Table Of ContentTHEAYMARA
Strategies in Human Adaptation to a Rigorous Environment
Studies in Human Biology
VOLUME 2
Series Editor
KENNETH M. WEISS
Department ofA nthropology and Graduate Program in Genetics,
The Pennsylvania State University
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
THE AYMARA
Strategies in Human Adaptation
to a Rigorous Environment
edited by
WILLIAMJ. SCHULL
The University of Texas at Houston,
The Genetics Centers,
Graduate School ofB iomedical Sciences
and
FRANCISCO ROTHHAMMER
University of Chile,
Department of Cellular Biology and Genetics,
Medical School, Santiago
With collaborating editor
SARA A. BARTON
The University of Texas at Houston,
The Genetics Centers,
Graduate School ofB iomedical Sciences
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
DORDRECHT I BOSTON I LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The Aymara strategies in human adaptation to a r1gorous environment
/ edited by "ill1am J. Schull, Francisco Rothhammer, with
collaborating editor, Sara A. Barton.
p. em. -- (Studies in human b1010gy ; v. 2)
Inc I udes bib 1 i ograph i ca I references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-7923-0969-3 (acid free paper)
1. Aymara Indians--Anthropometry. '2. Aymara Indians--Health and
nygiene. 3. Altitude, Influence of. 4. Anoxemia. I. Schull,
,,111 lam J. II. Rothhammer, Francisco. III. Barton, Sara A.
IV. Series.
F2230.2.A9A89 1990
612' .098--dc20 90-5335
ISBN-13: 978-94-010-7463-6 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-2141-2
001: 10.1007/978-94-009-2141-2
Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers,
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
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© 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi
LISf OF CONfRIBUfORS xiii
1: Introduction: The place and the study 1
William J. Schull
2: Flora and fauna 19
Angel E. Spotomo and Alberto Veloso
3: Trace metals 33
William J. Schull, Blago Razmilfc, Leonardo Figueroa and Mariluz Gonzalez
4: The Aymara: An outline of their pre and post-Columbian history 45
Francisco Rothhammer
5: Paleopathology 49
Marvin J. Allison
6: Nutritional characteristics of the Aymara of northern Chile 63
Sara A. Barton, Nelida Castro Williams, Ita Barja and Federico Murillo
7: The Chilean Aymara and their reproductive patterns 75
William J. Schull, Robert E. Ferrell and Sara A. Barton
8: Ecologic determinants of the health of Aymara children 87
Judith McFarlane
9: Disease and disability among the Aymara 101
Biffret Dlaz, Daniel Gallegos, Federico Murillo, Vivian Lunny Lenart,
William H. Weidman and Robert I. Goldsmith
10: Heterozygosity and physical growth in an Andean population 133
William H. Mueller, Patricia Soto-Heim and Victoria Schull
11: Hearing and hypoxia among the Aymara 143
Julia K Bailey and Betsy Weidman
12: Altitude and cardiopulmonary relationships 167
William H. Weidman, Sara A. Barton and Vivian Lunny Lenart
13: Oral characteristics of the Aymara 183
Heman Palomino
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
14: Intratribal genetic differentiation as assessed through electrophoresis 193
Francisco Rothhammer, Ranajit Chakraborty and Robert E. Ferrell
15: Ethnogenesis and affinities to other South American aboriginal
populations 203
Francisco Rothhammer
16: Epilogue 211
The Editors
REFERENCES 219
MULTINATIONAL ANDEAN GENETIC AND HEALTII PROGRAM PUBLICATIONS 245
GLOSSARY 249
INDEX 255
FOREWORD
South America's Andean highlands have seen the rise and decline of several
impressive, indigenous civilizations. Separated somewhat in time and place, each
developed its distinctive socio-cultural accouterments but all shared a need to
adjust to the individual, societal and environmental limitations imposed by life at
high altitude. Partial oxygen pressure, temperature and humidity fall
systematically as altitude rises, but there are other changes as well. Darwin,
Forbes, von Humboldt, von Tschudi and other naturalists of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries who weaved their way through South America commented
repeatedly on the tolerance or apparent indifference of the indigenes to the
rigors of life at altitudes above 3000 meters but its impact upon lowlanders. Von
Tschudi (1847), for example, observed 'in the cordillera the effect of the
diminished atmospheric pressure on the human frame shows itself in intolerable
symptoms of weariness and an extreme difficulty of breathing. ... The first
symptoms are usually felt at the elevation of 12,600 feet (3800 m) above the sea.
