Soon after their move to San Luis Obispo in 1989, my parents, Lise and Henry Marx, presented Jan and me with a gift they’d been working on for several years: a collection of German proverbs they had learned from their parents and grandparents.

I remember continually hearing these sayings from my earliest childhood until their final days. Each time one was uttered there was a moment of satisfaction—the speaker pleased to have found a way to make familiar sense out of some new experience and the hearer gratified to grasp the connection.  Growing up as a first generation American, I reacted to these old-world pieties with boredom and embarrassment.

By the time Jan and I and our children had finally settled and bought a house in our middle forties and Lise and Henry had reached their middle eighties, we all welcomed the opportunity to live in close proximity.  As a partially reformed rebel and parent of teenagers I was also ready to join Jan in affirming the value of family and cultural heritage.  That combined with the fact that we both spoke German allowed us to appreciate the wry wit and wisdom of the old folks’ oft-repeated slogans.  But it was a great surprise when they gave us a notebook with their own collection of over two hundred family aphorisms as a “Weinukah” or Chrisnukah present.  Some were as familiar as the furniture in their living room but many others I discovered for the first time.

The book has resided inside a little shrine holding their pictures and ashes. Now we converse through translation.

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More coming…

Introduction

“The Old and New Testaments are the Great Code of Art,” proclaimed William Blake in one of the captions of his etching, “Laocoon” (755). In The Great Code: The Bible and Literature, Northrop Frye replicated part of that proclamation and elaborated some of its implied claims. If indeed the Bible can be said to encode a substantial portion of Western culture’s imaginative, historical and legal heritage, then its first book, Genesis, can be regarded as the Code for the Great Code, since so much of what appears in the subsequent 65 books seems to grow out of it. Genesis’ title is amplified in the names of some of its recurrent themes and images: generation, generations, genealogy, gender, genitalia. The common root of all these words suggests yet another code: that which is carried by genes.[1]

Frye observed that Genesis’ “primary concern is expressed in the Biblical phrase “life more abundant,” and J.P. Fokkelman showed coherence in the book’s motley mosaic of stories with the discovery that its “overriding concern [is] life-survival-offspring-fertility-continuity,” (41) but neither critic associated these concerns with the evolutionary perspective they suggest. Until recently it’s been left to contemporary novelists versed in biology and literature to explore some of the rich meanings that flow from the convergence of Genesis and evolutionary principles, for instance Ruth Ozeki in All Over Creation and Barbara Kingsolver in Prodigal Summer.[2]

Genesis rewards literary analysis because of its complex structure and plot, its concentrated characterization, its vibrant language and its rich but submerged themes, accompanied by what Robert Alter calls “the high fun of the act of literary communication… the lively inventiveness …[which] repeatedly exceeds the needs of the message, though it often also deepens and complicates the message”(40-45).  Such analysis can be enriched by combining the relatively rigorous scientific methods of evolutionary psychology with some of the inventive and fanciful tactics of traditional Midrashic interpretation to make sense of the book.[3] That combination seems appropriate to a work which is itself a product of literary evolution–the outcome of a thousand-year history of competition among oral traditions, written documents, individual and group authors and editors assembled in the palimpsest of the received text (Friedman).

Genesis prompts Darwinian analysis because it traces human history back to its beginnings, where it locates the origin of what came later. It chronicles a period of prehistory that figuratively parallels the one and a half million year Pleistocene period that Darwinists refer to as the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation (EEA), the span of time long enough to allow most human traits to evolve (Cosmides 1997).

Darwinian interpretation explores the operation of the principle of evolution in literary works, depicting what Jonathan Gottschall calls

the fascinating multiplicity of ways characters react to and manipulate their environment (the setting and the other characters) to accomplish the prime directive of all life: to live long enough to reproduce and, in species where parental care is necessary (like ours), rear young to reproduce again.…” (260)

Genesis personifies that principle in its characterization of the Creator. Its God designs both animal and human life during their common emergence on days five and six by pronouncing the two parts of evolution’s “prime directive”: “I have given you every seed bearing plant …for food…and to all which has the breath of life within it.” (1.29) “…be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…”(1.28)[4]

Genesis’ God repeatedly affirms evolution’s positive outcome of reproductive success as the reward of those whom He has chosen and trained–from Adam at the beginning of the book to the sons of Israel at the end: “I will greatly bless you and will greatly multiply your seed, as the stars in the heavens and as the sand on the shore of the sea, and your seed shall take hold of its enemies’gate.”(22:17)

Genesis’ word for “seed” –zera in the original Hebrew—has several meanings that converge with those of “gene” (Alter 1996 xiii-xiv). It signifies the originating kernels as well as the foodstuff of fruit and grain–the source of sustenance for animals and humans. It signifies semen, half of the material agency of reproduction. It signifies individual progenitors and progeny connected by inheritance–the generations of genetic relatives who extend personal existence beyond the bounds of individual mortality. It signifies lineage, the mark of kinship drawing individuals together into a survival unit, a community, and eventually, a nation.[5]

Joseph, the culminating hero of Genesis, epitomizes all of these meanings of “seed.”  He distributes seed during famine; he preserves enough grain to feed the world; he procreates two sons, one of whom is named Ephraim, meaning “he has made me fruitful”; at his death, he joins his father and mother in their tomb; and he paves the way for his wise descendant Solomon “whose people, Judah and Israel, were as many as the sands of the sea.”[6]

Genesis establishes literary coherence among narrative units with genealogies that catalogue the succession of seed through numerous generations, binding its many discrete stories into the history of a single genetic strain. Later uses of the text call attention to the importance of this genetic continuity. The first edition of the King James Bible begins with thirty-four folio pages of genealogical charts tracing lineage from Adam to Christ, while the succession of deaths and births of relatives is still recorded on pages inserted in family Bibles.

The operation of the principle of evolution is determined by the “algorithm” of Natural Selection formulated by Darwin in Origin of Species:

Through the preservation of favoured individuals and races, during the constantly-recurrent Struggle for Existence, we see the most powerful and ever-acting means of selection. The struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high geometrical ratio of increase which is common to all organic beings. …

These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms (406).

Genesis begins at “Growth with Reproduction; inheritance” and proceeds to the more complex and turbulent aspects of natural selection: “the struggle for Life,” “Variability,”  “Extinction of less improved forms,” and consequent adaptation.

Natural selection arises from three conditions: 1) individuals compete for the resources to stay alive and procreate, 2) they compete for reproductive success through sexual selection–finding mates and raising offspring that preserve and proliferate their genes, and 3) over long periods of time, species adapt, that is, they change in ways that increase their likelihood of survival and reproduction. Such adaptive changes are carried out through improved design of the physical organism and through the adoption of adaptive behaviors.

Adaptive behaviors are patterns of response to recurrent environmental challenges. The brain circuits, or programs that enable adaptive behaviors, become “incorporated into a species’ neural design.”[7] Assemblages of such software circuits evolved as “cognitive domains,” just as the eye and ear, for example, evolved as hardware. Their blueprints were replicated and transmitted by genes in “the seed,” just as were the blueprints for organs.[8]

Adaptive behaviors produced by natural selection include tool use, kinship selection, status competition, territoriality, coalition building, reciprocity, indirect reciprocity and in-group/outgroup discrimination. These adaptations are observed in primates as well as in remnants of hunter-gatherer societies. This essay argues that evolutionary psychology’s account of the development of cognitive and behavioral adaptations offers a key to decode many of Genesis’ particular incidents as well as its overall design.

The Primeval Narrative

Creation

Genesis’ opening account of creation (1.1-2.2) has a formalistic perfected structure. It traces a progression from chaos to coherence, fluidity to stability, simplicity to complexity.  Vegetable, animal and human life are defined by fertility and replication and are ordered by genetic inheritance: “Let the earth grow grass, plants yielding seed of each kind and trees bearing fruit of each kind, that has its seed within it.”(1.11) All animals including people are sustained by vegetable life. To the first humans, simultaneously created male and female, God says, “I have given you…every tree that has fruit bearing seed, yours they will be for food.”(1.29) The execution of an apparently premeditated plan is judged by the Creator at every stage as “good” and celebrated at its completion as “very good”(1.31).

The alternate account of creation which follows introduces the instability, conflict and mortality that natural selection adds to “Growth with Reproduction.” Here the first human is a male molded out of soil before the appearance of vegetation and animal life. God places him in a garden planted for his sustenance but this time adds a caveat. Rather than being invited to eat from “every tree,” the human is warned about the difference between fruit that is good and that which appears good but actually does harm:  “from every fruit of the garden you may surely eat, but from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for on the day you eat from it, you are doomed to die.”(2.16-17)

Whether or not the fruit is actually poisonous, the prohibition initiates the creature into learning what he must to survive: that some options are safe and others are dangerous.[9] This command specifies that humans are created with the ability to choose between alternatives that either promote or reduce their chances of survival.  The totality of such individual choices underlies the operation of natural selection as well as the patterns of behavior discovered by experimental studies.

