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2010-01-16 04:42:43
The Men Who Live Forever
In the hills of Mexico, a tribe of Indians carries an ancient secret: a diet
and fitness regimen that has allowed them to outrun death and disease. We set
out to discover how the rest of us can catch up.
This tribe may be one of the most ancient cultures on the planet, but, as I
discovered in my preexpedition research, its members actually have a lot in
common with the average American guy.
Tarahumara men have a taste for corn snacks and beer, for instance. They're
hard workers, but come downtime, they party like a rap star's roadies.
According to one of the few outsiders to witness a tesguinada -- a full-on
Tarahumara rave -- women were ripping the tops off each other in a
bare-breasted wrestling match, while their husbands watched in glassy-eyed,
drunken paralysis. Tarahumara men love sports, booze, and gambling so much,
they'll stay up all night to watch a game, down enough beer in a year to spend
every third day buzzed or recovering, and support their teams by literally
betting the shirts on their backs.
Sound familiar? But here's where American and Tarahumara men part company: Many
of us will be killed by heart disease, stroke, and gastrointestinal cancers.
Almost none of them will.
None.
When it comes to the top 10 health risks facing American men, the Tarahumara
are practically immortal: Their incidence rate is at or near zero in just about
every category, including diabetes, vascular disease, and colorectal cancer.
Age seems to have no effect on them, either: The Tarahumara runner who won the
1993 Leadville ultramarathon was 55 years old. Plus, their supernatural
invulnerability isn't just limited to their bodies; the Tarahumara have
mastered the secret of happiness as well, living as benignly as bodhisattvas in
a world free of theft, murder, suicide, and cruelty.
So how do they do it? How is it that we, in one of the most technologically
advanced nations on Earth, can devote armies of scientists and terabytes of
data to improving our lives, yet keep getting fatter, sicker, and sadder, while
the Tarahumara, who haven't changed a thing in 2,000 years, don't just survive,
but thrive? What have they remembered that we've forgotten?
That's the mystery that brought me here, to the deep Mexican outback, for this
impromptu sunset encounter with three ambassadors from the past. Salvador eases
the truck to a stop, and we slowly slide out. The three men facing us are
dressed in white toga skirts and bright, billowing blouses that look like
pirate shirts. Their faces are hard and angular, and their jet black hair is
chopped low over their eyes in bowl cuts. On their feet are thin sandals lashed
high around their calves with leather thongs, the kind you'd wear to a
Halloween party if you were playing Julius Caesar.
"Cuira," Salvador greets them.
"Cu raga," one of the men replies.
This "Hi/Hi to you" exchange pretty much exhausts Salvador's Tarahumara
vocabulary. The Tarahumara speak an ancient, pre-Aztec language so obscure, it
ended up accidentally changing their name. They really call themselves Rar
muri, or "The Running People," which was misunderstood by the conquistadors who
invaded in the 16th century.
Luckily, we all know enough Spanish to make ourselves understood. Once they
learn that we're not members of the murderous Fontes drug cartel, which has
been terrorizing the canyons, one of the men -- Alejandro -- agrees to guide us
by foot to his village, somewhere far below.
"If we leave in the morning, we should make it by dark," Alejandro says, then
takes a second look at my all-too-American body. "If we leave very early."