High-Living Superman

When it comes to high-altitude living, says plump Dr. Carlos Monge, director of Peru's National Institute of Andean Biology, the Andean man is in a class by himself. Last week in Lima Dr. Monge told scientists from 18 countries about his continuing researches in a subject on which he ranks as one of the world's leading authorities (TIME, June 23, 1947).

After centuries of living 2 1/2 miles or so above sea level, says Dr. Monge, the Andean native has become "a climato-physiological variety of the human race." To cope with the low oxygen supply in the air he breathes, the typical inhabitant of the high Central Andes (including parts of Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador) has developed a barrel chest with extra lung capacity. He carries about two quarts more blood than the coastal Peruvian, about half again as much hemoglobin (the blood's oxygen-carrying component). His heart rate is slow and steady. "An ideal heart for an athlete," says Monge. The Andean practically never suffers from high blood pressure.

Mighty in the Mountains. So adapted, Andean man can perform amazing quantities of work at altitudes where non-adapted lowlanders fall gasping and retching. The somber-eyed, long-exploited descendant of the Incas is in fact a sort of superman. "After eight hours' hard work in mines at more than 16,000 feet above sea level," says Dr. Monge, "his idea of relaxation is a soccer match in which he sometimes plays barefooted."

His performance is all the more sensational when his diet is taken into account. He eats two meals a day--potatoes, corn, quinoa (all first domesticated by Andean Indians) and, very rarely, guinea pig. Andes men seldom get enough to eat; many chew coca leaves to help dull their hunger.

The Andean's house is stone or adobe, with a thatched roof. He sleeps on llama skins, and has no more sanitary conveniences than his llamas. He usually wears shirt, coat, knee-length pants, sandals made from old automobile tires, a poncho and a chullo (wool headgear with flaps, like a skater's cap). All these his wife makes for him. She also bears him children; the altitude, which often makes newcomers from the coast temporarily sterile, seems to have no such effect on highlanders.

Puny on the Plain. Four centuries after the Spanish conquest, perhaps four out of seven million Peruvians still live in the Andes, speak the Quechua and Aymara of the Incas, play their mournful five-noted pipes of Pan and on festive occasions get falling drunk on tinka, a poisonous potion of cane alcohol, nicotine and cocaine. But the pressure for land has increased, and the ancient farming ayllus (communes) are disappearing. More & more, Andean man has hired out to haciendas or mines, or moved to coastal cities. When he descends to the Pacific, it becomes his turn to undergo the rigors of adaptation, and the experience is often too much for him. Partly for this reason, Lima and Callao have one of the world's highest T.B. rates. Dr. Monge thinks Andean man's future is in the mountains. There, with food, soap and some books, says Monge, he might one day recapture the creative vigor of the Incas.

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