ALPACA INFO
Alpaca
History | Why
Buy Alpacas | Alpaca
Care | Related
Links
Alpaca History
Hidden in the mists of the high Andes and antiquity, a mystical and
almost magical little animal has journeyed over five millennia in partnership
with man. To fully appreciate this remarkable history, consider the following:
-
1000 years before the Great Pyramid of Giza was completed, the ancient
ancestors of the Inca were measuring their
wealth by the numbers of alpacas they owned and were enjoying the finest
garments woven from the fleece of their great alpaca herds.
-
2000 years before King David united the tribes of Israel, members of pre-Incan
nobility were draping themselves in multicolored robes of gossamer sheen
produced from alpaca fiber as they performed the mysterious rituals of
their religion and culture.
-
3000 years before the Iliad and the Odyssey were transcribed from myth
to parchment, the Peruvian people were expanding a thriving economy built
in part on the commercial value of their treasured alpacas. Through man's
first known use of selective breeding, they were producing alpacas whose
quality of fleece was far superior to even the best contemporary alpacas.
-
500 years before Rome began to build its empire and the warring barbarian
tribes were flooding into the territories of Modern Europe, the alpaca
was firmly entrenched as a major cornerstone in the Incan empire which
encompassed most of the western side of the South American continent.
And so it remained for another 2000 years, until the arrival in the New
World of the Spanish conquistadors in the 17th century AD. As these soldiers
of fortune began the orderly conquest and genocide of the Incan people,
another casualty of their carnage was the little "humming sheep" so prized
by their Incan enemy. The alpaca, which had been treasured for almost 4000
years as a source of highly prized fiber, was viewed only as a competitor
for grazing lands allocated to the Spaniards' sheep, and therefore most
useful as a source of meat. This deliberate decimation of the great alpaca
herds would have led to the eventual extinction of these magical little
creatures except for one saving turn of fate. As the surviving Incans sought
sanctuary in the highest reaches of their beloved Andes, they took a few
of their most prized alpacas with them as they began their self-imposed
exile into the mountains' protective mists. In the centuries that followed,
a much more hardy and healthy alpaca developed in the stern and demanding
lands above the clouds, where survival of the fittest was an absolute and
constant reality.
The curtain of history descended again on the alpaca and remained down
until the mid 1800's, when Sir Titus Salt of London "discovered" the remarkable
fiber of this musical camelid and began promoting its use in the finest
textile mills and fashion houses of Europe.
Even with this limited exposure to the outside world, the alpaca remained
relatively unknown in the United States until 1983, when a small group
of American importers began purchasing small numbers of these animals from
select breeders in South America and bringing them to their farms as breeding
stock.
Today, over three million alpacas exist worldwide, with 98 percent still
located in Peru, Bolivia, and Chile. The alpaca herd in the United States
is estimated at 110,000 and is expected to increase gradually at 25% per
year.
|
