"The center of the world"

"Far from being only a quaint tourist destination Ecuador has a history of scientific expeditions and cultural missions.While California and your local toystore may be the place to look to identify trends like outsourcing or robotics, Ecuador has always been a place to find things that are far more important, permanent and sometimes very fragile or fleeting."-Terry

1930's Pan Am Poster

Humboldt and the Origins of Romantic Biology

Darwin is destined for life as a country parson. But before settling into such a quiet life, he yearns to have an adventure in the tropics. He reads and rereads Alexander von Humboldt's inspiring account of his expeditions through the rain forest.

"All the while I am writing now my head is running about the Tropics: in the morning I go and gaze at Palm trees in the hot-house and come home and read Humboldt: my enthusiasm is so great that I cannot hardly sit still on my chair ... I never will be easy till I see the peak of Teneriffe and the great Dragon tree; sandy, dazzling plains, and gloomy silent forest are alternately uppermost in my mind ... I have written myself into a Tropical glow."

Humboldt's Personal Narrative is more than just an exciting travelogue. It touches on some of the most important scientific questions of the time, and hints that the answers can be found through an exploration of nature.

COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe
Volume One of Kosmos at the Gutenberg Project

The first two volumes of the Kosmos were published, and in the main composed, between the years 1845 and 1847. The idea of a work which should convey not only a graphic description, but an imaginative conception of the physical world which should support generalization by details, and dignify details by generalization, had floated before his mind for upwards of half a century. It first took definite shape in a set of lectures delivered by him before the university of Berlin in the winter of 1827-1828.

These lectures formed, as his latest biographer expresses it, "the cartoon for the great fresco of the Kosmos." The scope of this remarkable work may be briefly described as the representation of the unity amid the complexity of nature. In it the large and vague ideals of the 18th are sought to be combined with the exact scientific requirements of the 19th century. And, in spite of inevitable shortcomings, the attempt was in an eminent degree successful.

A certain heaviness of style, too, and laborious picturesqueness of treatment make it more imposing than attractive to the general reader. But its supreme and abiding value consists in its faithful reflection of the mind of a great man. No higher eulogium can be passed on Alexander von Humboldt than that, in attempting, and not unworthily attempting, to portray the universe,

Frank Edwin Church-Cotopaxi

Cotopaxi soars almost 20,000 feet above sea level. Through the teachings of the great German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, whose extensive South American explorations and publications awakened the outside world to the wonders of the American tropics, its status as the highest active volcano on earth was well known to the audience gathered at Goupil's Gallery.

"The form of Cotopaxi is the most beautiful and regular of the colossal summits of the high Andes," Humboldt had written, but it "is also the most dreadful volcano of the kingdom of Quito and it's explosions the most frequent and disastrous"

Humboldt's description of its exotic beauty and latent powers of destruction proved fascinating to Church, who drew and painted it frequently. Church's interest in the subject was so closely linked with the great explorer's name that upon the exhibition of Cotopaxi in 1863, it was announced that he had vindicated "his claim to be considered as the artistic Humboldt of the new world."

Chimborazo: Ecuadors highest peak

Read more about Frank Edwin Church here.

Joseph Conrad

Nostromo Online

Conrad's foresight and his ability to pluck the human adventure from complex historical circumstances were such that his greatest novel, Nostromo -- though nearly one hundred years old -- says as much about today's Latin America as any of the finest recent accounts of that region's turbulent political life. Insistently dramatic in its storytelling, spectacular in its recreation of the subtropical landscape, this picture of an insurrectionary society and the opportunities it provides for moral corruption gleams on every page with its author's dry, undeceived, impeccable intelligence.

Charles Marie de la Condamine:
Explorer, Mathematician, and Scientist

Charles Marie de la Condamine and the French Geodesic Mission to Measure the Equator(Jan. 28, 1701-Feb. 4, 1774),

Condamine was a French mathematician, physicist, explorer, and geographer. La Condamine was sent to Ecuador in 1735 to measure the Earth at the equator. He also scientifically explored and mapped the Amazon region as he rafted to the mouth of the Amazon. Earlier in his life, La Condamine took exploratory trips to Algiers, Alexandria, Palestine, Cyprus, and Constantinople. At the time, there was a debate as to whether the Earth was wider around the equator or around the poles. The King of France and the French Royal Academy of Sciences sent two expeditions to determine the answer; one was sent to Lapland (this expedition included the Swedish physicist Anders Celsius) and another to Ecuador.