The command introduces a theme whose relevance to survival and adaptation will become more evident once a larger population of human beings has emerged.  It takes the form of an implied contract of reciprocal benefits and costs that might read: “I’ve provided you with the benefit of immortality and easy subsistence in a congenial environment in return for your refraining from eating one fruit and challenging my authority.”

Reciprocity requires altruistic behavior from individuals—a sacrifice of short-term interests in exchange for long-term returns. Evolutionary psychologists regard such reciprocity based on the restraint of individual interests as an adaptation that evolved to temper competition for resources and enable social cooperation. A multitude of experiments have demonstrated that individuals choose altruistic behavior through cost-benefit calculations. The continuation of altruistic behavior depends upon upholding the assumption that one’s own sacrifice will be compensated by the sacrifice of others.[10] Failure to reciprocate is labeled as “defection,” “free-riding” or “cheating.”[11] The more individuals who cheat, the greater the cost to those who remain altruistic. If cheating can’t be controlled, altruism and reciprocity disappear and the community breaks down. Natural selection has evolved specialized “cheating detection” modules in the brain and social mechanisms of punishment to deter it.[12]

In another telling contrast between accounts of creation, the first version’s depiction of reproduction as identical in animals and humans is succeeded by the second version’s delineation of gender and sex as problematic from the start. God revises his earlier assessment of the creation on the sixth day saying “It is not good for the human to be alone”(2.18). Here he proceeds by trial-and-error rather than by design, employing surgery to craft a partner as the remedy for a deficiency in his original creature. After pain, the solution will afford pleasure: “the two of them were naked, the man and the woman and they were not ashamed” (2.25).

Adam celebrates his new companion’s birth day: “…bone of my bones/ and flesh of my flesh/This one shall be called woman/for from man was this one taken.  Therefore does a man leave his father and mother and cling to his wife and they become one flesh.” (2.23) But his words foreshadow the first couple’s imminent departure from the parent and introduce the conflicts of sexual selection.

The Fall

The serpent, not yet associated with threat, encourages Eve to disobey the prohibition, thereby violating reciprocity. As punishment, God imposes the real rigors of natural selection: 1) individual life is bounded by mortality but carried forward through genetic inheritance of offspring and 2) environmental resources fall short of the expanding requirements of offspring, leading to a struggle for existence and survival of the fittest.

Eve and her partner are condemned to eventual death and exiled from the easy fruit-gathering regime of the garden to a setting where they will have to deal with life-threatening animals, snakes in particular (Oman and Mineka 5-9). There they will have to endure the rigors of tilling the soil to produce the seeds and fruit that nourish them. Rough weather will require clothing. Their love-life will be fraught with the tensions of domination and desire, and childbirth will be painful and risky (3:16).

In their state of prelapsarian ignorance, they would be unfit to survive in this environment. However, eating the forbidden fruit of “knowledge of good and evil” allows for positive adaptations brought about by natural selection: the development of intelligence and a moral code. The association between these adaptations and post-lapsarian reproduction, with its demand for handling emotional challenges and parental responsibility, is underscored by the Biblical word for sexual intercourse, “to know.” The pains of human childbearing are partly attributable to the oversized head of the fetus required to house the enlarged human brain (Kaplan et.al. 156-185).

Evolutionary psychologists postulate that adaptive cognitive development proceeds by the evolution of distinct “domain-specific” capacities–cognitive modules housed in different sections of brain tissue–just as different organs of the body evolved to carry out distinct physical functions (Boyer and Barrett 96-118). One kind of knowledge—tool knowledge or an “object mechanics system”–allows the first humans to adapt to demands of survival in a harsh environment with the inventions of clothing, shelter and agriculture (102-4).

The other kind of knowledge cultivated through adaptation is categorized as “social intelligence” or “Machiavellian intelligence.”[13] The serpent’s “cunning” consists of its ability to imagine what is in the woman’s mind and thereby to convince her that it knows what’s in God’s mind: “For God knows that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will become as Gods, knowing good and evil”(3:5-6).[14]

This capacity depends upon a “mind reading system” or “Theory of Mind” cognitive module evolved to anticipate the behavior of predators, prey, competitors and allies by imagining their mental states.[15]  Such empathic ability also enables the deception of others by facilitating the fabrication of false clues inducing mistaken inferences about the deceiver’s mental state.

Eating the fruit and attaining the “knowledge of good and evil” leads Adam and Eve to try to deceive God—first by hiding when he calls them, and after being discovered, by covering themselves with the excuse that they needed to hide their nakedness.  God detects the ruse and exposes it with accusations disguised as questions: “Who told you that you were naked? From the tree I commanded you not to eat have you eaten?” (3:11-12) In doing so he employs yet another module co-evolved in a “cognitive arms race” with the one for deception: the capacity for “detecting faked and insincere emotional signals” (Trivers 39).

Cain and Abel

The adaptations that meet the challenges of their hostile environment allow Adam and Eve to procreate and achieve the reproductive success catalogued with a long genealogy of descendants in a following chapter (4:16-5:32). But the fact that their the first child murders the second illustrates a primal “recurrent environmental challenge.” Natural selection starts as a zero sum game, with “individual fitness” rewarding the strongest competitor at the expense of others. Cain’s crime is driven by competition for limited resources, here the approval of the Deity. But natural selection has evolved an adaptation responding to this challenge called “kinship selection,” which mitigates intrafamilial competition by selecting for “inclusive fitness.”[16] More genes of each of two brothers of the same parents are likely to survive in the next generation if they both live and reproduce than if only one survives. God tests Cain by showing favor to his sibling and instructing him to restrain his jealousy in order to teach this, but Cain defiantly refuses: “am I my brother’s keeper?” (4.10) Like Adam and Eve’s, Cain’s fitness-reducing choice is punished with exile. The failure of the adaptation to work frustrates God, as becomes evident in the next story. The ultimate resolution of sibling rivalry by kinship selection becomes the burden of the later narratives of Jacob and Joseph.

Another element of this story also recapitulates Adam and Eve’s defection. Cain is provided the benefit of the power to resist temptation: “At the tent flap sin crouches/and for you is its longing/but you will rule over it.”(4:7) But he fails to pay the cost of restraint. He employs deception when luring Abel to his death and when trying to hide his crime. God again foils deception with interrogative tactics that bring on self-disclosure.[17]

Noah and the Flood

In the next story the specific crimes aren’t specified, but it is asserted that all people had done evil in the Lord’s sight except for Noah and his family (6:5-6).  From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, one can infer that this evil consists of failures of kinship selection as well as of wider applications of reciprocity that could allow for the existence of communities.  Though later regretted, the cataclysmic scale of the punishment here follows upon the ineffectiveness of earlier efforts to deter defection and cheating. The story teaches that even a small group that practices reciprocity when others defect will be selected for survival and reproduction. In a narrative motif repeated throughout the Bible to emphasize this lesson, spectacular penalties are accompanied by the salvation of a chosen few, who witness the destruction of the many with terror, and with heightened joy at their own deliverance.

Practical adaptation skills, both tool knowledge and social intelligence regarding animals, also enhance the fitness of Noah’s family. To provide for the biodiversity in their trust, they are counseled to hoard nutriment: “take you from every food that is eaten and store it by you, to serve for you and for them as food” (6.21) and given precise instructions for constructing a seaworthy lifeboat.[18] And Noah exercises survival skills by taming beasts, observing the behaviors of raven and dove, and from them learning the moment to venture out.

This story emphasizes the principle of kin selection. Under the increased pressure of the natural catastrophe, Noah’s family alone, along with their animal companions, restart the process of reproduction at the expense of all other competitors. Once the crisis has passed, however, kin selection breaks down into intra-familial competition. Ham, one out of three brothers, appropriates some of his father’s reproductive powers by observing him naked when he’s drunk and asleep. For that he is punished through his genetic descendants, who are condemned to be enslaved by the descendants of his siblings (9:21-27).

Babel

The re-creation that stems from the survivors of the flood is tracked with a genealogy of Noah’s descendants. “These are clans of the sons of Noah according to their lineage in their nations.  And from these the nations branched out after the Flood”(10:32). Their dispersal “out of Africa” follows a Darwinian pattern:

As each species tends by its geometrical ratio of reproduction to increase inordinately in number; and as the modified descendants of each species will be enabled to increase by so much the more as they become more diversified in habits and structure, so as to be enabled to seize on many and widely different places in the economy of nature, there will be a constant tendency in natural selection to preserve the most divergent offspring of any one species (555).

