Monkey's Bridge: Mysteries of Evolution in Central America [Paperback]

David Rains Wallace (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1999

This exploration of Central America combines vivid travel writing, reflections on the landscape and culture and meditations on the ecosystems unique to this region.'

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Central America is unique among the earth's land masses: it is neither an island nor a continent, neither cape nor peninsula?it simply connects two continents. The final formation of this land bridge some three million years ago is believed to have dramatically altered the global climate. A tremendous species exchange occurred over time, resulting in a biodiversity of unprecedented proportions. Astoundingly, seven percent of the earth's species are supported by Central America's less than one percent land mass. Award-winning nature writer Wallace made nine trips there over a 24-year period, during which he explored rain forests, reefs, and rivers, searched for fossils, and talked to natives, marshaling his observations into this impressive yet compact book. Written in an engaging style, this is a valuable resource for conservationists, ecotourists, evolutionists, and anyone interested in learning more about this fascinating region. Recommended for public and academic libraries.?Gloria Maxwell, Kansas City P.L., Kan.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

The unique evolutionary story of the species-rich Central American land bridge is eloquently chronicled by Wallace (The Quetzal and the Macaw, 1992, etc.). Five million years ago, the Isthmus of Panama, the final puzzle-piece of what became known as Central America, poked its head above water, initiating the Great American Biotic Interchange. Species that had been specific to either North or South America commenced to cruise: dogs, cats, and deer went one way across the bridge, armadillos, porcupines, and opossums the other. Wallace's own first trip south, in 1971, was to Guatemala, where the unusual mixture of animals and plants aroused his curiosity. Why, he asked himself, was he running into turkeys and foxes in the deepest jungle? So he went back, time and again, to peruse the land bridge's complex physiography, a tangle of blue mountains and malarial lowlands, high plateaus and sierras, jaguar-infested savannas, lively volcanoes, and limestone caves. While delineating these landscapes, as well as the astounding fauna and flora, he twines the narrative with histories of Western adventurers (like Christopher Columbus, for whom a land bridge was the last thing he wanted to encounter, and who died convinced that Panama was southern China); the studies of naturalists such as the pirate William Dampier and Dominican priest Francisco Ximenez; tales of fossil-hunter Barnum Brown and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould; and a portrait of the lives of today's inhabitants, described by one researcher thus: ``You can go from one little municipio to the next and find not just a completely different language, but a completely different way of looking at the world.'' Wallace's wildlife gleanings are enviable: pheasant cuckoos, orange-bellied trogons, rainbow cichlids. A vibrant natural (and human) history of a biomassive throughway where large patches still remain unknown. (2 maps, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Sierra Club Books for Children; First Paperback Edition First Printing edition (February 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1578050189
• ISBN-13: 978-1578050185
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,653,642 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great start to understanding the Central American tropics, April 7, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Monkey's Bridge: Mysteries of Evolution in Central America (Hardcover)

Reviewed for The Wilderness Record, publication of the California Wilderness Coalition.

Most California environmentalists are familiar with the works of David Rains Wallace, having read his award-winning The Klamath Knot, the superb natural history of the greater Siskiyou region, or The Turquoise Dragon, an enchanting eco-thriller that takes the reader from the Bay Area to the Trinity Alps and Kalmiopsis wilderness areas. If you enjoyed these or a dozen other of his books, you will appreciate The Monkey's Bridge.

Wallace's latest natural history treatise looks at the region that linked North and South America some three million years ago and the amazing mix of flora and fauna that surged back and forth across this land bridge. His knack for bringing an region to life makes it a delight to learn about hundreds of species, volcanoes, plate tectonics, and gomphotheres.

But Wallace tells more of the story than just the natural history. He begins with the adventurers who sailed from Europe and conquered some, but definitely not all of the native peoples of Central America. Next are those trying to find a shortcut from the Alantic to the Pacific, including the French attempt to build a canal at a cost of an estimated 22,000 lives. He then brings in the naturalists, from those with the first explorers to Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace.

Much of the story is embedded in geology. The fossil record in North and South America led evolutionists to recognize the importance of this land bridge, and the revolutionary theory of plate tectonics gave us the mechanism to explain how the bridge formed.

But what really brings this book alive is that Wallace has been there, from his first three-month journey in 1971, a return in 1987 for a "gaudy bird-watching trip," and repeat visits during the last decade. He climbs the volcanoes, claws through the dense rain forests, and snorkels the coral reefs. "Big marine toads plopped in and out, acorn woodpeckers called 'Kraaaa! Kraaa' in the pines, and a flock of parakeets flew shrieking overhead," he colorfully writes.

As you surely imagine, this is not a totally happy tale. Wallace discusses the "island ecology" theories of habitat fragmentation and loss of species. He mentions the recent extinction of the flightless, grebe-like poc and the golden toad and recounts the decline of the harpy eagle. But he also describes efforts to reverse this loss of habitat through programs like Paseo Pantera ("the path of the panther") that is a major element of The Wildlands Project's strategy to protect the biodiversity of the North American continent.

Wallace clearly is in awe of the complexity and diversity of the Central American rain forest. "Sometimes I think the human language, or simply human mentality, hasn't evolved yet to the point where tropical rain forest is comprehensible or describable," he writes.

But with The Monkey's Bridge, Wallace has made a great start.