure of the hinterland has drawn the explorer and entrepreneur, until it is now possible to cross the entire mass of the Amazon basin overland. These are the various routes that I have taken.

It is intriguing that Africa should have been so formative in the physical features of South America, yet in modern times have had such a marked effect on its people. When South America separated from Africa in the breakup of Gondwana, the highest mountains were in the east, in the Guyanas and Brazil. From these heights, rivers flowed westwards. When the leading edge of the moving continent was buckled and forced upwards to make the Andes, the direction of the rivers was reversed, producing the vast Amazon basin. In more recent times, the slave trade brought African peoples to the northeast of the continent, particularly to Brazil and the Guyanas, investing them with a character that is more African than the Indian and European admixture of the rest of South America.

The journeys have been overland where possible, by bus and train and those marvellous river boats. Sometimes a car has been the only way to reach more difficult places and where they could not go or I needed to get to a place quickly then I had to take to the air. The best way to see a place though is to travel with the people who live there, sharing their experiences and seeing the land with them. So it was mainly by bus that these journeys were made, so many different ones I could not even begin to count the number. As to the many people I met, these were legion. Each added to my experiences and for this I thank them.

What I particularly appreciated and something I have found in many places where I cannot speak the language is that fluency in conversation is not necessary. I am a terrible linguist, but have never let this stop me from embarking on a journey and here as in all other places it has been the effort to communicate in a few words and gestures that has somehow made me get to know people better. Sometimes I felt that it was even better not to be able to speak the language as this made me humble in every level of society. It was a strain, though, on those I asked for help, and I register my appreciation to all the many people who persevered with this odd stranger in their midst.

These are not unique journeys, very few ever are, there have always been others that have gone that way before. Even great explorers took a local guide or were experienced in following trails that others had made. They were only remarkable because it was the first time that a person from the western world had been there or had written down their experiences. The fame of Marco Polo is not that he was the first person from Western Europe to visit China and the East, but the detailed account he made of all he saw. Many had journeyed across Asia to China before him, including his father and uncle who took the young Marco along with them on one of the many journeys they made that way. Captain Cook took on board the greatest Polynesian navigator of his time, Tupaia, to show him where all the many islands were in the Pacific that he would ‘discover’. This is not even the first time that this part of the world has been described in detail, there are many other and better accounts, but it is hoped that bringing this all together in one easily readable book will be of interest. Indeed it is other great journeys such as that of Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle or those of the great German naturalist, Humboldt, from which I have taken brief accounts to add more substance to my journeys. Factual material I have obtained from many sources, most of which is listed in the bibliography, for which I give my thanks. I am particularly grateful for permission to reproduce the paintings of Delabergerie in Chapter Eight.

Map 2

Andes and the upper Amazon.

Chapter One: The Centre of an Ancient World

I was trying to understand why here, in a high, inhospitable valley in the Andes, the first civilisation in South America should begin. Chavin de Huantar, centre of the mysterious Chavin civilisation was reached by a rough but spectacular road from Huaraz. Situated in a fertile valley 398 kilometres from Lima, Huaraz was the nearest town, but I needed to travel through the mountains for another 110 kilometres before I finally reached Chavin. It was a breathtaking road, ascending from the hot dry desert, to this temperate valley at 3,028 metres.

In 1977, travelling from the north, it was a single-track road that only a small bus could negotiate. There were sheerer mountain sides to climb and more passes to cross than on any of my previous ascents into the Andes. Thousands of metres below was the valley bottom, a place you felt you may descend to at any moment in the gay abandoned way the bus rushed around the many corners. Clearly, this was an all too frequent occurrence with, ever so often, a group of crosses to mark the place where a vehicle and its unfortunate occupants had gone this way.

The pattern is very similar on much of the west coast of South America south of Ecuador. The rain shadow of the mountains has left the coastal strip a dry hot desert against the Andes. Climbing up the side of this immense wall it is difficult to see how a way for the road can be found. When I travelled these roads, they were unsurfaced, dusty tracks on which the bus slowly ground its way for hours in its lowest gear as it tried to cope with the incline. If you were spared breakdowns, then there would be repairs to the road, which, as the way was so narrow, meant closing the entire road for most of the day, while bulldozers carved out a new passage or cleared the landslide. There was nothing to be done but sit and admire the scenery, or try and explain to my curious companions in fragmented Spanish what I was doing.

Once past these roadworks, and there might be several at different levels, there was a marked and pleasant coolness as one entered the temperate zone. Rocky and sparsely green at first, a little higher the ground gushed small streams and llamas grazed on the vegetation. Then with a last effort by the weary bus, and the spectacular climax of the drive, the first high ridge of snowy mountains was crossed and one entered a wonderful valley, so green and fertile. Here, dotted with stone houses and people dressed in heavy woollen clothes, and tending their crops was a world quite different and removed to that from which I had just come.