These symptoms are vertigo, dimness of sight and hearing, pains in the head and
nausea. ... Inhabitants of the coast and Europeans, who for the first time visit
the lofty regions of the cordillera, are usually attacked with this disorder.' But
von Tschudi's description of acute mountain sickness was hardly the first; his
Spanish predecessors had known and commented upon it too. The earliest
account is probably that of the Spanish Jesuit, Father Joseph de Acosta although
it has recently been argued that acute gastroenteritis was either a more likely
cause of the symptoms he described than acute mountain sickness or at least a
complicating factor in his experiences (Bonavia et ai., 1985). Be this as it may,
Acosta wrote (1590, see also Purchas, 1628; in particular the 1905 reprinting,
volume 15, pp. 27-29):
'There is in Peru, a high mountaine which they call Pariacaca, and having heard spoke of
the alteration it bred, I went as well prepared as I could, according to the instructions
which was given me, by such as they call Vaguianos, or expert men: but not withstanding
all my provision, when I came to mount the degrees, as they called them, which is the top
of the mountaine, I was suddenly surprized with so mortall and so strange a pang, that I
was ready to fall from the top to the ground: and although we were many in company,
yet every one made haste (without tarrying for his companion,) to free himselfe speedily
from this ill passage. Being then alone with one Indian, whom I entreated to helpe to
stay me, I was surprized with such pangs of straining and casting, as I thought to cast up
my heart too; for having cast up meate, flegme, and coller, both yellow and green; in the
end I cast up blood, with the straining of my stomacke. To conclude, if this continued, I
should undoubtedly have dyed; but this lasted not above three or foure houres, that wee
were come into a more convenient and naturall temperature, where all our companions
(being fourteene or fifteene) were much wearied ..... But commonly it doth no important
harme, onely this paine and troublesome distates while it endures: and not onely the
passage of Pariacaca hath this propertie, but also all this ridge of the Mountaine, which
vii
viii FOREWORD
runnes above five hundred leagues long, and in what place soever you passe, you shall
finde strange intemperatures .... I therefore perswade my selfe, that the element of the
ayre is there so subtile and delicate, as it is not proportionable with the breathing of
man, which requires a more grosse and temperate ayre, and I beleeve it is the cause that
doth so much alter the stomacke, and trouble all the disposition.'
Two features of Acosta's early description warrant special attention as
testimonies to the astuteness of his observations. First, he correctly deduced that
it was the 'thinness' of the air that induced the symptoms, and second, that these
effects occurred throughout the Andes if the altitude was high enough, but were
generally transitory and harmless.
These chroniclers also noted that the indigenous peoples differed one from
another but had in common disproportionately large chests which they ascribed
to the demands of the altitude. They were intrigued too by the changes in body
dimensions of highland peoples who colonized low altitudes. Most of these early
observations were limited in scope and number, and frequently bordered on the
anecdotal. Systematic study of the processes of acclimatization and adaptation to
the hypoxia of altitude did not begin until roughly a century ago with the studies
of the great French physiologist, Paul Bert (1878). Much of the earliest work was
in the Alps. This century has seen an expansion of interest to Africa, the
Himalayas, the Andes and their peoples, and the search for commonalities in
adaptation in these different geographic areas. qf particular relevance have been
studies in the Andean area and the contributiqns of the Peruvian high altitude
physiologists and the Pennsylvania State University anthropologists, including
their students.