La Condamine was in the Ecuadorian group, which included Louis Godin and the mathematician Pierre Bouguer. The Ecuadorian expedition left France in May 1735. They landed in Colombia and traveled overland to Panama, then sailed to Ecuador. La Condamine traveled through rainforests with Pedro Vincente Maldonado, a local governor and scientist-mathematician. They sailed up the Esmeraldas River and then climbed up the Andes Mountains. They arrived in Quito, Ecuador, on June 4, 1736.

They finished their measurements by 1739, measuring the length of an arc of one degree at the equator, but they got word that the Lapland expedition had already finished their work and had proven that the Earth is flattened at the poles. La Condamine remained in South America for four more years, doing scientific work and mapping some of the Andes and much of the Amazon River. He returned to France by climbing the Andes Mountains and rafting down the Amazon River. He arrived in Paris in 1745, 10 years after he left France.

"Some people think Darwin discovered the theory of evolution. The Frenchman Lamarque did. What Darwin discovered was the mechanism of evolution-Natural selection. Of equal importance was the effect of this discovery or series of discoveries on civilization. It placed all scientific inquiry on an equal footing with nature more or less permanently. The rest of the world is still catching up.

During my own visit to the Galapagos Islands I noticed the same thing as Darwin. the tameness of the animals. Below is an excerpt from Darwin's diaries that discussed the significance of this discovery. Animals learn fear of man. Instinctually. In the world that Darwin came from, religion with it's unique worldview described fear as the opposite of faith itself. Faith and light oppose fear and leads to informed action. Religion then is a kind of sense instead of a force like nature. This is what Darwin and his colleagues missed or set into opposite motion that our senses and instincts are formed in opposition to one another." TM

The Voyage of the Beagle journal(click on image)

"I will conclude my description of the natural history of these islands, by giving an account of the extreme tameness of the birds. This disposition is common to all the terrestrial species; namely, to the mocking-thrushes, the finches, wrens, tyrant- flycatchers, the dove, and carrion-buzzard. All of them are often approached sufficiently near to be killed with a switch, and sometimes, as I myself tried, with a cap or hat.

"A gun is here almost superfluous;"

for with the muzzle I pushed a hawk off the branch of a tree. One day, whilst lying down, a mocking-thrush alighted on the edge of a pitcher, made of the shell of a tortoise, which I held in my hand, and began very quietly to sip the water; it allowed me to lift it from the ground whilst seated on the vessel: I often tried, and very nearly succeeded, in catching these birds by their legs.

Formerly the birds appear to have been even tamer than at present. Cowley (in the year 1684) says that the "Turtledoves were so tame, that they would often alight on our hats and arms, so as that we could take them alive, they not fearing man, until such time as some of our company did fire at them, whereby they were rendered more shy." Charles darwin-Voyage of the Beagle

Francisco Orellana and the Search for El Dorado

The legend of El Dorado, The Golden King or The Gilded Man, was born in Quito at the very beginning of 1541. Spaniards were returning from Venezuela and Colombia with wild tales of a land richer than either Mexico or Peru. This, they said, was a land of gold that was ruled by a Golden King. The historian Gonzalo Fern·ndez de Oviedo traveled to Quito and he questioned those who been on these expeditions:

"I made an inquiry of those Spaniards who had been there, why this prince, chief or king, was called Dorado. They tell me that what they have learned from the Indians is that the great lord or prince goes about continually covered in gold dust as fine as ground salt. He feels that it would be less beautiful to wear any other ornament.

It would be crude and common to put on armour plates or hammered or stamped gold, for other rich lords wear these when they wish. But to powder oneself with gold is something exotic and unusually novel, and more costly, for he washes away at night what he puts on each morning, so that it is discarded and lost, and he does this every day of the year."The prince, the men told Oviedo, was very great and fabulously rich:"

Every morning he anoints himself with a kind of resin or gum to which the gold dust easily adheres, until his entire body is covered, from the soles of his feet to his head.

So his looks are as resplendent as a gold object worked by the hands of a great artist." In fact, the tale appeared to be based on an actual ceremony of the Chibcha people of Colombia. Each year the Chibcha would anoint a new king, covering him with gold dust and then cleansing him in the waters of a sacred lake, Guatavita, (Gwa-ta-vee-ta). Though the ritual was no longer practiced by the time of the Spaniards' arrival, the story had been passed on by the Indians and had blossomed into the myth of El Dorado which would captivate men for several centuries to come.