Such was the way to Huaraz, a town sadly shattered by a devastating earthquake in 1970. This, however, was now forgotten; the town had been rebuilt and life went on. Overlooking Huaraz were the magnificent peaks of Huascaran, Huandoy and San Cristobal, the pure white snow on their sides contrasting with the dirt and squalor that is always present in any town in this part of the world.

This first large valley, over the ridge of mountains, is normally the centre of upland peoples, as Huaraz is today, but in 600 BC, when the Chavin civilisation was being founded, the people chose the next valley across the mountains to found their capital. One has to traverse the highest ridge of mountains and the watershed. From this side, all the rivers drain eastward into the Amazon, rather than west to the coastal rivers. There is nothing to recommend this site in preference to the valley of the Rio Santa, where Huaraz is situated, but if the people had come into the mountains from the Amazon, rather than by the coastal plain, this would explain why this place had been chosen. It was less fertile, colder and, in every way, more inhospitable, yet somehow contained the necessary elements to set in motion the succession of impressive civilisations that were to grace this continent for over two thousand years.

Chavin de Huantar consisted of a civic centre, residential area and a fortress-like structure, called the Castillo. Despite the name, it was not a fortress but was probably a huge funerary monument. Within were a labyrinth of tunnels with beautiful carved stone reliefs of condors, pumas and warriors. The many carved heads that lined the walls are in museums in Huaraz and Lima, but the centre of worship was a finely carved monolith, the Lanzón, set at the focus of all the tunnels. This depicted a jaguar-man god, a cult that had a major influence on the surrounding area.

Fig 1

Chavin de Huantar

On the way to Chavin de Huantar.

* * *

The ruins of Chavin. The structure on the left contains a network of subterranean passages that all converge on the sacred Lanzón.

The jaguar, snake and crocodile depicted on Chavin stone carvings indicated a familiarity with the tropical rain forests to the east. It has always been assumed that the peopling of the Andes occurred from the west, in the same way that the bus had struggled up from the coast. Early man found his way into the mountains to be rewarded by fertile valleys where water was never a problem. Certainly, there are more ancient cultures than Chavin on the coast, notably at Sechin, which might have had an influence on it, but it is still curious that this mountain stronghold should have been chosen in a river valley that drains to the east.

In prehistoric times, when early man passed through the Panama isthmus on his way into South America, because of the mountain barrier two choices lay open to him, to follow down the coastal strip on the western side of the Andes or turn east, through what is now Colombia and Venezuela and enter the Orinoco and Amazon basins. These were vast savannahs at this time, like the East African plains, or the area around present day Boa Vista in Brazil, and would have been full of wildlife and attractive to the early hunter. After the preliminary migrations he might have explored the mountains, following up the short rivers in the west, or conceivably ascended along the longer rivers that formed the Amazon. While the former is the more logical, there is some evidence for the latter view.

The oldest remains found in South America are at Pedra Furada, now within the Serra da Capivara National Park, a World Heritage site in north-east Brazil. Rock art depicting giant sloths, horses and early llamas, animals that are not found in the area any longer, have been carbon dated to 26,000–22,000 BC, but there is evidence that the caves were inhabited for as long ago as 100,000 years before the present day. When the caves were excavated, tools and scrapers were found in different layers indicating a gradation from very ancient stone tools to those of a more recent date, with quite sophisticated workmanship. These considerably pre-date any found on the west coast, suggesting that ancient man inhabited the eastern part of the continent first and then extended his range towards the west. To further support this idea is the domestication of the bean and pepper plants, which were the basis of the agricultural revolution in South America. A few beans and peppers have been found in the Guitarrero cave, which lies in a high mountain valley, the Callejon de Huaylas. But these plants are native to the forested western slopes of the Amazon basin. Agricultural experimentation probably began in the lowlands before 8,500 BC and was then carried up into the mountains.

There are early cultures on the west coast, such as El Paraíso (Chuquintana) and La Florida, in the Chillon and neighbouring Lurin valleys, which suggest that the stimulus for civilisation started from the west coast, but older are ceremonial structures at Kotosh, in the valley of the Rio Huallaga, not far from Chavin de Huantar. Could the germ of civilisation have come from the east, up the valleys of Amazon tributaries, to enter the Andean Sierra from this direction?

* * *

The Andean valleys are so steep that it is difficult to travel from one to the other without coming down to the coast and then ascending again further along. One exception though is where the mountains are at their widest, forming a high plateau in which Lake Titicaca is situated. Probably, influenced by the germ of culture that generated Chavin, villages and towns were established in the southern lake shore around 1,200 BC. The people cultivated root crops, herded llamas and caught fish. They built mounds and carved stelae, as well as discovering how to smelt copper.