The Patriarchal Narrative

Chapter 11’s genealogy recording the descent of the founders of the dispersed nations of the world marks a transition into the second large subdivision of Genesis. The narrative structure here changes from a series of short discreet stories in which God is the only character who persists from one incident to the next to a continuous intergenerational saga chronicling the overlapping life histories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Rather than by God’s catastrophic interventions, the process of selection is accomplished by the mechanisms of breeding, conditioning, and teaching through interactions among complex human characters in human history. Rather than stories representing all of humanity, the focus narrows to a single genetic strain. Emphasis falls upon adaptations that will promote successful social living in the chosen group, enabling its members to become founders of a nation that will achieve the reproductive success to out-compete rivals and establish future imperial dominance.

Survival

The biographies of Abraham and his grandson Jacob relate tales of testing for individual fitness. God orders Abram to leave his home in a Babylonian city and take up the rigors of a nomadic life in Canaan (12). Abraham displays his strength as a fighter by defeating four local kings in battle before rescuing his brother Lot from captivity (14). Jacob proves his mettle in the desert by walking alone hundreds of miles to his uncle’s settlement in Harran, camping out with only a rock for a pillow (28) and by prevailing in an all-night wrestling  match with an angel (32). Their selection through these rites of passage is signified by honorific changes of name: Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel.

Sexual selection

The Patriarchal narrative places strong emphasis on the Darwinian theme of sexual selection:

Amongst all animals there is a struggle between the males for the possession of the females…The strongest and most vigorous men—those who can best defend and hunt for their families…would succeed in rearing a greater than average number of offspring (Darwin 2004 246-7).

Though individual characters are prominent, the unifying element of its stories is the “seed” they receive and transmit, whose future proliferation is mentioned in this section no less than forty times.

Frequent graphic references to the organs of generation–circumcised penises,(17) dried up or moist vulvas, (18) menstruating vaginas, (31) baby’s arms reaching out of wombs (25)—and to a lurid variety of sex acts—anal rape, (18) daughter/father incest, (19) pimping a spouse, (12, 20, 26) the bed-trick (29)—contrast fruitless sexuality with the licit mating that yields children of promise. The truest loves produce preferred siblings after an extended trial period that includes matches with less favored wives or concubines whose offspring, like Ishmael, or Abraham’s sons by Sarah’s successor, Keturah, are disinherited.

The chosen seed is distinguished by extraordinary sex appeal that sometimes leads to trouble: the Pharaoh falls in love with Abraham’s 70 year-old wife (12, 20) and so does King Abimelech (26), who also cannot resist the allure of Isaac’s wife, Rebecca. Jacob weeps with the joy of love at first sight of Rachel (29), but must work fourteen years for her father to earn her hand, seven of them also married to her older sister, while the women vie for his nightly presence in their beds (30).  His reproductive success yields twelve surviving sons, each of whom will be the genetic source of one of the twelve tribes of the future Israelite nation.

Jacob performs the kind of artificial selection that inspired Darwin’s theory of natural selection by breeding goats, which, over generations, he chooses for the traits of dark and spotted coats (30:35-43).[19] His success in that endeavor generates enough wealth to free him from indenture to his father in law (30). Like the clever herdsman, Genesis’ God prefers inbreeding over endogamy, observing the priorities of kin selection over numerousness of partners.[20] The chosen seed springs from Sarah, Abraham’s half-sister, and not from Hagar, her unrelated slave girl. Abraham requires that Isaac’s wife be found in the house of his brother in law (25). Rebekah rejects Esau for marrying a Hittite woman and provides her favorite, Jacob, with the opportunity to find a spouse from among her own family, whose members are overjoyed with the match of first cousins (27, 29).

God distinguishes his preferred line of descent with a badge that comes as close as possible to a genetic marker of adaptation: “You shall keep my commandment, you and your seed after you through their generations…You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be the sign of the covenant between me and you”(17:11). When the Canaanite Schechem and his brothers and father agree to endure such circumcision in order to intermarry with the Israelites, Jacob’s sons butcher them all for dishonoring their sister, Dinah, while they’re incapacitated from the surgery (34).

Reciprocity: Abraham

Abraham’s selection by God as the vehicle of his chosen seed depends largely on his character traits of altruism and reciprocity, as opposed to the self-seeking behaviors of Adam and Eve and Cain and the contemporaries of Noah. When his and his brother Lot’s men fight because “the land could not support their dwelling together,” Abraham says “let there be no contention between you and me…for we are kinsmen,” (13) and gives his brother first choice of territory, exemplifying the adaptation of kin selection.  He shows extraordinary care for strangers who turn out to be emissaries of God, demonstrating the hospitality that serves as a universal example of faithful reciprocity (18).

God cultivates those adaptive behaviors in Abraham with promises and rewards and strengthens them with the kind of tests failed by earlier candidates for selection.  As exchange for future progeny and wealth, He demands the fleshly sacrifice of the foreskin and the psychological sacrifices of extraordinary patience and unquestioning obedience.

Abraham is taught patience by having to defer gratification of the promise of offspring with his wife Sarah until he is 90 years old.  The challenge is intensified by her impatience and the family discord that results from her insistence he mate with her slave-girl Hagar. Abraham demonstrates the ultimate obedience during the cruel test that’s posed by the demand to sacrifice his only son with Sarah (22). Though such traits of heroic patience and obedience are necessary in a subordinate, they are also required of leaders, who must model the self-control, commitment, and personal sacrifice they demand from followers and who must persist in pursuit of their goals in the face of doubt and reversal.[21]

In some incidents, Abraham’s exceptional self-restraint and subordination is mixed with a portion of the self-assertion also required of leaders.  He protests to God about the ejection of his unselected son, Ishmael (21:11-12) and he bargains with God to spare the innocent when He condemns the city of Sodom (18:21-33).

Isaac

By contrast, the drawbacks of unqualified obedience are shown in the biography of Abraham’s son, Isaac. Isaac learns obedience as a child in the same incident that tested his father.  But his obedience offered no occasion for choice; the loving father bound him and took a knife to his throat without explanation, leaving the boy permanently traumatized, passive and ineffectual. He remains in an infantilized state his whole life, ruled by others, even during the process of reproduction. His father selects his mate (24:3), her elaborate courtship is carried out by a servant (24:9-63), and his choice of an heir is circumvented by trickery (27:6-48).

Jacob

Isaac’s offspring, Jacob, develops the optimum adaptive blend of self-seeking and altruism through painful experience, rather than by God’s instruction.  Jacob’s life begins in the womb as a competitive struggle for precedence with his elder twin, Esau. Supported by his mother, he deceives his father and brother to gain dominance and control of the family patrimony. He uses technical intelligence in cooking and dressing and social intelligence to maintain coalitions and escape detection (27:6-48).

Jacob’s excessive competitiveness is punished by a trial, which develops the self-restraint required for reciprocity.  To secure his preferred mate and earn his own fortune in livestock, he endures exile and the free-riding of his uncle Laban for fourteen years (29-30). After paying more than his dues, he achieves wary reconciliations with the uncle who cheated him (31:25-54) and the brother and father whom he cheated (32-33). This success qualifies his seed to found the future nation of Israel, which is given the Darwinian name conferred upon him by the angel, “he has struggled with God and man and prevailed” (32:23-33).

The Joseph Narrative

The last third of Genesis takes up the story of Joseph and his brothers, the sons of Jacob, the seed of Abraham. It reiterates the earlier stories’ themes of adaptation but presents them in a more sophisticated structure and style. The whole section is comprised of a single plot with multiple layers of action rather than sequentially linked episodes. The characters are individualized and realistic, their words and deeds providing one another and the reader with evidence of inner consciousness different from what they outwardly project. The most striking change is that the world of the story no longer includes supernatural beings.  God disappears as speaker and actor and is present only insofar as he’s invoked by the narrator or by Joseph, who eventually seems to take upon himself God’s directive role.

As the geographic background shifts from Canaan to Egypt, the setting changes from a world of tents and herds to scenes of civilized life: domestic intrigues in the house of the chamberlain, the dynamics of prison management, and politics in the court of the Pharaoh, where Joseph controls the fates of the population of the empire and its neighbors.[22] The expanded setting also expands the arenas of natural selection from family and tribe to the state. The adaptations of direct reciprocity, which make for the inclusive fitness of kinship groups and small bands, here lead to the adaptations of indirect reciprocity that group selection requires for the survival of a larger community. Indirect reciprocity is a system of exchange of benefits that involves third parties and depends upon reputation.  Natural selection favors the person who develops a reputation for altruism on the basis of previous acts performed for others, and it confers benefits from fellow community members, like elevation of status, opportunities for partnership and material rewards.[23]

Joseph advances in Egypt through indirect reciprocity by building his reputation for self-restraint, obedience and loyalty, qualities that God cultivated in Abraham. Here they are displayed for the young immigrant’s superiors–the chamberlain, the head jailer, and Pharaoh–in Joseph’s resistance to Potiphar’s wife’s attempted seduction, in his advancement from prisoner to jail steward, and in his crediting all his political successes as the power behind the throne to the Pharaoh (39-41). As in all hierarchical societies, animal or human, establishing alliances through reciprocity with friends in high places is essential to acquiring status.[24]

Joseph’s trustworthiness is accompanied by adaptive traits of technical and social intelligence, advanced beyond those that enabled Jacob to succeed in Haran by the measure of increased complexity and sophistication of the Egyptian setting. These traits are mobilized in administrative tasks, which motivate his superiors to let him do their jobs to their credit.  His ability to interpret dreams, which he prudently ascribes to God, can be credited to talent for recognizing patterns and decoding symbols and to a canny assessment of the dreamer’s situation (41). His successful economic policy of cornering the futures market in grain is attributable to observations of climate and productivity trends and to awareness of the tendency to spend when times are good without providing for the lean years.