Blowing Gold Dust on an Indian Chieftain After His Body Had Been Anointed With Balsam
Credit: Theodor de Bry, British Library

The legend of El Dorado continued to inspire artists, poets and authors for centuries after the initial expeditions to the golden kingdom. British poet George Chapman wrote his epic poem "De Guiana" in 1596, glorifying Sir Walter Raleigh's journey. Over 150 years later, Voltaire sends his protagonist to a utopian El Dorado, the best of all possible worlds, in his satirical work "Candide." And, following centuries of European obsession with the fabulous land of gold, Edgar Allen Poe darkly portrayed the futility of such mania in his poem, "Eldorado." "De Guiana" Guiana, whose rich feet are mines of gold,

Whose forehead knocks against the roof of stars, Stands on her tiptoes at fair England looking, Kissing her hand, bowing her mighty breast, And every sign of submission making,To be her sister and the daughter, both,Of our most sacred maid, whose barrenessIs the true fruit of virtue, that may get,Bear and bring forth anew in all perfection,What heretofore savage corruption heldIn barbarous chaos.

Poem excerpt: George Chapman, "De Guiana," 1596 "Eldorado"

Gaily bedight, A gallant knight,In sunshine and in shadow,Had journeyed long, Singing a song,In search of Eldorado. But he grew old - This knight so bold - And o'er his heart a shadow Fell, as he found No spot of groundThat looked like Eldorado. And, as his strengthFailed him at length,He met a pilgrim shadow - "Shadow," said he, "Where can it be - This land of Eldorado?" "Over the Mountains Of the Moon Down the Valley of the Shadow,Ride, boldly ride," The shade replied, - "If you seek for Eldorado!"

Poem: Edgar Allan Poe, "Eldorado," Flag of Our Union (Boston), April 21, 1849 "Candide" Chapter 18 - What They Saw in the Country of El Dorado .

While supper was preparing, orders were given to show them the city, where they saw public structures that reared their lofty heads to the clouds; the marketplaces decorated with a thousand columns; fountains of spring water, besides others of rose water, and of liquors drawn from the sugarcane, incessantly flowing in the great squares, which were paved with a kind of precious stones that emitted an odor like that of cloves and cinnamon. Candide asked to see the High Court of justice, the Parliament; but was answered that they had none in that country, being utter strangers to lawsuits. He then inquired if they had any prisons; they replied none.

But what gave him at once the greatest surprise and pleasure was the Palace of Sciences, where he saw a gallery two thousand feet long, filled with the various apparatus in mathematics and natural philosophy. After having spent the whole afternoon in seeing only about the thousandth part of the city, they were brought back to the King's palace. Candide sat down at the table with His Majesty, his valet Cacambo, and several ladies of the court. Never was entertainment more elegant, nor could any one possibly show more wit than His Majesty displayed while they were at supper. Cacambo explained all the King's bons mots to Candide, and, although they were translated, they still appeared to be bons mots.

Of all the things that surprised Candide, this was not the least."All we shall ask of Your Majesty," said Cacambo, "is only a few sheep laden with provisions, pebbles, and the clay of your country." The King smiled at the request and said, "I cannot imagine what pleasure you Europeans find in our yellow clay; but take away as much of it as you will, and much good may it do you." He immediately gave orders to his engineers to make a machine to hoist these two extraordinary men out of the kingdom. Three thousand good machinists went to work and finished it in about fifteen days, and it did not cost more than twenty millions sterling of that country's money.

Candide and Cacambo were placed on this machine, and they took with them two large red sheep, bridled and saddled, to ride upon, when they got on the other side of the mountains; twenty others to serve as sumpters for carrying provisions; thirty laden with presents of whatever was most curious in the country, and fifty with gold, diamonds, and other precious stones. The King, at parting with our two adventurers, embraced them with the greatest cordiality. Text excerpt: "Candide," Voltaire, 1752

Natives mining gold inside a mountain. Credit: Theodor de Bry, British Library

Travelling though the Andes

Independence Square in Old Quito


"Find out more about world heritage sites here"TM

A UNESCO World Heritage Site

"This is a travel article originally written for the Matrix travel site" TM

It was my good fortune, and privledge to live and work in Ecuador for a period of about three and one-half years between 1998 and 2001. These were hard times for the country. Leadership was crumbling and longstanding structural economic problems were once again coming to a boil.The Ecuadorian people are a stoic lot.

