In Peru, a unique conservation effort is taking place near the city of Cusco at the Parque de la Papa (Park of the Potato). Located outside the Andes Mountains town of Pisac (or Pisaq), the park celebrates the Peruvian potato, of which there are some 3,000 varieties. The park is also a living tribute to the cultural heritage of the region’s indigenous (native) communities.

Potatoes originated in the highlands of Peru and nearby areas of the Andes Mountains. Credit: © Shutterstock

The Parque de la Papa is administered and farmed by the local Amaru, Chawaytire, Pampallacta, Paru Paru, and Sacaca indigenous communities. Within its grand boundaries—the park covers over 22,000 acres (9,000 hectares)—are grown more than 1,300 varieties of potato native to that area of the Andean highlands. Many potato varieties in the park are found nowhere else in the world. The cultivation of such rare potatoes helps ensure their existence for future generations, as does the park’s sharing of precious seeds with the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a long-term seed storage facility in Norway.

The Parque de la Papa demonstrates the ability of potatoes to survive in the region’s harsh but changing conditions. The park sits in the cold and thin air at an altitude of 12,000 feet (3,700 meters) above sea level. Climate change is bringing warmer temperatures, however, forcing farmers still higher to reach the optimum growing environment for some potato varieties.

Peru is home to some 3,000 varieties of potato. Credit: © Shutterstock

Visitors to the park learn about traditional potato cultivation, harvesting, cooking, and storage. They are also treated to delicious local potato dishes. Hiking trails allow people to walk off their meals while also providing panoramic views of the Andean highlands. The Parque de la Papa features a variety of local crafts and products—from cosmetics and teas to medicines and textiles—made from potatoes and other plants native to the area.

A patchwork of potato fields covers this section of the Altiplano, a cold plateau in the Andean highlands. Credit: © Roux Frederic, Shutterstock

The potato originated in the Andes Mountains of South America. Scientists believe cultivated potatoes came from a species that first grew around Lake Titicaca, in what are now Bolivia and Peru. People living there and in surrounding areas were growing potatoes long before Spanish explorers arrived in the early 1500′s. Potatoes were then introduced to Europe and other parts of the world. The nutritious potato became a vital food crop in many regions.

March 8, 2018

In February, an exhibition called “Super/Natural: Textiles of the Andes” opened at the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition features numerous textiles (woven fabrics) and other items created by the ancient Andean cultures of South America. These textiles were traditionally worn as clothing, but they also were used for communication and artistic and religious expression among the diverse peoples of the desert coasts and mountain highlands of the Andean region.

The “Super/Natural” textile exhibition includes this otherworldly figure holding a wild Pampas cat. Credit: Mantle (detail) (100 BC/AD 200), Wool embroidered in stem stitches by Paracas Necropolis; Emily Crane Chadbourne Fund/The Art Institute of Chicago

Textile creation in the Andes dates at least to the ancient Chavín culture (900 B.C. to 200 B.C.) in what is now Peru. The Chavín developed a backstrap loom and many of the techniques that weavers in the Andes still use today. In a backstrap loom, a strap on one end of the loom wraps around the weaver’s back. The weaver attaches the other end to a solid object such as a tree and leans or sits back to pull a set of yarns called the warp taut. 

The above textile, a product of the Paraca culture (500 B.C. to A.D. 200) in Peru, is a detail from a mantle (cloak) included in the “Super/Natural” exhibition. The figure holds a Pampas cat, a powerful predator and protector of agricultural fields. The individual appears to channel otherworldly power, as colored streamers emerge from the mouth and down the back, suggesting that the figure embodies the supernatural forces believed to govern the natural world. This type of representation is common throughout the Andes. Among the Nazca, a culture that emerged after the Paracas, woven textiles and painted vessels depict similar imagery. Individuals dressed in ornate costumes and wearing whiskered masks suggest transformation and connection between the natural and supernatural worlds. Later, such Andean cultures as the Wari, Chimú, and Inca also created intricate textiles for a variety of uses.

The “Super/Natural” exhibition features over 60 ancient textiles along with a number of Andean ceramics from the Art Institute’s collection. The exhibition highlights the unique aspects of individual Andean cultures while also demonstrating the similarities among them. The artistic objects deal with everyday life, the natural world, the supernatural world, and the afterlife.

August 6, 2018

About 8 million people in Andean South America speak one of the many dialects of the Native American language Quechua. Quechua, or Runa Simi as it is called by its speakers, is commonly heard in Peru and in parts of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador. Spanish is the official language of these nations, but Quechua has equal status in Peru. Quechua descends from the dominant tribal groups of the Inca empire. More than a quarter of Peru’s population speaks Quechua. In Bolivia, there are more people who speak Quechua than speak Spanish.

Quechua is an ancient dialect of the Inca empire. Many people speak the language in Peru, where Inca religious ceremonies—here, the Festival of the Sun—still take place. Credit: © M. Timothy O’Keefe, Alamy Images

Quechua originated as the language spoken by the Inca. The Inca were a native South American people who ruled one of the largest and richest empires in the Americas. The Inca empire emerged in the early A.D. 1400’s and occupied a vast region centered around the capital of Cusco, in modern-day southern Peru. The empire extended over 2,500 miles (4,020 kilometers) along the Andes Mountains. Different peoples within the empire spoke Quechua and a variety of other native languages. A second important language in the empire was Aymara, which is still heard in Bolivia and other nations.

The Peruvian flag flies over millions of Quechua speakers. Credit: © Gil C, Shutterstock

The Inca did not have an alphabet. They did have quipu, however, a cord with knotted strings of various lengths, colors, weaves, and designs that served as a system of record keeping. Special officials throughout the empire read the quipu and maintained the knotted strings. Archaeologists have discovered how the Inca recorded numbers and dates using quipu, but they are still trying to understand what other information might be encoded in the knotted strings.