Joseph’s policy converts the population of Egypt from independent farmers to vassals of the central government while providing sustenance to those who otherwise would starve (47). His power to cultivate direct and indirect reciprocity strengthens the whole society, creating community fitness in a time of famine that draws his long-estranged brothers all the way from Canaan to buy food.

Their encounter foregrounds a tale about kin selection and direct reciprocity that begins with deadly sibling rivalry and ends with prosperous family reunification. The initial disturbance arises from Joseph’s arrogance and his father’s preferential treatment, which induce fierce envy in his brothers, who sell him into slavery and report him as dead (37).[25] The final success is facilitated by Joseph’s hiding his identity in order to test, punish and educate his brothers about their crimes and by their willingness to offer restitution, admit their guilt and at last affirm their common genetic bond (45:1-15).

His interaction with them highlights the operation of social intelligence, the ability to deceive, decode nonverbal clues, and persuade.[26] These traits belong to a cognitive domain that evolved through the “arms race” between cheaters and those engaged in their detection.[27] That race shaped earlier interactions between God and Adam and Eve and Cain, Jacob and Esau and Jacob and Laban, but here it’s greatly amplified. Through extended dramatic scenes between the brothers, the reader discovers discrepancies between what characters say and what they think. While hiding their own feelings, they try to penetrate one another’s.

The young naïve Joseph learned the way cheaters work by listening to the plotting of his brothers while waiting for slave traders to pull him out of the pit and by being subjected to the false accusations of Potiphar’s wife. That experience equips him to employ crafty interrogation methods on his brothers, who come into his presence without recognizing him or knowing that he understands their language. Spying himself, he falsely accuses them of spying and places them under arrest.  He subjects them to techniques used by police and by psychologists who simulate the Prisoner’s Dilemma to study the dynamics of competition, cooperation and punishment (42).[28] To his relief he discovers that they’ve left his father and his younger brother Benjamin alive. He overhears their admission of having sold him into slavery. Their horror at his insistence that they bring Benjamin as a hostage reveals the guilt they feel for the suffering they caused Jacob many years ago by depriving him of a favorite son.

When the famine forces the brothers to return for more food with Benjamin, Joseph’s false accusation of the youngest brother elicits Judah’s willingness to suffer punishment for a crime he did not commit in order to spare both Benjamin and Jacob (44:18-34). At this moment of restored reciprocity,

Joseph could no longer hold himself in check before all who stood attendance upon him, and he cried, “Clear out everyone around me!” And no man stood with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud and the Egyptians heard and the house of Pharaoh heard.  And Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph.  Is my father still alive?” And his brothers could not answer him for they were dismayed before him (45:1-4).

Shedding his disguise and standing alone, he bares his soul by exposing his deepest feelings. But those who witness his tears, though sharing the same seed, have little understanding of that inner self.

What follows is a joyous playing out of the reconciliation scenario that leads to strengthening of the family’s inclusive fitness.  Jacob is reunified with all his sons and their children in Egypt, Pharaoh honors and rewards them with the most productive land in the kingdom, and Joseph fathers two sons.  The ability to offer and accept reconciliation after conflict, restoring cooperation after bouts of murderous competition, demonstrates one more tool of adaptation devised by natural selection.[29]

Joseph ascribes this happy ending to the providence of God: “And now do not be pained and do not be incensed with yourselves that you sold me down here, because for sustenance God has sent me before you to make you a remnant on earth and to preserve life, for you to be a great surviving group,”(45:5-8) in a passage echoed by Darwin’s celebration of natural selection:

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved (1861, 525).[30]

However, that reconciliation among brothers subsequently turns out to be fragile and provisional, contingent upon the circumstances of a changing environment:

And Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, and they said, “If Joseph bears resentment against us, he will surely pay us back for all the evil we caused him.” And they charged Joseph saying, “Your father left a charge before his death, saying ‘Thus shall you say to Joseph, We beseech you, forgive, pray the crime and the offense of your brothers, for evil they have caused you….’(50:15-17)

Despite the earlier tearful scenes of love and forgiveness, they fear that Joseph has only been waiting until their father’s death to exact his revenge.  Their continuing distrust is likely to result from their own continuing disguised defections.  It may be that Joseph senses this new danger and counters it with his appeal to higher authority:

And Joseph said, “Fear not, for am I instead of God? While you meant evil toward me, God meant it for good, so as to bring about at this very time keeping many people alive. And so fear not.  I will sustain you and your little ones” (50:15-21).

As he himself plays the role of surrogate deity, Joseph’s attribution of his success to an unseen God activates another adaptation. Evolutionary psychology accounts for the origin of supernatural beings as support for the indirect reciprocity required in communities too large to assure face-to-face punishment of cheaters.[31]

…natural selection favoured [attributions of life events to supernatural agency] because, in a cognitively sophisticated social environment, a fear of supernatural punishment steered individuals away from costly social transgressions resulting from unrestrained, evolutionarily ancestral, selfish interest.[32]

In his pious yet pragmatic references to a God whose existence is a product of the words of humans, here at the end of Genesis Joseph suggests a possible interpretation of the book’s beginning, where the existence of humans was a product of the words of God.

He also points forward to the book of Exodus that follows. There, God reemerges as the dominant character, and in collaboration with Moses, his surrogate-in-training, embarks on the creation of a new religion and a new state, natural selection’s next evolutionary project.[33]

_________

[1]. “Genes are the means by which functional design features replicate themselves from parent to offspring.  They can be thought of as particles of design.  …[they cause the organism to develop some design features and not others. Genes …propagate themselves by increasing the probability that offspring will be produced by the organism in which they are situated or others who…carry the same genes” (Tooby 21).

Nevertheless, after the satisfactions of the Peru trip and the recent hike to Sykes Hotsprings, the urge to travel again outweighed both inertia and the motivation to work on other projects. “Seize the Day” was accumulating authority as a watchword for my seventies and full retirement.

Reading Robert Macfarlane’s The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot strengthened my desire to return to the trail.  Ian’s five-day Winter recess from Grade 4 was coming up and he was excited by the slideshow about backpacking presented at his last Cub Scout meeting, so I decided to return to Big Sur with him on an overnight camping trip.  I’d been up the Salmon Creek Trail a few years ago with a former student and remembered a remote campsite by the creek only two miles in but requiring a thousand foot ascent.

We sat at the computer together and ordered a packsack for him, a butane stove, and a water purification bottle from Amazon, which were delivered within two days. The weather forecast was mild and the Ranger said no fee or fire permit was required till May.

We departed at 10 AM and stopped at Spencer’s Market in Morro Bay for baguettes and Hershey Bars to complete the food selection plucked from the cupboards at home.

As we drove north on Highway 1 along the open Pacific, the radio reported that a 300 foot wide asteroid was about to pass within 17,000 miles of the earth—only two diameters away—and that a large meteorite just landed with the blast of 25 Hiroshima atom bombs somewhere in Russia.  This was the first I heard about either of these apocalyptic cosmic invasions, and the news only confirmed my motto.  I couldn’t think of a better place to meet the end.

We shared a Hearst Ranch hamburger at Sebastian’s in San Simeon and parked near the trailhead at noon.  Ian’s pack weighed about 20 pounds, mine about 35.  The first section of the well-traveled path was a trudge, relieved by dramatic views of the ocean below and the steep canyon above.

The ecology of this valley was  similar to that of the Big Sur River I’d I’d traveled through two weeks earlier, but also different.  A hundred miles to the south, here there were no Redwoods, but occasional large Douglas Firs and a full canopy of California Bay Laurel, whose new winter leaves glowed fluorescent light green.  Lush Fremont Iris bloomed in the shade,

and the sunny patches of exposed Serpentine soil where no trees grew sported rich displays of Poppies, Paintbrush and Shooting Stars. Ian distracted both of us from muscle pain and fatigue by recounting the plot of Shadowmage, the novel he’d recently  finished reading on his Kindle for a book report.

It took us an hour and a half to reach the high point almost directly above the road and our tiny Prius, Reddy. There the trail headed inland on a level contour cut into the mountainside, zigzagging toward and away from tributary creeks grooving the main canyon. After the shakedown climb, the last mile and a half of the hike went fast and smooth.  At the first trail junction we descended toward the main creek, whose rush and roar we’d heard the whole way, down to the dark and somewhat dismal campsite I remembered.  But further exploration led to a crossing of  Spruce Creek just above its convergence with Salmon Creek and a promontory bathed in Winter afternoon sun.

