Andean Man

One of the toughest environments on earth is the high, thin-aired Andes. Lowland visitors puff & pant after trying to walk a few blocks in Oroya, Peru (12,000 feet) or La Paz, Bolivia (12,400 feet). Some get soroche (mountain sickness) so badly that they lose consciousness. Many lowlanders never get adjusted, and have to move back "down the hill."

But altitude does not bother the local Indians, who have long since adapted themselves to Andean life. They thrive and raise families in altitudes up to 17,000 feet, which is more than a mile above the altitude at which most U.S. Army airmen are required to use oxygen. Peruvian pilots of Indian blood fly their airplanes as high as 24,000 feet without extra oxygen.

Andean Man, a stocky individual with a broad chest and purplish-ruddy complexion, is the special interest of Dr. Carlos Monge, founder of Peru's National Institute of Andean Biology. Dr. Monge regards him as a distinct climatological variety of the human race. The institute was founded (in 1930) to study the Andean Indian and thus to find ways of making the mountains livable for newcomers, both human and animal. At first, Dr. Monge had almost no money or trained help and made little progress. (Once, when he sent rabbits to Huancayo for observation, the observer ate them.)

In despair, Monge turned to historical records, where he found a rich deposit of high-altitude lore. The Incas, who ruled Peru before the Spanish Conquest, were altitude-wise. When they colonized newly conquered territory, they always sent immigrants accustomed to its altitude. When they warred against coastal peoples, they maintained two highland armies. Each campaigned in the lowlands for only two months, was relieved, and returned to the high sierra to breathe its thin air and recuperate.

For Reproduction. Soon after the conquest the Spaniards had altitude trouble. At first they planned to make their headquarters at Jauja (11,000 feet), but they moved to coastal Lima because "neither in the town nor in any part of the sierra can pigs, horses or birds be bred."

In Jauja, the conquerors themselves might have failed to increase and multiply. It was 53 years before the 20,000 Spaniards in Potosi, Bolivia (14,000 feet) produced a single child which lived more than a fortnight. The high Andes had no self-perpetuating white population until Spaniards born at intermediate altitudes moved up the slopes. Americans living at high mining camps today send their wives down to sea level as soon as they become pregnant.

When the institute got help and money, it studied Andean Man in the flesh. The highland Indians, Dr. Monge found, get their resistance to altitude from definite physical differences. Their lungs are bigger than normal, with more blood vessels in them. Their blood is in greater volume and contains more oxygen per unit. Their hearts can do 12% more work than the hearts of sea-level men. Their nerve cells are less sensitive to anoxia (oxygen starvation).

Selective Process. These physical characteristics are the result of long-continued selection. Inca customs may have helped the process consciously. Young men who wanted to join the orejones (warrior caste) had to fast for four days, climb several mountains, and then wrestle on an empty stomach. There was also a system of genetic selection. During the avocado harvest, young men and girls danced naked among the avocado trees. Then the girls, given a head start, dashed up the nearest mountain. Any man might possess the girl he caught--if he had enough energy left by that time.

Dr. Monge does not foresee the revival of such selective festivities, but he does hope to breed cattle and sheep for high altitudes. Rocky Mountain bulls will help. So will Mexican highland cattle.

Dr. Monge will soon be joined by Dr. Harry G. Armstrong of the School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Field, Tex., a leading U.S. authority on high-altitude effects. He ought to learn much, Dr. Monge thinks, by studying Andean Man, a fellow already adapted to altitudes almost as high as many an airplane can fly.

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