“It is only when actually gazing on an active volcano that one can fully realize its awfulness and grandeur. Whence comes that inexhaustible fire whose dense and sulphureous smoke forever issues from this bare and desolate peak? Whence the mighty forces that produced that peak, and still from time to time exhibit themselves in the earthquakes that always occur in the vicinity of volcanic vents? The knowledge from childhood of the fact that volcanoes and earthquakes exist has taken away somewhat from the strange and exceptional character that really belongs to them. The inhabitant of most parts of northern Europe sees in the earth the emblem of stability and repose. His whole life-experience, and that of all his age and generation, teaches him that the earth is solid and firm, that its massive rocks may contain water in abundance but never fire; and these essential characteristics of the earth are manifest in every mountain his country contains. A volcano is a fact opposed to all this mass of experience, a fact so awful a character that, if it were the rule instead of the exception, it would make the earth uninhabitable; a fact so strange and unaccountable that we may be sure it would not be believed on any human testimony, if presented to us now for the first time, as a natural phenomenon happening in a distant country. “

~Alfred Russel Wallace. December 1857, May 1859, April 1861

“Notwithstanding the losses incurred by these terrific visitations, and the small size and isolated position of these little islands, they have been and still are of considerable value to the Dutch Government as the chief nutmeg-garden in the world. Almost the whole surface is planted with nutmegs, grown under the shade of lofty Kanary trees (Kanarium commune). The light volcanic soil, the shade, and the excessive moisture of these islands, where it rains more or less every month in the year, seem exactly to suit the nutmeg-tree, which requires no manure and scarcely any attention. All the year round flowers and ripe fruit are to be found, and none of those diseases occur which under a forced and unnatural system of cultivation have ruined the nutmeg planters of Singapore and Penang.”

~Alfred Russel Wallace, December 1857, May 1859, April 1861

These are the original Spice Islands.  During the early seventeenth century spices like cloves, nutmeg, and mace were such coveted and valuable commodities in Europe that they helped spur on European exploration of the world.  For hundreds of years sultuns and orang kaya, councils of rich men, controlled these lucrative spices trading with Malay and Chinese traders. When Europeans arrived in the early seventeenth century the equation dramatically  changed.

First colonized by the Portuguese, the Dutch soon gained control of the Banda Islands and went on to battle the British in the Spice Wars. By 1667 the British agreed to withdraw and gave up the island Pulau Run in exchange for a small island on the other side of the world, New Amsterdam, now known as Manhattan! So valuable was nutmeg that  in almost two centuries of colonial rule, it is calculated that Holland produced a billion gilders worth of nutmeg from the tiny Banda Islands. By Wallace’s time though the Dutch monopoly on nutmeg was ruined and dying out. Widespread corruption and the smuggling of seeds to other islands in the Moluccas and in French Mauritania ended the days of  Dutch controlled spice trade. Within ten years of Wallace’s visit to the islands, the Dutch had abandoned the system and handed over control to the local perkiniers, or planters, whose descendants still grow nutmeg here today.

Fascinated by this unassuming plant, Wallace wrote of the nutmeg tree — “Few cultivated plants are more beautiful than nutmeg-trees. They are handsomely shaped and glossy-leaved, growing to the height of twenty or thirty feet, and bearing small, yellowish flowers. The fruit is the size and colour of a peach, but rather oval. It is of a tough fleshy consistence, but when ripe splits open, and shows the dark brown nut within, covered with the crimson mace, and is then a most beautiful object. Within the thin hard shell of the nut is the seed, which is the nutmeg of commerce. The nuts are eaten by the large pigeons of Banda, which digest the mace but cast up the nut with its seed uninjured.”

The Banda Islands still have the perfect conditions for the finicky nutmeg, which requires rich soil, a tropical climate, and dappled shade. Nutmeg pigeons, local fruit pigeons, helped naturally disperse the seeds of the nutmeg tree which would pass undamaged through the bird’s gut to germinate on the forest floor. Tall kenari trees compliment the nutmeg trees by providing shade in an ancient and ingenious form of agroforestry that still works amazingly today. The kenari trees also produce nuts that add a tasty and valuable supplementary crop to planters. (They taste delicious, just like almonds.)

During my stay in the Bandas I wandered many nutmeg gardens under the lofty kenari trees to imagine what it must have been like during Wallace’s time. This magical place seems to have largely escaped the ravages of the 20th century and it is delightful to get lost in history here. Meandering through the nutmeg gardens, listening to the booming of the fruit pigeons, and exploring the ruins of old Dutch forts, it is easy to be transpored back in time to the islands famous heyday, now long since gone to seed like the weeds poking through the crumbling ruins…

“Banda is a lovely little spot, its three islands enclosing a secure harbour from whence no outlet is visible, and with water so transparent, that living corals and even the minutest objects are plainly seen on the volcanic sand at a depth of seven or eight fathoms. The ever smoking volcano rears its bare cone on one side, while the two larger islands are clothed with vegetation to the summit of the hills.”