We pitched the old tent, gathered firewood and relaxed a little while.

Then it was time to enjoy the pleasure garden: the play of light and water over rocks,

the bloom of  pollen-spilling alder catkins,

the extremes of color and shadow on leaf, moss, stone, and liquid,

the thrill of hopping, climbing and jumping,

the satisfaction of building dams and taking pictures.

After the sun passed below the canyon’s wall and our little island of light was engulfed in shadow, Ian built a layered pyramid around a sheet of crumpled newspaper–tinder first, then pencil sized twigs, then thicker sticks—and lit the fire with a single match.  He nursed it with bellows breath and fed it with fuel wood until the sparks crackled and the bed of coals was hot enough to ignite the thick wet logs we’d dragged from a distance out of the forest.

He cooked a box of mac and cheese in the coffeepot on the camp stove, drained it and gobbled it down as I munched bread, cheese and salami.

Afterwards we toasted marshmallows and made s’mores, stashed all the food in a bag, and hung it with a cord from a thin branch above the stream to keep it away from the bear.

Snug in sleeping bags by 7:00, we saw the moon rise above the canyon walls through the branches overhanging the tent. By 7:30 we’d stopped talking.  Though I woke up every hour or so, feeling my leaky thermarest mattress gradually deflating and listening to the rich music of the creek, I slept eleven hours and awakened refreshed.  Ian slept another hour while I cooked cowboy coffee and restarted the fire.  He got up and made another pot of mac and cheese for his breakfast.

We set off through the creek in search of a large waterfall about a mile upstream, him leading the way over big rocks, across logs, and up steep banks, as the going got rougher and more spectacular.

We turned back before finding the waterfall, hoping to avoid exposure to poison oak stems that hadn’t yet leafed out and therefore remained hard to recognize

We sighted budding triliums and boulders of jasper

and posed together for a self-timed photo before drenching our feet and boots in an awkward stream crossing.

Back in camp we packed our gear, doused the fire, and at noon, as planned, hit the trail back.  The return hike was less arduous than the way in.

Just before reaching the car, we followed a spur leading to an impressive waterfall  that compensated for the failure to reach the one upstream. It was topped by a loose boulder that looked like a teetering meteorite.

It was no great challenge for us seasoned backpackers to clamber over the rockfall that hid the pool  and cavern at its base.

The way back down required crossing the creek along a twisted steel pipe while hanging on to a stretchy  mountaineering rope—a nice adrenaline rush to conclude our short, satisfying adventure.

Slideshow of full-sized pictures

The midwinter weather would be unpredictable, but not too hot, and there were vacancies at the Bright Angel Campsite, which at most times required reservations a year in advance.  It would be three weeks after our return from Peru, two weeks after Peter’s visit from Canada, a little extravagant in terms of doing what I felt like, but a healthy assertion of retirement independence, and an opportunity for a real workout that my daily half-mile swimming routine made me crave.  I’d been suffering enough lower back pain since returning from Peru to drive me to the chiropracter, who told me it likely resulted from too much sitting–in buses, airliners, and at my computer. I carried a pack full of water up Poly Mountain to see if I’d be capable of the hike, only to find that it made my back feel better.

The one obstacle would be weather conditions during our planned four day weekend that could make flying a small plane over the Tehachapis and landing and taking off at the 7000 foot altitude of the South Rim risky.  For two weeks we watched the forecast get less promising, even as excitement built at our meetings to plan provisions and equipment. We considered alternate locations–Zion Park, Anza Borrego Desert, Point Reyes–but in the days before departure we settled on leaving the plane on the ground and driving the two hours to Big Sur for some nearby camping.  A quick Google search turned up Sykes Hot Springs–ten miles into the Ventana Wilderness, accessible only by trail, something of a challenge, but according to many reports a most rewarding route and destination.

The sky was emerald blue and the Big Sur Highway was empty on the spectacular drive up coast.  We stopped for an overpriced lunch at Nepenthe and got to the Trailhead at Pfeiffer State Park around 1 pm.  The original plan was to hike in the full ten miles the first day and camp for two days at the destination, perhaps adding another ten miles of day hike to a peak further along, but it soon became evident that we’d be doing well if we reached the halfway point  before dark.  The first couple of miles made a  steep ascent.  My huffing and puffing induced Craig to time my pulse in concern about a heart attack, and I left about 12 pounds of unnecessary food and equipment hanging in a bag from a tree limb for retrieval on the way back.  Soon afterwards the way leveled out some and fatigue was replaced by exhilaration.

The trail wound eastward following the course of the Big Sur River  700 feet below, the sound of its tumbling water a steady serenade complemented by occasional glimpses of rapids through the near vertical wall of the canyon.

The low winter sun  illuminated its opposite wall and the mountains behind it, but we remained  in deep shade produced by the north facing ridge we traversed and the canopy of redwoods, which towered high above us though rooted hundreds of feet below.

Rather than red, the immense, deeply ridged trunks were coal black,  scorched by the fire that had incinerated the chaparral ground cover and killed the smaller trees of the forest just a few years ago.

In places where the fire was hottest, most of the big trees perished, but wounded survivors regenerated in distinctive shapes.

I wondered whether this was the same fire that had ravaged the area around Tassajara, the Zen monastery that Jan and I had visited in June two years earlier.  With the vigor of the new tree growth, the freshness of trailside grasses and shrubs, and all the creeks and springs flowing, it was hard to imagine the arid combustible atmosphere of this landscape during the summer months.  The ruggedness remained in the raw terrain upthrust by subduction of the Pacific Plate and grooved by watercourses bearing off rainfall from the sea. The Forest Service’s  well-maintained trail showed evidence of this continual geological activity, often rerouted around recent rockfalls. Without the well worn path, the steepness and irregularity would have rendered passage through this country impossible.

Invigorated by bodily exertion and the excitement of escape, Craig and I kept up a steady stream of conversation informed by common experiences and contrasting perspectives. Seventy year old professional colleagues with little more to prove, blessed with happy marriages, children and grandchildren, at least partially earned financial security and good health, we share an eagerness for adventures during the few upcoming years they’ll still be possible. We talked with admiration of Obama’s Second Inaugural Speech’s and its elevated rhetorical ancestry, of Jerry Brown’s down to earth State of the State speech concluding with the Little Engine that Could, of Spielberg’s Lincoln, Charles Mann’s 1491, my Peru trip, City politics, his engagement in Episcopal Church activities especially caring for the homeless, and my withdrawal from activism. He spoke of his search for models of wisdom and grace among the aged, I spoke of my growing admiration of youth, which was highlighted by every encounter with young hikers along the trail, especially the scantily clothed girls who passed us toting heavy packs.

The trail traversed to a ridgeline and made a tight turn southward, following the upstream direction of the river  and affording a last view of the majestic summit that topped a major tributary.

As the shade deepened, the trail descended quickly to a stream flowing through a grove of huge redwoods that escaped the inferno.  Only a distant one of several tent sites distributed between the cheerfully burbling water and the great trunks  was already occupied.

Here in Central California, no fees or reservations, no fire rings or tables, no rangers or regulations, just the wilderness opening itself to our embrace.  We rejoiced to lay down our packs and explore the surroundings: a carpet of springy duff, ancient fire hollows big enough to fit a bear or a couple of people at the base of several of the trees, delicate leaves and flowers of sorrel catching patches of sunlight at the bottom of the walls, everything cleaned and freshened by the previous day’s heavy rains.

The intense use of this campsite became evident when I was unable to find a shred of dry tinder to ignite a fire and the little magnesium fire starter I’d bought at Big 5 didnt work. While Craig set up the tent and pumped water through his purifier, I cooked up a quick dinner of Couscous, Indian Lentils and Eggplant Curry from Trader Joe on his little butane stove and set some dried fruit soaking for compote in the morning.

As the rising moon painted white blotches on the tree trunks, we sipped Irish whiskey and nibbled dark chocolate before turning in, each of us equipped with a pee bottle inside our sleeping bags to supplement limited-capacity bladders.

After a lengthy sleep interrupted only by the headlamps and murmurs of late arrivals looking for tent sites, I awakened to birdsong, less achy than in bed at home. We drank several pots of cowboy coffee, ate scrambled eggs and salami, packed up our gear and got back on the trail.

Winding around the shoulders of narrow ridges, it generally maintained altitude as it veered away from the river below and then abruptly dropped to another fast flowing tributary too extensive to cross by stepping stones.

A large redwood log that had accidentally fallen across the stream at an interesting angle facilitated the crossing, but we let more some more nimble hikers precede us before tackling the challenge.

