Mountains and Bodies in the Andes

Long before twentieth-century scientists postulated inherited physiological adaptations to high altitude, colonial Spaniards and Andeans developed ideas about the effects of mountain living on the human body. The heritage of medical ideas from the classical and medieval Mediterranean had little to say about altitude, but there was a traditional sociology of mountain peoples, who were considered to be of a low cultural level. In the Viceroyalty of Peru, by contrast, Spaniards drew on indigenous discourse to claim that indigenous highlanders were stronger and more rational than lowlanders, both on the coast and in the Amazon. At the same time, grappling with the deadly impact of Old World diseases on drafted Andean laborers, colonial Spaniards developed the idea that life at sea-level was dangerous to highland Andeans’ bodies, even while recognizing the dangers of high elevation to European and African bodies. The colonial era, and the experience of the mita, created a toolkit of ideas about mountains and bodies that informed medical and physiological discussions in the twentieth century.