There are also many myths and contradictions there. They also have a positive outlook on the future that I find refreshing. Perhaps it is the good fortune of having one of the most naturally beautiful locations on earth that inspires them. The soil is very fertile due to volcanic ash and anything grows there.

It seems very difficult to imagine anyone going hungry since there is food displayed everywhere. But some do go hungry. Poverty continues to be a problem there as in the rest of the world. Seeing children begging in big cities bothers even long time residents who say it has not always been that way.

The climate seems ideal but it is also damp and many have told me about arthritic complaints. There is a great deal to see in a small space. Almost too much. If you are the type who likes a lot of variety Ecuador is ideal. At first everything seems new and interesting there like a fantasy world. If you do not believe me look at old Quito from a hill at night at the pink and pale blue houses lit up like a Christmas tree. This is a fantasy world! There is a sense of adventure everywhere you go as if you might be the first outsider to ever see or go to a certain place.

Of course this isn't true except in rare cases in remote mountain areas or jungle recesses. Ecuador will give you a perspective on life that is hard to get elsewhere. The fusion of art that is part aboriginal culture and part European is still apparent everywhere. It is like going back in time for a little while.

A lot of what Ecuador is ie a way of life is also passing thorugh the rear view mirror disappearing into the cities and the global village. As I supppose are many cultures around the world. So even if you are not the first to visit a volcano or walk through the street of a particular village you may quite possibly be one of the last to see it the way it has been for many hundreds of years or more.

So I recommend when traveling there to do your best to go as far off the beaten track as possible. Please be charitable to people when possible even if you are hardened by living in some industrial city in The North. It will make you feel much better about yourself. The people are often as curious about you as you are about them.

If language is a problem take a few Spanish lessons outside the capital where they are less expensive. It will help you to appreciate the culture more. Ecuador left me with many memories some good, some bad. But some lasting lessons about life and how precious what we have is and how we can all make a difference have stayed with me. So enjoy and don't forget to bring a camera.

Loja Days and Loja Nights

"This is the City of Loja where I lived for nearly four years." TM

Photos of the City and Surroundings

The Cuxibamba Valley

Videos of the Region of Loja


"The People of nearby Saraguro (The Sacred Valley) are the last descendants of Athualpa, the Incan Emperor of the Northern Kingdom of Ecuador. They wear black in perpetual mourning for the Incan Emperor and the Empire.

"Vilcabamba: (The Place of Refuge), Ecuador's fountain of youth.

The Valley of Long Life:Does Vilcabamba hold the secret to immortality?" TM

Don Alberto of Vilcabamba

When the medical world began studying longevity seriously in the 1960s, scientists flocked to Abhazia, Georgia, the Hunza, and Vilcabamba, Ecuador, sites renowned for the long life spans of their residents. In 1978, Dr. Richard Mazess published a study claiming that in Vilcabamba everyope was exaggerating their true ages. Since proper birth records did not exist, he based his premise on a genealgical survey of families in Vilcabamba, combined with baptism records that are for all purposes illegible.

Whether his conclusions are correct or not, they were accepted as fact.Mazess, who is a specialist on osteoporosis, had come here to study the remarkable lack of the disease in Vilcabamba. His studies were never really finished, since he became totally absorbed with the exaggeration thesis. He stated that only one centenarian in a population base this size was out of the ordinary. Two 100 year old residents here would be more than a miracle and deserve ampie study, At that time, 15 people in the valley claimed to be over a hundred. Mazess said they were all liars. He listed ten people he considered to be between 85 and 95, and who claimed to be centenarians. Of that list, two people are still alive.

Since the list was made in 1978, it would seem that Dr. Mazess has an obligation to do more research around Vilcabamba. However, he is now "retired" and still too busy to follow up his original report. In fact, hardly anyone in the scientific world is interested in the theme of natural longevity any more. The fad has passed and laboratory advances have made field work superfluous.

Dr. Alex Leaf, who came here with National Geographic, now quotes Richard Mazess as the authority on the old liars from Vilcabamba, and spends all his time researching fish oils. Perhaps fish oils are the salvation of humanity, and certainly it is more convenient than a trip to southem Ecuador. But there is still a whole lot to leam here in Vilcabamba that will never be discovered in a lab.