As the morning wore on, we were passed by numerous young folk heading for the Springs, some of whom had hiked in the dark, others who went at the speed we had originally anticipated maintaining ourselves.  One couple carrying only day packs, were accompanied by an energetic black lab loaded with heavy-looking saddle bags.

After rounding one more ridgeline, the trail returned to following the course of the Big Sur River below, and by 1:30 in the afternoon, we descended to its rocky banks.

The smooth fast water was crystal clear and the trees’ reflection rendered the bottom in shades of turquoise and taupe.

But where were the promised warm pools that would heal those now aching hip, knee and ankle joints and put me in contact with earth’s chthonic forces?  Craig shouted questions to some long haired boys on the opposite bank and got no clear answer.  Other young couples approaching this trail’s end from the opposite direction told us they could be found downstream beyond a steep rocky bank, hard to miss because they were full of unclothed bodies. This seemed to dampen Craig’s interest–he said he was looking for solitude and peace not naked partiers–but it piqued mine. We clambered over the cliff face and found a large campsite on a flat spot ten feet above a hairpin turn in the river, like the previous night’s  graced with ancient redwoods but blighted around its edges by hiker-abandoned trash–old socks and underwear, a ragged tent, empty wine bottles.

Craig said he’d stay there and set up camp.  I left my pack and walked around the point along the river whose opposite bank was dotted with tents and campfires.  Both apprehensive and enticed, I followed an informal trail  over an outcrop carved by another twist in the river and found myself suddenly in sunshine, on a terrace beside a glittering pool created by a wall of bagged stones which dammed the flow of  warm water coursing down a multicolored rockface canopied by the rootball of a fallen tree.

photo credit: brianwiese.com

photo credit: brianwiese.com

Submerged in the pool sat the curly headed young man who had passed us with the dog, smiling and holding a joint.  He offered me a toke, and I was transported back 46 years to another Big Sur camping trip with a girl I had recently met at the time.  We’d hidden my motor scooter along the highway and clambered down to an idyllic spot by the Little Sur River, which soon filled up with young people from all over the country eager to share food, drink, stories and music. As I inhaled the slight odor of sulfur and piled my boots and clothes next to the pool, he said, “Do you mind if I ask how old you are?” and when I told him, he answered, not “I dont believe it,” but a little disappointingly, “I hope I can be in your shape at that age.”

The hundred degree water felt extraordinarily pleasant seeping into my limbs.  The floor of the pool, part clean sand, part knobbly rock, sharpened the massaging sensation on my sore sacrum. On the river bank, 50 feet below, I heard yelps of delight and glimpsed flashes of sun-drenched flesh.

photo credit: brianwiese.com

I lay back silently savoring the moment.  After those glorious nine days in Peru with Jan, after that marvelous four day visit with Peter, after the great time on the trail with Craig, how could fate continue to regale me with more pleasures?

Suddenly there was a bustle of activity on the approach to the pool and four laughing twenty-somethings clambered over the log, one of them insisting that they needed to start the ten mile trek back to civilization very soon.  Another asked if it was alright if they joined us in the pool, there seemed to be room.  There was no objection as the two women, one a pale redhead, the other a dark brunette, disrobed and lowered themselves into the water. They were followed by their boyfriends, a wiry bearded longhair and a thoughtful babyfaced fellow. We all introduced ourselves by first names and they passed around a couple of cans of beer cooled in the stream–a refreshing way to hydrate in the hot spring.  After an interval of oohs and aahs, conversation picked up–tales of visiting other hot springs, bears in campsites, alien invasion fantasies, local geological and botanical lore.  The curly haired man was a master’s candidate in geology, the brunette a recent Santa Cruz graduate in Environmental Science and Art History who was interested to hear that I had taught English and Environmental Studies, the longhair a builder of cob houses and other unconventional structures, the redhead and her mate still in school.

We circulated locations in the pool so that everyone could experience the variety of pleasures in different positions: regarding faces and upper bodies reclined against the multicolored cascade or leaning against the mossy flow of the spring, feeling the  shower of warm drops from the canopy softly wetting one’s hair while gazing at the radiant tree branches across the canyon. The red haired girl with elaborate tatoos covering one shoulder lifted her snow white hands out of the water and moved her slender fingers in slow graceful gestures.  I felt at ease enough to blurt out what crossed my mind: “you look like a Hindu goddess in a grotto doing a  mudra dance.”  She laughed and replied, “I was just trying to stop my hands from wrinkling like prunes.”

Around 4:00 p.m., as the shadows crawled up the opposite bank, the two couples finally agreed that they must get on the trail for the hike back to their cars. They were looking forward to doing most of it by the light of the full moon.  It was time for me to let Craig know where I was and get a fire going with wet wood.  As we all pulled on our clothes, a new crop of people came over the log and entered the water, most with swimsuits, but one lone young woman in the buff.

When I returned to the campsite, Craig was pumping water at the river.

He had gathered wood and pitched the tent.  It took almost an hour, a huge amount of breath and several handfuls of toilet paper to make a steady blaze. We cooked quinoa, sundried tomatoes and mushrooms with hotsauce, emptied the half-pint flask, and went to sleep. I woke up at my usual 5:30 a.m., rekindled the still warm ashes in the dark and made more coffee.  We were packed and on the trail back just as it got light enough to put away our headlamps.

The way back, twice as long as each day’s outward hike, though lacking in suspense, allowed for more appreciation of features of the landscape–the alignment of the river and tributaries, the arrangement of the big trees in side canyons, the movement of the sun.

The conversations got lengthier and more thoughtful, detailing on both sides stories of early mistakes, lucky rescues, unresolved regrets.  And though the lightened packs and accumulated conditioning made us feel stronger than on the way out, the afternoon sight of the sea just beyond the start of the trail was a welcome invitation to our return home.

Before leaving Qosco he leads us back to the Korikancha—Convent of San Lorenzo. The oval sanctuary, originally its most prominent feature, recalls Machu Picchu.

Inside the complex, sections of austere Inka masonry originally covered with silver and gold and later painted over by the conquerors are interspersed with ornate baroque architecture.

Unearthed stones show the sophistication of indoor rock plumbing. Did this waste water system allow for disposal of paper?

A modern mural reproduces pre-European visions of star configurations in the Milky Way.

A short walk brings us to Plaza des Armas, originally the main Inka square where hundreds of thousands assembled for calendrical festivals.

The Spanish appropriated it as a focal point for church buildings, but in recent years, it’s been partially reclaimed with a golden statue of the Inka king at the top of the central fountain,

Its gardens are animated by a vibrant mix of old and young, locals and foreigners.

As we depart for the airport, the skies open with a downpour, just as they did upon our arrival in Qosqo.

Back in Lima we transfer back to the Miraflores hotel we’d stayed in earlier and are provided rooms to rest in before a scheduled midnight departure.

Our Lima guide, Dante, returns to lead us on a bus ride through traffic congested by the next day’s Dakar international auto race to a viewpoint above the city dominated by another hilltop statue of Christ.

From there I get a last obscured picture of life in the new towns directly from above.

After farewell dinner at a seaside restaurant we return to the airport.  The flight to Miami is delayed three hours, but we still catch the connecting flight to L.A., where we arrive in late afternoon, find our Prius, Reddy, in the vast parking lot, stop for dinner in Santa Monica, and drive the last four hour stint to San Luis Obispo.

Jan lays out our treasured souvenirs and gifts for children, grandchildren and nieces that will always recall this life-enriching trip, before we sink into a long and happy sleep.

Slideshow of these and more full-size photos

Link to Day 1

Once over the pass and heading north toward Urumbamba we’re back in the countryside, on a high plateau covered with larger fields of potatoes and corn also tended with hand tools.

Breaks in the cloud cover reveal the summits of Cordillera Blanca towering above the pastoral landscape.

We stop for a photo-op at a turnout and a woman in traditional garb arrives and opens her blanket full of textiles and gourds to offer for quick sale.

Our destination is the village where OAT, our tour company, has established another relationship with a local community, here in support of a one-room elementary school. The children are on winter vacation but have assembled from distant villages to greet us. They surround the bus and lead us by the hand into the classroom, where we’re welcomed by their teacher, a beautiful and dignified resident of Qosqo who comes with her young daughter three days a week.

The homemade posters on the wall exhibit a curriculum emphasizing the modern as well as the traditional. Nutrition, reproduction, and environmental health

Math and self respect

Reading and writing Spanish and the indigenous language of Quechua that Spanish conquerors and missionaries tried unsuccessfully for centuries to eradicate.

The children show us their notebooks, as impressive in the work produced and the care with which they’ve been graded as my grandsons’ in their California Catholic schools.

Alvaro translates as the children come to the front of the class and tell us about themselves. Their their career aspirations include doctor, lawyer, tourguide, pilot, nurse. None of them mentions farmer.

Then we hear their recitations of poems in Quechua celebrating Peru’s traditions, people and natural environment

[Click photo for movie]

Finally a chorus of farewell for sixth graders who will be graduating this year and moving on to middle school.

