Alpacas are said to live closer to heaven that any other living creature. In the night of the Andes they will disappear from the icy mountain tops to the star-lit sky, and reappear in the mists of dawn.
According to the native peoples of Bolivia and Peru, the alpaca was a gift to mankind from the gods. A gift that would be removed if neglected. In the ancient Indian myth, long ago the earth was made of 2 worlds, the upper and the lower. (We inhabit the upper!)
The lower world was populated with large herds of plump, sleek alpacas that belonged to the Apu, or mountain god and were tended by his daughter. The alpacas of the upper world were fewer in number and inferior in quality.
To help the Apu’s daughter tend her alpacas, the god arranged for her to marry a young herdsman from the upper world. For some time they lived happily together tending the alpaca, but eventually the young husband became homesick and wanted to return to the upper world and enrich it with the lower world’s alpacas. The Apu’s daughter agreed and began travelling through the springs and lakes to her husbands domain. The god’s one condition on his daughter's marriage had been that her husband must take special care of the flock and especially of one tiny cria which must always be carried. But the husband became lazy and left the tiny cria on the ground to fend for itself. When she saw this, the Apu’s daughter fled back to her own world and all but a few of her alpacas followed her.
And that is why alpacas to this day stay near springs and lakes, yearning for their mistress who has never returned.
Origins
The paleantological record tells a story just as fascinating if a little less magical.
The camelid family originated on the American prairies from a single ancestor some 40 million years ago. One branch of the family moved east over the land bridge then connecting what were soon to be separate continents, and from these were derived the familiar one and two humped camel and dromedary of Asia and Africa. In South America, the remaining camelids evolved into two species, the guanaco and the vicuna. Archaeological evidence and genetic evidence both point to the two domesticated South American camelid species being derived from these two wild relatives:- the llama being
derived from the
guanaco and the alpaca from the vicuna. Both llamas and alpacas were
domesticated by ancient south American civilisations, including the Incas, more
than 6000 years ago, which makes them the earliest recorded domesticated animals.Alpacas and the Incas
Both llamas and alpacas played a pivotal role in the society of the Incas. The llamas were bred as beasts of burden and alpacas for their fibre. Among the Andean people, cloth was currency and the fleece of the alpaca was so highly prized the animal was worshipped and the best males sacrificed at religious ceremonies. The Incan armies were paid with alpaca textiles and the warehouses filled with alpaca fabrics were so valuable they were burned if they had to be abandoned when an army retreated. In fact, the alpaca was the true gold of the Incas, a fact which the invading conquistadores signally failed to recognise.
The arrival of the Spanish in the 1500's was a disaster for both the native peoples and their animals. Some accounts claim that as many as 90% of the alpacas in South America were slaughtered and left to rot in the fields in order to make room for sheep and cattle. Only a small remnant were rescued by the native peoples and driven to the barren and remote altiplano, where the environment is far too bleak for European species to survive.
Alpacas in England
Alpacas first figure commercially in England in 1834, when a textile manufacturer, Titus Salt, noticed some bales of alpaca fleece in a Liverpool warehouse. He experimented with the fibre and found that it could be woven into an exquisitely soft and lustrous cloth. Titus Salt was to become rich on alpaca cloth. He founded a new mill and town on the banks of the river Aire (Saltaire) and was created a baronet by Queen Victoria. England remained the main producer of alpaca yarns and clothing until the 20th century, when Peru rediscovered the treasure of their heritage in the Andes.
Notwithstanding the importance of the fibre industry, alpacas remained curiosities or zoo animals in England until the mid 1980s, when began the major imports of animals which were to lay the foundations of the UK’s breeding herd for the 21st century.