In 1982, Dr. Morton Walker arrived in Vilcabamba to investigate the cell mineralization of the local residents and its relationship with genetÌcs and the natural environment. Though Dr. Walker was not in Vilcabamba for very long, he managed to pinpoint numerous very interesting facts that establish the direction of future research here.

For a long time there had been some controversy over whether the supposed longevity in Vilcabamba was due to genetic factors. Since this area has been renowned in Ecuador and Peru for many generations as a sacred place where old people abound, some scientists were sure that it must be a gene that was responsible.Morton Walker took hair samples from the nape of numerous residents of various ages. These samples were carbonized and analysis was performed in a California lab.

The results showed exactly why the folks of Vilcabamba have healthy, long lives. When examining the data on children, one finds the kind of random mineralization that is common everywhere and is mostly due to genetic variation. By the time that they are young adults, there are many similarities in their cell mineralization.

Once the people of Vilcabamba are 50 years old, their body minerals are virtually identical, and accumulative toxic metals are at very low levels. Dr. Walker also had samples of the river water and various foods analyzed to see how their mineral ratios related to the cell minerals in the populace. These were even more revealing. The ratio of minerals common in all the old people was the same as the mineral ratio ofthe local water.

Foods that were irrigated with river water also had the same basic ratio. So, what's going on at the cellular level in Vilcabamba?Dr. Walker was already studying tbe relatively new field of mineral chelation at that time. It was not difficult for him and the lab technician, Gary Gordon, to connect Vilcabamba and natural chelation. Mr. Gordon stated that the people of Vilcabamba are getting a sophisticated chelation treatment from their environment for free. Dr. Walker claims that the ratio of calcium, magnesium and manganese in the water is virtually perfect, preventing calcium from leaving the bones once it is absorbed.

This obviously is the reason that Vilcabambans, who consume less than half the calcium that most Europeans do, never suffer from osteoporosis. This is what Richard Mazess missed while worrying about exactly how old everyone really was. Besides preventing osteoporosis, this ratio of minerals keeps calcium out of the blood where it will inevitably mix with nasty cholesterol and clog up the artenes and veins. All this loose calcium floating around in most older people's blood is stiffening up everything in their bodies that should be supple.

And of course, everything that should be hard and durable begins to crumble. In Vilcabamba, old people can still heal a broken bone, and they don't suffer from any diseases that have to do with calcium metabolism.In Vilcabamba, old people can still heal a broken bone, and they don't suffer from any diseases that have to do with calcium metabolism. What is it about the food and water of this place that makes it special? Fifteen kilometers above Vilcabamba is the continental divide and the highest local peaks. Up there it is almost constantly precipitating in one way or another. All water, including rain water, has some mineralization.

Only water distilled in a lab is pure. So, when our rain, drizzle or sleet fall on these mountains it is already carrying some dissolved solids. The ground on the very high ridges of the Andes is covered with thick grass-like plants that grow and die; but since they can't really rot at the temperature up there, they just continue to grow one on top of the other. What this creates is a deep vegetable sponge that filters and mineralizes the water as it passes through. The Andes in this area were covered by glaciers during the last ice-age.

These glaciers carved out shallow basins in the rock at about 3,000 meters of elevation. Now, they are lakes and their water have virtually the same mineralization as the river water in the valley below. The kinds of rocks that make up the lower terrains of the Andes are not particularly reactive to H20. So, all the minerals in Vilcabamba water, and the most important ones in the irrigated food chain are coming from a vegetable source.

These grasses of the Andean tundra and the forests that grow in wind-protected clefts are feeding on glacier-ground rock particles of an ancient age. Fortunately for Vilcabamba, far below, there are no dikes of precious metals lacing the upper watershed. Otherwise gold miners would have long ago contaminated the high creeks with mercury and other toxic by-products found all over the Andes. In fact, gold is found almost every place else around, besides the Vilcabamba watershed. Also, these highlands are too rough and rocky for agricultural purposes.

Therefore nobody's been fertilizing or fumigating up there. No one even lives up that high, since pasture animals cannot survive on this rough grass. Its minerals are balanced, but it has almost no protein. This tundra, cloud-forest area is useless, besides producing the most therapeutic water on the earth's surface. Some folks in the USA are already copying the mineralization of Vilcabamba in the lab. They sell the anti-oxidizing trace minerals of Vilcabamba and of course the bone preserving ratio of macroelements. Naturally, their products are far too expensive for even the richest people in Vilcabamba.