[Click photo for movie]

After presenting our gifts of school supplies and toys we reluctantly say goodbye.

Just behind our bus a villager parades down the street with his charges.

On the way further into the hinterland, there’s more to see than can possibly be absorbed through the moving bus windows.

We arrive at Moray, an Inca site of landscape sculpture, ritual worship, astronomical observation, and agronomic experimentation. The concentric terraces that suddenly yawn below us like a negative impression of Ollantaytambo create a wide range of micro-climates, growing warmer as one descends.  Although the absence of decipherable Inca records leaves uncertainty, it is likely that it was designed for testing and breeding some of the thousands of varieties of potatoes and corn and other crops precisely suited for diverse Andean environments.

Toward the north, the Cordillera’s glaciers loom, though shrinking and collapsing due to global warming.

Toward the east, following the course of the Urumbamba river down toward the Amazon, one can see the tall peaks surrounding Machu Picchu.

Alvaro approaches a huge aloe, puts his mouth around the devilishly sharp point of one of its leaves, bites, chews and pulls with an intensity that makes his whole body shake.

Finally he pulls back, leaving a bundle of fibers protruding from the stalk and removes the point which is attached to more of them.  “Inca needle and thread,” he says, “These are fibres they used to lash timbers and build suspension bridges.  They’re stronger than steel.”

Next we head to the town of Chinchero, home of numerous Andean weaving cooperatives catering to tourists and dedicated to preserving traditional materials and methods and to providing a source of income to poor rural families.

We’re greeted by Julio, an intense but reserved patriarch garbed in a gorgeous hat and poncho who speaks excellent English.  He is the owner of Wina Away.

He invites us to share a lunch of potato fritters, quinoa soup, rice and a mash of beans from Peruvian lupine prepared by his wife and served and shared by the resident weavers, women of several ages.

They come to his center from distant villages and stay with their children for weeks at a time, perfecting their skills and laboriously producing the gorgeous fabrics they wear and offer for sale here and in certified outlets in Qosqo.  The meticulous production goes slowly but they receive a large enough percentage of the retail price to make it worthwhile.

Once lunch is cleared with the assistance of our group, we move chairs and tables for a demonstration of the craft techniques.  A beguiling little boy watches.

His young mother suddenly picks him up and wraps him in a blanket she ties on her back.

Within a few minutes he falls asleep and she puts him down in a bedroom and returns to work.

First stage of the process is to wash the raw alpaca wool with a lather made from the grated root of a plant they spend hours foraging for in remote mountain locations.

The cleaned wool is spun on a drop spindle like those we have seen women using alongside the road and in the market.

They die the wool using various natural materials that produce vibrant and durable colors.

Colchinea squooshed out of the prickly pear beetle is mixed with lemon juice to produce a bright crimson.

We get our own chance to dip and color the wool.

The warp is strung by two weavers rolling balls of died yarn back and forth between wooden poles.

One end of the completed warp is strapped to the weaver who moves the shuttle with a bewildering flurry of gestures out which the intricate pattern slowly emerges.

[Click photo for movie]

The final products are marketed by their creators.  Jan and I admire a table runner that takes a person several weeks to produce. It’s design includes the Inca princess’ eyes around the edge, a figure-eight shaped symbol of the seasons, and a line of snow covered mountains.

We buy it for eighty dollars. There is no bargaining.

Slideshow of these and more full-size photos

Link to Day 9

Then, the city’s central market, which all this week in celebration of New Year’s is festooned with yellow balloons, streamers, confetti and underwear.

Inside is a riot of colors, sounds and smells and of merchandise, costumes and activity.

[Click image for movie]

We pass through packed streets to the bus and drive by another new community on the hillside to a 17^th century church overlooking the city

and then a little higher to Sacsaywaman, an immense Inka temple fortress laid out in the shape of a bolt of lightning. It was the scene of a famous battle between Pizarro and the rebel Emperor Manco Inka, and still competes for prominence with the large statue of Christ on an adjoining hilltop.

Much of the temple was dismantled by the Spanish to build the cathedrals that were intended to replace it, but the megalithic foundation stones, perfectly fitted and exquisitely shaped–here like a puma’s paw–have withstood Qosqo’s earthquakes and provide a site for locals to enjoy holiday picnics.

Another stop brings us to Q’engo, an underground labyrinth carved out of a natural rock formation where Inkan royalty were mummified.

Two minutes down the road we get off the bus at the edge of a field overlooking the city. A shadowy figure appears in the distance sitting under a thatched pavilion.

As we take seats, Alvaro introduces him as a curandero or shaman, a healer who has traveled here a long way from the highlands to conduct a ceremony for us. We agree to refrain from picture taking while the ritual proceeds. The curandero unfolds a blanket and covers it with a large white sheet of paper. He pours libations of beer on the ground and unfolds small packets containing corn, rice, sugar, candies, flowers, potatoes, alpaca jerky and other substances and arranges them in a mandala-like pattern surrounded by cotton for clouds and multicolored strings for Inka roads. He rocks and chants to himself like a davener in synagogue. All of this is meant as an expression of gratitude to the earth goddess, Pachamama.

He folds the loaded paper into a compact bundle, tucks coca leaves into the top and blows on them,  laying hands on each person in the group. To dispose of any illness or ill-feeling, Alvaro says we should exhale it onto the packet. When everyone has done so, the curandero places the bundle on a wood fire Alvaro has kindled outside. As it burns, he poses for more photos and accepts gratuities.

Though logically contradictory, it doesn’t seem inappropriate that we offer up both our goods and our evils to the goddess. And given the prevalence of coughs and swollen eyes at this stage in the trip, the promise of a purge of poisons adds immediacy to the exotic ritual.

We cross the road to an unobtrusive storefront and inside find a large showroom full of alpaca woolens of varying grades. Alvaro encourages us to buy here rather than on the street or in the markets for the best prices and quality. Jan and I comply, purchasing gifts for friends and relatives back home and for ourselves.

The day’s planned activities conclude at a hillside restaurant with panoramic views of the city where  luncheon is served by a woman in spectacular traditional garb.

On the way back to the bus after the meal, we’re serenaded by passing holiday celebrants.

[Click image for movie]

While Jan stays at the hotel, adding rest, antihistamine and more ibuprofen to the curandero’s cure, I explore the walled streets of the central downtown for an hour or so, but then join her, satiated with stimulation and grateful for the chance to read more in Mann’s 1491 about the historical background of what we’ve seen .

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Linnk to Day 8

The sound of the rapids echoing between the high walls of the canyon roars through the town and adds excitement to our departure for the heights.

When we arrive, the site and surroundings are predictably obsured by fog.

Alvaro leads the group in a prayer at the edge

The clouds begin to lift. Yesterday’s amazing sights take on a living presence, mysterious and intimate.

It seems like the renting of a veil, the parting of a curtain, the revelation of divine nature, Pachamama’s gift.

This is a moment together Jan and I are supremely privileged to share and preserve.

Our group leaves the confines of the city and is led slowly by our guides toward a viewpoint looking down on it from above.

Anyone who wishes to go on ahead has permission to hike to the Sun Gate, the high pass through which Machu Picchu first appears to those traveling by foot along the Inka Trail, the 500 year old original approach.

I welcome the chance for more exercise and a little solitude.  Half an hour later I encounter another member of our party. He accepts my assistance in climbing the rock wall below a small opening in the jungle that provides the only possible opportunity within miles to go to the bathroom. On the way out, he slips and falls on the stone path. He’s in great pain but refuses offers to call for help or accompany him back to the bus.  He will reach the Sun Gate!  With the assistance of four Ibuprofen and my spring-loaded trekking pole heroically he reaches his goal.

Meanwhile, despite her injured knee and with the help of her two trekking poles and more Ibuprofen, Jan mounts hundreds of stone steps to the lower viewpoint. Little Al calls her the lady on four legs.

On the way back to the train she bargains in the market for silver earrings decorated with an Andean cross and symbols of the months and for a table cloth woven in the rainbow colors of the Qosqo flag.

The bus trip back to Qosqo offers our first view of the snow-covered mountains of the Cordillera Blanca.

Jan too is coming down with the cold that’s hit most members of the group. Having landed in a comfortable hotel room, we both decline to join the late night New Year’s Eve festivities in the central plaza and fall asleep well before the end of 2012.

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Linnk to Day 7

She says we’re from San Luis Obispo California. He says he’s been there to visit his aunt who was a physician with Doctors Without Borders recently killed in a plane crash. Jan says she’d met her once and we both attended the funeral of her volunteer pilot, whom we knew as an environmental activist.

Like our son Joe, Pacifico is a mountain bike and offroad motorcycle enthusiast, and head of the Lima Mountain Bike Association, which is now big enough to afford him employment.  His partner, Maria, is a fashion designer.  He shows me his bike and points out the trail on a distant hillside that he’s built by himself.

