Light at the Edge of the World by Wade Davis

lowland forest, with its thousand shades of green, envelops and consumes the imagination, and it is only when they are on the rivers that the Indians are able to see
the sky. The waterways are not just routes of communication; they are, for the Barasana, the veins of the Earth, the link between the living and the dead, the paths along which the ancestors travelled at the beginning of time. In an astonishing manner, as Reichel-Dolmatoff realized, myth and reality come together in adaptation, a fusion of the past and present that allows the Barasana to cope with the fragility of their lives and thus thrive in an environment that might otherwise so easily overwhelm. Like many nuances of culture, this is not something that the Barasana discuss or even think about. Rather, it is a theme embedded in their very essence, an impulse that lingers along the boundaries of their collective subconscious.
    Their origin myth speaks of a great journey from the east, in sacred canoes brought up the Milk River by enormous anacondas. Within the canoes were the first people, together with the three most important plants—coca, manioc and ayahuasca , gifts of Father Sun. On the heads of the anacondas were blinding lights, and in the canoes sat the Mythical Heroes in hierarchical order: chiefs, wisdom keepers, warriors, shamans, and, finally, in the stern, servants. All were brothers, children of the sun. When the snakes reached the centre of the world, they lay over the land, outstretched as rivers, their powerful heads forming river mouths, their tails winding away to remote headwaters,
the ripples in their skin giving rise to rapids and waterfalls.
    Each river welcomed a different canoe, and in each drainage the Mythical Heroes disembarked and settled, with the lowly servants heading upstream and the chiefs occupying the mouth. Thus, the rivers of the Vaupés were created and populated by different peoples. In time, the hierarchy of mythical times broke down, and on each of the rivers the descendants of those who had journeyed in the same sacred canoe came to live together. Still, they recognized each other as family, speakers of the same language, and to ensure that no brother married a sister, they invented strict rules. To avoid incest, a man had to choose a bride who spoke a different language.
    When a young woman marries, she moves to the longhouse of her husband. Their children will be raised in the language of the father, but naturally will learn their mother’s tongue. Their mother, meanwhile, will be working with their aunts, the wives of their father’s brothers. But each of these women may come from a different linguistic group. In a single settlement, as many as a dozen languages may be spoken, and it is quite common for an individual to be fluent in as many as five. Through time, there has been virtually no corrosion of the integrity of each language. Words are never interspersed or pidginized.
Nor is a language violated by those attempting to pick it up. To learn, one listens without speaking until the language is mastered.
    One inevitable consequence of this unusual marriage rule—what anthropologists call linguistic exogamy—is a certain tension in the lives of the people. The tradition prevents the people of any one river from becoming inbred. With the quest for potential marriage partners ongoing, and the distances between neighbouring language groups considerable, cultural mechanisms must exist to ensure that eligible young men and women come together on a regular basis. Thus, the importance of the gatherings and great festivals that mark the seasons of the year. Through sacred dance, the recitation of myth and the sharing of coca and ayahuasca, these celebrations promote the spirit of reciprocity and exchange on which the entire social system depends, even as they link through ritual the living with the mythical ancestors and the beginning of time. Myth and language, trade and procreation, all are