"There is a long history of biogeography, dating back to Linnaeus (1700's, Swedish) and Darwin and Wallace (1800's, British), when people started exploring the world and noting how species were distributed.Two eminent ecologists, the late Robert MacArthur of Princeton University and E. 0. Wilson of Harvard, developed a theory of "island biogeography" There have been several major developments since the early 1950's that have elicited new interest in biogeography. The one that stands out is the theory of plate tectonics and continental drift, which was only widely accepted in the late 1960's, although it was proposed as early as the 1850's." TM

Podocarpus Gateway to the Amazon

BIOGEOGRAPHY and the Amazon

"My last trip through the Andes was to Cuzco and Machu Pichu -An entire city designed as a place of refuge from an alien invading culture- Europeans.

Unfortunately I arrived in Lima on the heals of a half a million strong demonstration against Fujimori in Lima that tragically turned violent injuring tens of thousands and killing six."

©2005 Terry Mockler

Weak Democracy in Ecuador- Taking it to the Streets

First hand reports form Ecuador tell me that this was a non event in ecuador but itsn't the opposite equally true ? Isn't it the only game in town? Theatre of the absurd. Photographs from the demonstrations in Quito; the Ecuadorian capital that led to Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutierrez's inevitable ouster." Terry

Waging Peace-Building a model of Transparency one brick at a time

Be sure to click here and visit the Carter centre and see the video that shows just what a visionary Jimmy Carter actually is.

Most people in the world agree on what a great guy Jimmy Carter actually is. My uncle who is a lawyer in Canada actually got to meet Carter in the White House when Carter was President of the United States and he autographed an autobiograophy he had written with the following quote- "Don't complain don't explain just get even"-Jimmy Carter.

I suppose there is a story behind this I should tell. It is the story of one of the most wanted men in American at that time. Robert Vesco who perpretrated the largest fraud in US history and was running from the law. He had set up his corporation in the maritimes in the city of Saint John a sleepy economic backwater away from public scrutiny and used my uncles law firm to do it.

Carter supeonaed my uncle in the investigation to the White House. Vesco has since been apprehended. And my uncle says he has escrow over his accounts but he is owed money so if he ever moved a dime of the billions he defrauded from investors he would get first crack at it to pay his legal fees. That is one of the peculiarities of being a lawyer I guess some times you defend some pretty questionable people as long as they pay you that is.

My uncle said it was quite a defense he got to go to Geneva on the Concorde and at times Vesco would show up in Fredericton in a plane to meet him on the runway with the engines still running in case the Mounties showed up. My uncle said he was never sure where he would wind up when they met.

Jimmy Carters 2002 Nobel Peace Prize

President Gustavo Noboa invited The Carter Center to work with his government to combat corruption in Ecuador and to develop partnerships between the political and social sectors. Ecuador is ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in Latin America, according to Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index, and partisanship has slowed development.

The Center's Americas Program and Conflict Resolution Program began a project in spring 2000 to identify the issues dividing the country and bring national leaders together to discuss them. The issues were modernization of the state, fiscal decentralization via an autonomy law, and continuing corruption in the government and private sector. In late 2000, the Center worked with the political elites and experts to seek common ground on these issues.

Transparency International Secretariat

One thing about development in the third world that fascinated me in my years in Ecuador is how our mentality is tied to petroleum base culture. What do I mean by this you may be asking. Well Ecuador has been transforming itself as a result of the discovery and development of its oil and gas reserves.

To put this in perspective the entire proven and probable reserves of petroleum based products in Ecuador is equal to the daily consumption of the USA in one day. Thats right folks all the gas burnt in the US in one calendar day 24 hrs.

But when you go to the capital Quito. You can clearly see the section of the city that is shopping malls franchises like MacDonalds and cinemas playing Star Wars and inside the grocery store are consumption based goods things literally flown in from the USA at American prices. And it's all because of oil. A consumable highly distributable commodity.But changin the way we do things happens one person at a time.

Even we are mostly made of carbon and that carbon comes from billion year old dead stars. Supposedly petroleum comes from old fossils also millions if not billions of years old. They say there is about a thousand year supply left in the earth of fossil fuel but we may have to stop using it well before it runs out because of global warming. Sometimes I look at the ruins of Machu Pichu and think about the civilization that ran out of sacred time that was its very engine. Our civilization replaced those civilizations that sprang up independently with a monolithic one by destroying nature to buy back time. Might we meet a similar fate, might it be when we cease to rely on carbon based products?