Ruefully we leave this beautiful enclave and head back to Ollantaytambo to catch the train for Machu Picchu. On the way we stop at a house marked by a red plastic bag on a stick, the sign for a chicha bar, one of the several found in all rural villages.

The doorway is painted with a design copied from an ancient inscription.  Long before the Inkas, this form of corn liquor has been a staple of the Andean pharmacopeia and diet, just like the coca leaves on the figure’s headress.

In the courtyard, Alvaro shows us the bar game of Sapo, which involves tossing heavy bronze disks into the mouth of the frog and various other orifices.  I enjoy playing, even though my aim has always been terrible.

Inside another kitchen that seems like a museum display, we are introduced to the brewer-hostess.

She demonstrates the process of making chicha: sprouting corn kernels, fermenting them, filtering and stirring the brew in large clay pots and ending up with the either the cheap plain or the more expensive variety flavored with strawberries.

Peruvians are known to drink it by the half gallon, but we each only take a sip, reluctant to imbibe anything that might weaken tolerance for the altitude.

Near the bathroom at the back of the bar, we discover another little guinea pig barn, a lovingly arranged tool-storage wall, and a quinoa plant, which I’ve never seen, even though I eat a lot of this Peruvian staple.

Alvaro stops the bus again to grab some beetles infesting a prickly pear cactus by the side of the road.  He crunches them on a sheet of paper to reveal the source of cochineal, the red pigment used as a fabric dye, cosmetic, and wall paint.

At Ollantaytambo, we board the train that travels beyond the end of the road down the narrowed Urumbamba valley, now a canyon. We pass a footbridge at the start of the Inca Trail, the beginning of a four-day trek to Machu Picchu on the old stone road which now requires advance registration, a guide and porters.

Another footbridge rests on original Inka piers. As we descend in altitude the surrounding vegetation turns to thick tropical jungle.

The railroad terminus is Aguas Caliente, a bustling tourist town on either side of the tributary that dashes down from fog-enshrouded peaks to converge with the Urumbamba.

There we meet “little Alvaro,” another licensed guide who assists our Alvaro, and we board one of a steady stream of buses carrying visitors up the “Hiram Bingham highway,” named after the Yale explorer who claimed to discover the ruins of the lost city in 1911. In fact, they were shown to him by local farmers who lived on the site, but Bingham must share credit with Pachacuti the original builder for creating an economic bonanza for later generations.

As the river shrinks to a narrow ribbon below, surrounding mountains break through the clouds.

Then we’re off the bus, through the mass scene at the entrance kiosk where passports must be shown and the $60 entrance fee paid, and out on a terrace for the first view of the place.  Though I’ve seen it on countless brochures and billboards, nevertheless here in person, it shuts the mouth, quiets the brain, and fills the eyes with wonder. Walls, terraces, houses, temples, the jungle, the clouds above, the adjacent summit of Huayna Picchu, the peaks rising from the river below, the myriad miniscule people–all that variety in a unified three dimensional panorama.

After the initial impression of the whole, I take in more of the specifics: steep agricultural terraces and drainage corridors,

waterfalls tumbling out of the cloud forest,

structures hewn out of and bedrock and grafted onto it,

Huayna Picchu peak chiseled with staircases and topped with temples,

animals domestic and wild.

Despite the rainy season, the weather is dry and the clouds are clearing.  Alvaro’s prayers have worked!  He leads the group to the Temple of the Condor, a dazzling statue of one of the three sacred beasts of the Inka, representing the realm of the sky, and also a site for sacrificial offerings.

photo credit

He says his prayer, offers some coca leaves, and distributes mouthfuls to the rest of us. The sun comes out, revealing the primary deity the Inka worshipped.

He impresses upon us their aesthetic appreciation, their scientific observation, and their spiritual responsiveness to the natural environment.  Here a stellar observatory in protected reflecting ponds

Here a carved imitation of the peak behind it

Here, at the zenith of the site, a sundial.

In front of Mount Machu Picchu, we stop for a group portrait–travellers from Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Arizona, and California.

At the base of the southwest side of the ridge, the river twists downstream.

To the northwest, peaks of the Cordillera momentarily  appear thousands of feet above us.

The most polished masonry of Machu Picchu is reserved for the Temple of the Sun, a structure twinned by Korikancha, a temple in the middle of the city of Qosqo and aligned with it along a mysterious network of meridians.

The temple perches on a rough rock face above a cave used for the preparation of mummies which represents the underworld realm of the dead, presided over by the snake god.

As we head back to the entrance late in the day, the contrast deepens between shadow and light.  Color, shape and texture take on intoxicating intensity.

Down in the valley, we walk to dinner at a gaudy restaurant where we’re serenaded by a lively group of traditional musicians. The we check in for the night at a friendly little hotel.

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Link to Day 6

It’s raining as the bus follows the river further downstream, parallel to the railroad to Machu Picchu, past a recent road washout, an earthern building site, and kids playing during school holidays.

The ancient agricultural methods of cultivating potatoes and and corn on terraces and the fertile valley floor remain in use.

We arrive at Ollantaytambo, a city conquered and rebuilt by the first Inka Emperor Pachakuti in the mid 15^th century and maintained as a private preserve by his family until serving as a hideout for Manco Inka during his rebellion a hundred years later. Beyond it the Valley gets narrower and drops more steeply toward the Amazon basin.

Alvaro leads us through a stone portal into the courtyard of a private residence.

Ducks and ducklings peck at the doorway of the stone dwelling we crowd into.  A wood fire burns in the clay stove providing welcome heat. Bunches of corn hang from the ceiling. An altar decked with blackened ancestral skulls and fresh flowers rises above a stone shelf packed with unearthed artifacts–figurines, masks, mortars and pestles and polished phalli.

In one corner a cute flock of guinea pigs chirp and feed on grass, fattening themselves for an upcoming dinner by their owners.

Alvaro explains that one lumpy sphere represents the earth dotted with Apus.

We leave the house and proceed through town along perfectly aligned walls and streets grooved with gutters conducting water down from the high mountains toward the gate of a temple complex.

A blind harpist in bright garb serenades the entrants. [click image to play movie]

Our guide leads us to a low-walled enclosure at the base of the mountain spur that guards the valley and demonstrates the method of using coca, the reverenced herb enjoyed by Andean natives for millennia.  First three dried leaves are grasped in the hand, blown upon and thanked.

Then a bunch of leaves is vigorously chewed mixed with a bit of catalyst—the charred residue of cooked quinoa.  The resulting wad is held in one cheek and periodically switched to the other. Most people in the group are willing to try it, but the crumbly texture and astringent taste are not to everyone’s liking.

It affords no drug high but I do feel the predicted effects—a reduction in the breathlessness caused by the 8000 foot altitude, increased stamina during ascent of the steep terraces, and slight euphoria.

In addition to tourists, the site is crowded with groups of students, more evidence of the pride Peruvians share in their ancient heritage along with the country’s modern economic expansion.

Facing us across the valley, another vertical rock face shows mysterious formations that Alvaro explains are Inka granaries and warehouses, easily defensible and set in a microclimate that’s drier and cooler than the valley below.

A stern visage sculpted from the rock represents Wiracochan, the emissary of the creator god, Wiracocha. On the winter solstice the rising sun illuminates it directly and sharpens the profile.

The higher we climb, the finer the stonework—the joints tighter, the rock faces smoother, the angles more uniform.

At the top of the ridge, overlooking the valley upstream and down, a set of monoliths of uncertain religious function display faint bas reliefs, one recognizable as the Andean cross.

An unfinished cut of the facet of one stone shows the use of some kind of saw.

The wind and rain at the top temple get stronger and Alvaro prays intensely for the better weather he promised for our visit to Machu Picchu. He once aspired to be a shaman but learned that the calling is an endowment available only to those who inherit it.

The way down is along narrow paths cut from the vertical rock rather than stepped down in terraces.

The bus returns to Urumbamba, where we’re welcomed into another private home, this one quite modern and, like most Peruvian domiciles, in a continuing condition of construction and expansion.  OAT has arranged for us to visit a family, share in their food preparation and meal, and bring them little gifts from the U.S.  The Dad is away at work, but here are Grandma, the person in charge, her daughter, and the daughter’s three daughters–two grade-six twins, and a younger child suffering from severe developmental disabilities yet fully integrated into domestic life.

In the large dining room used for family gatherings, a side table displays varieties of local foods that, I’ve discovered, many Peruvians exhibit for their aesthetic beauty as well as practical value.

Some group members help to cook, dredging and sautéing the chile rellenos. One slaughters the guinea pig with an instantaneous twist of the neck. Grandma cleans the carcass before cooking it on a wood stove. It’s presented in the traditional manner.  Jan says it tastes like a cross between chicken and rabbit, but I decline to partake.

The meal is of exceptional variety and quality, enriched with fresh local ingredients and friendly cross-cultural communication.

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Link to Day 5