The Aymani who are the objects of the present volume were first studied, at
least in recent times by Ricardo Cruz-Coke, a physician and geneticist, who
became interested in high altitude research some years ago during a stay in Lima
where his father was the Chilean ambassador. Cruz-Coke promoted the interest
of other health scientists, who joined him in various field visits organized
between 1%2 and 1968. During a post-doctoral training period at the University
of Michigan, in 1971, one of us analyzed most of the data collected by Cruz-Coke
and his colleagues under the guidance of the other, who was then a member of
the faculty of the Medical School of the University of Michigan. From this
scientific collaboration emerged the multidisciplinary research to be set forth in
subsequent pages. Although the main body of information was collected and
analyzed between 1973 and 1978, additional data collection and evaluation
continue.
Our interest in the Aymani and thus our perspectives are essentially
biomedical but in an anthropological and genetic context. Broadly stated, our
aims in this monograph are to describe changes in function, in healthy and
diseased states, of the pulmonary and cardiovascular systems and in
cardiopulmonary relationships in anthropologically defined, biologically
homogeneous groups, living in adjacent but sharply different environmental
niches. Furthermore, we are interested in assessing, if possible, the genetic
contribution to man's adaptation to hypoxia, more specifically, to quantify
FOREWORD ix
changes in genetic variability with increasing oxygen pressure. Finally, we wish to
understand the ethnogenesis and the evolutionary relationships of the Aymara
and of Andean populations in general to other indigenous groups in South
America as they are revealed by a series of genetic markers. We are under no
illusion that the study to be described achieved the stated ends in all of its
particulars. It patently has shortcomings. Some of these were apparent at its
initiation, but represent the inevitable compromises forced upon a study of its
nature; others have become so as analysis of the data has progressed. One of the
explicit aims of this monograph is to expose these limitations in order that
subsequent investigators will profit.
Although each of the essays that comprise this book is intended to be self
contained, we have attempted to depict the Aymara as they reside in
environments of different physiological and socioeconomic stress so that some of
the environmental interactions, interactions that characterize all societies, can be
seen in their complexity. It is these interactions that must be identified and
understood if progress is to continue in studies of human adaptability. Finally, as
the literature readily reveals, there are numerous different transliterations of the
names of the various Andean cultures; for consistency we have fixed on one,
possibly not always the best, but where alternatives exist, these will be found in
the Glossary.
The Editors
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Studies of this magnitude and complexity, carried out under circumstances alien
to most of the investigators involved, clearly owe whatever measure of success
they achieve to numerous people and many local and national institutions, but
we are especially beholden to the now defunct Junta de Adelanto de Arica and
its then president, Luis Beretta. Without the unqualified endorsement of this
body, as well as the enthusiastic support of all members of the Department of
Community Development and Andean Plan - particularly its chief, Carlos Solari
- this study would have not been possible. We owe much to the National Health
Service of Chile, the Servicio Nacional de Salud, the practicantes of the Chilean
police, and the teachers who gave selflessly of their time and energies to make
our examinations a success. We are also indebted to numerous persons and
institutions at the local and national levels in Bolivia, but especially to Coronel
Antonio Ovando of the Corporaci6n de Desarrollo de Oruro, Padres Emery
Mulaire and Santiago Monaste, Gilberto Pauwels, and Srs. Juan Capurate and
Te6fUo Ayma. Finally, we wish to express our gratitude too to the numerous
members of our field teams and the residents of the study locales who in
patience and good humor tolerated our questions, pokings and proddings.
This work was supported by grants from the National Heart, Lung and Blood
Institute (HL-15614, HL-05266), the Institute of General Medical Sciences
(GM-28574) of the National Institutes of Health, the Wenner-Gren Foundation
and the John S. Guggenheim Foundation of the United States; from the Special
Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases of the World Health
Organization; from MABjUNESCO; from the Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo
Cientifico y Tecnologico (FONDECYT); and the Universidad de Chile. We are
grateful to all of these institutions and agencies for without their help this study
would never have been undertaken, and if undertaken, could certainly not have
been adequately implemented.
xi