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The map at left shows the location of the Inca empire along the Andes Mountains of South America. The empire’s capital, Cusco, is in modern day Peru. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

Without an alphabet or written language, information was passed along the Inca empire’s system of royal roads by messengers called chaski. Messages were passed by word of mouth or by quipu. Chaski were stationed every few miles, and messages would be passed from one messenger to the next so information would flow quickly throughout the empire.

The sons of rulers throughout the empire were sent to Cusco, where they were instructed in Inca language, history, and religion. They were also taught about the quipu and Inca fighting techniques by teachers called amauta. These teachers also recorded stories and legends in poems and songs that they retold at gatherings.

In the 1500’s, during the Spanish conquest, missionaries used Quechua to teach the Inca about Christianity. The missionaries were the first to record Quechua in written form. An official orthography—method of representing the sounds of a language by written or printed symbols—was drafted in 1939 and adopted in 1946 for the main Peruvian dialect of Quechua.

August 25, 2017

The Andes Mountains of Peru in South America have recently revealed some grape-sized secrets: three new species of so-called rubber frogs. An international team of researchers discovered the tiny amphibians while rooting through the Andean grass, rocks, and moss, and the scientists published their findings last month in the journal Zootaxa. The team, which consists of Edgar Lehr from Illinois Wesleyan University, Rudolph von May from the University of Michigan, and scientists from Peru and the Czech Republic, has been rather frog happy lately. The newly described animals—the Pui Pui rubber frog, Humboldt’s rubber frog, and the hill dweller rubber frog—are actually the third, fourth, and fifth new frog species discovered by the team this year. The species discovered earlier, which are also found in the Peruvian Andes, are Attenborough’s rubber frog and the Ashaninka rubber frog.

Humboldt’s rubber frog is found only at a single site high in the Andes Mountains of Peru. The frog is named for German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Credit: © Rudolf von May, University of Michigan

To make these discoveries, the scientists ventured to the hard-to-reach Pui Pui Protected Forest in Peru, a two-day hike from the nearest human settlement. The remote protected area, established in 1985, consists of alpine forests and grasslands. There have been few biological surveys conducted in the park since it was established, which leaves the possibility of more animal discoveries in the future.

The tiny hill dweller rubber frog lives among the bushes, mosses, trees, and feather grass of the Peruvian Andes. Credit: © Rudolf von May, University of Michigan

The three new species are land-breeding frogs, and they do not have a tadpole stage. The eggs laid by females develop directly into froglets. This mode of reproduction is successful as long as there is plenty of moisture.

Like all frogs, these new species are faced with threats from habitat loss and climate change, as well as Chytrid fungus, which can lead to chytridiomycosis, an infectious disease that has depleted amphibian populations around the world. The scientists took skin samples from the frogs, and several had the fungus—but that does not necessarily mean the frogs have the deadly disease. It is important to know that the fungus is there, however, so scientists can learn how these isolated frogs react to it.

July 12, 2017

Last month, in June, an international team of researchers and scientists braved heavy snows, freezing winds, and thin air to extract ice core samples from the Illimani glacier high in the Andes Mountains of Bolivia. The samples were the latest collected by teams from Ice Memory, a project aiming to gather ice samples from endangered glaciers around the world. The archive—which will be stored in a sanctuary in Antarctica—will allow future studies of glaciers that will soon fall victim to global warming. Ice Memory is managed by the University of Grenoble Alps Foundation in France and supported by the French and Italian national commissions for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

On June 6, 2017, the Ice Memory team drills near their camp on the Illimani glacier in the Andes Mountains of Bolivia. Credit: © Sarah Del Ben, Wiltouch/Fondation UGA

At 21,004 feet (6,402 meters), Illimani is the highest mountain in the Cordillera Real range of western Bolivia. Glaciers on Illimani have existed for many thousands of years, but they are rapidly melting and retreating as climate change increases Earth’s temperatures. Glacier ice reads like a historical record of climate and environment, preserving ancient animal, plant, and mineral samples as well as showing glacial growth over millennia. They also show variations in temperatures and more recent concentrations of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. Saving Illimani cores will allow scientists to study the ice long after the host glaciers have disappeared.

Scientists remove ice from the drilling core on the Illimani glacier in Bolivia on June 9, 2017. Credit: © Sarah Del Ben, Wiltouch/Fondation UGA

It took several weeks for the Illimani team to drill through the ice and extract the core samples, both of which were more than 440 feet (135 meters) long. Dangerous weather forced the team to abandon the planned retrieval of a third sample. The glacier cores were then cut into smaller pieces, stored in tubes, and catalogued. The samples will eventually make their way to the archive at Concordia Station in Antarctica, where they will join the first core samples extracted from France’s Mont Blanc in 2016. The Concordia glacier archive is meant to store hundreds of ice core samples in a protected snow cave at -65° Fahrenheit (-54° Celsius).

An Ice Memory researcher stacks tubed sections of ice core in an improvised snow cave on the Illimani glacier on June 5, 2017. The samples will eventually be stored in Antarctica. Credit: © Sarah Del Ben, Wiltouch/Fondation UGA

Future core extractions are planned for such threatened glacier areas as Mera Peak in Nepal, Mount Elbrus in Russia, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, and sites in the Swiss Alps and the Altai Mountains in Asia. Ideally, three glacier samples from each area will provide one sample for immediate analysis and two for storage and archiving. Aside from providing clues about the past, the samples help scientists understand the current effects of climate change and predict future environmental events.