It was not until about 400 BC that these early villages evolved into a culture that became known by its principal city of Tiahuanaco. This was first shown by ceramics of lizards, serpents, fish and other animals, motives that were later copied and carved in stone. It was this ability to work with stone that led to the construction of cities, with the main centre at Tiahuanaco, situated at 3,842 m (12,600 ft), some 60 km from La Paz. The predominant features of the city were temple platforms surrounding sunken courts, executed in superb masonry. The temple platforms were made of huge blocks of stone, weighing as much as a hundred tonnes, that fitted so well together that no mortar was required. At the entrance to the temple area was the Gateway of the Sun, carved with stone relief of a god holding a staff in each hand. This god was also worshipped at Chavin de Huantar some hundreds of years before the Tiahuanaco culture began. There were other stone figures, carved in the round, that were an important link in the trans-Pacific theory of Thor Heyerdahl, or the astronaut speculations of von Daniken. Indeed, von Daniken speculated that Tiahuanaco was the operations centre of interplanetary travel, citing the carved stone channels as protective tubes for energy cables, but they are clearly nothing more than water conduits, carved to the same high level of workmanship as the rest of the temple masonry.

Tiahuanaco though was more than just a religious centre, as it was surrounded by a residential area, occupying in all some 4 km², housing a population estimated at 20,000–40,000 people. It dominated the Lake Titicaca basin, where the remains of other cities have been found, and extended to the Nazca culture on the coast. Its influence went as far south as the Atacama region of northern Chile and to the lowlands of the east, ensuring a regular supply of tropical produce to the highland empire.

Fig 2

Tiahuanaco

The temple semi-subterráneo had protruding carved heads and delicately worked stones not unlike Chavin.

A stone figure clasping what could be a book and decorated with intricate designs that appear to some people like electronic circuits.

* * *

There has been much speculation on why Tiahuanaco died; was it due to its situation on the Altiplano with its icy winds, like those that froze me on my first visit? Standing on a mound (that probably covered an unexcavated structure) I could look over the ruins to the present day village of Tiahuanaco, with its church and houses, surrounded by fields and grazing land. The village occupied just as large an area as the ruins, so if it can support a reasonable population today, then there is just as much reason to suppose that ancient Tiahuanaco could have done in the past. Another suggested reason was lack of water, but at the northern end of the site is a full well, while what looks like a specially constructed reservoir still contains a shallow lake. Although carefully worked stones that would serve as water conduits have been placed in unlikely places in the reconstruction of the ruins, there is every indication that the storage and transport of water was a major achievement of this culture.

The religion of these people was associated with the sun, so the whole complex faced east-west. In many ways it was perfectly positioned for a sun-temple, and set at an altitude free of cloud and haze, it was like what we have sought for our astronomy observatories. It is sad that so little has been excavated as some of the answers could be hidden in the many earthen mounds that I was climbing up to get a better view of the ancient complex. Why did it suddenly cease, what happened to the people, why did such a great culture die, leaving just these monumental remains?

While much is left to speculation, fantastic explanations of spaceships and inter planetary visitors are more attractive than simple interpretation. Man has always fought and conquered his rivals, often absorbing the culture of the conquered. The Romans took what they could from the Greeks and much of Islamic art and learning originated from Constantinople. Could not Tiahuanaco have been the death knoll to cultures that came before (such as Chavin) and itself have been destroyed by the rising new power of the Incas who claimed origin from islands on Lake Titicaca, just a short distance away?

My first visit to Tiahuanaco also taught me about the effects of altitude sickness. I had been some time at a lower altitude, then flew to La Paz. I got out of the plane and rushed to join the crowds queuing to go through immigration when I became quite faint and had to sit down for a while. After a night’s sleep I thought I would be all right. I took a bus to Tiahuanaco but going round the ruins felt quite unwell. It was cold and bleak on the Altiplano, and while waiting for the bus back (that never did come) I was befriended by a Peruvian girl similarly hoping for the bus. She worked for the Ministry of Antiquities and spoke good, if a somewhat brave form of English, trying different ways of explaining what she wanted to say. I mentioned that I was suffering from the altitude so she suggested I try a cup of coca tea. In its unpurified form it is a mild stimulant that is chewed by the mountain people, but as a drink did wonders for my altitude sickness.

* * *

Lake Titicaca, at 3,810 metres is the highest navigable lake in the world and must be one of the most beautiful, with its azure blue waters surrounded by snowy mountains. It is 120 miles long and 3,200 square miles (8,300 sq. km.) in area, with an average depth of 200 metres. Shallowest in the west it slopes down to its greatest depth in the north-east, off Island Soto. Although fed from a vast basin in excess of 22,000 square miles and with water from the