During takeoff I looked out the tiny port-hole windows of the plane as drops of water beaded and slowly migrated over the panes. As we lift off the vastness of the tropical sea comes into focus and stretches away to the horizon like an immensely calm lake. I look for signs of whales and other marine life but see none. After an hour small islands come into view and then I see them — like an image out of Jules Verne, the volcanic cone of gunung api, the fire mountain, rises up from the depths of the Banda Sea. Surrounding it are smaller islands forming the perfect harbor that Wallace described. A shaggy mat of green vegetation and tropical palms cover the islands and even from this distance the shallow waters near shore are clear and transparent.

As we descend to the tiny landing strip, we pass over fishermen in small dugout canoes checking their fish traps. We glimpse the ruins of the old Dutch fort on the hillside and the red roofs of Band Neira Town. And above it all looms the volcano still steaming as if newly risen from the sea. This place feels like a dream — I’ve finally arrived in the fabled Spice Islands…

“I did not get a great many birds here. The most remarkable were the fine crimson lory, Eos rubra – a brush-tongued parroquet of a vivid crimson-color, which was very abundant. Large flocks of them came about the plantation, and formed a magnificent object when they settled down upon some flowering tree, on the nectar of which lories feed.”

~Alfred Russel Wallace. December 1557, October 1859, February 1860

I crossed the imaginary Wallace Line on my flight from Makassar Sulawesi to Ambon. I’ve come to Indonesia to chase after Wallace’s ghost across the far isles of this sprawling archipelago. Descending through the brooding storm clouds, Ambon is a vision of lush green forested hills and aquamarine waters fringing sandy coconut strewn bays. Wallace writes of Ambon:

“The town of Ambon consists of a few business streets, and a number of roads set at right angles to each other, bordered by hedges and flowering shrubs, and enclosing country houses and huts embosomed in palms and fruit trees.” ~ A.R. Wallace. December 1557, October 1859, February 1860

Today Ambon has been transformed by boxy concrete buildings sprawling out from a city center bursting with motorbike traffic, honking horns, and open sewers running down to the harbor. Glimpses of charm still remain, but this is a place that has been violently transformed since Wallace’s time. Although it is no longer the quiet village of hedges and flowering shrubs, I instantly recognize the same contours of land Wallace described so many years ago.  Ambon sits in the crook of a rounded bay on a long finger of land bordered North by the large island of Seram. From the hilltop mosque minarets and church spires dominate the town center and market stalls line the  waterfront bay situated for lively commerce.

Wallace stopped many times here to rest and replenish supplies on his various collecting forays throughout the Far East. During his time Ambon was the gateway to the fabled Spice Islands and administered by the Dutch East India Company. The Dutch are long gone, but Ambon  remains the gateway to the Spice Islands and the jumping off point for me as I continue further East!

Author of the Sultan and the Mermaid Queen: Extraordinary Asian People and Places, and Things that Go Bump in the Night, as well as numerous other  books and articles for major publications, Paul Sochaczewski really is “an old Asia hand.”  Paul has lived in SE Asia most of his life after first visiting Malaysian Borneo as a Peace Corp volunteer in 1959. He has retraced Wallace’s journey  through many parts of the Malay Archipelago and written extensively on Wallace. I met with Paul at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand today to talk to him about Wallace.

Q: How did you get personally interested in Wallace as a writer, Paul?

A: I didn’t know anything about him when I lived in Sarawak (Borneo). I didn’t know about him when I lived in Singapore. It was only slowly when I was living in Indonesia that I first started learning about him and then going to some of the places that he had been to all over Java, Sumatra, and when I went to Switzerland for WWF (World Wildlife Federation) that I began to appreciate his role for conservation and for biology. And I was lucky enough to keep on coming back to Asia and having friends all over. And I could chase him.

I did a reasonable job of chasing him. I even chased him to the Rio Negro (Brazil) but never wrote about it. I went way up the Rio Negro, up near the border with Venezuela and Colombia. I just became intrigued by the guy as a man. I just found him to be a very interesting man, a guy who was an explorer and in a sense a big thinker, but he was also a small thinker. Details were important as well. His lack of ego was fascinating. I just find him as a character in history, as one of the more interesting people you’ll ever find.

Q: In your book, The Sultan and the Mermaid Queen, you write about many interesting characters like, and including Wallace. What is it about the mysterious, the occult, and the forgotten that appeals and attracts us?

A: Science and Western thought is left-brained: logical, Cartesian, good at explaining things. We need that in life for explaining things and in writing. The other side of the spectrum is right-brained: emotions, feelings, mysticism, and the unexplainable. We need that too. Wallace was a guy who recognized in himself both. He wrote hundreds of scientific papers for journals, but he also had this whole spiritual thing going on and he wasn’t afraid to explore it – and that endears me to Wallace. He was able to recognize this dichotomy, this bipolarization, this bipolar reality we all have. And too often people get pigeonholed – he’s a scientist or he’s a priest. He’s a shaman or he’s a scientist. We can’t be both – in fact we are both, each person has that inside of him.

Q: As people do we need the unknown? This sense of mystery Wallace embraced, why is it important in the world today?

A: It’s not only important, it’s the reality that we have that mystery but often times we discount it. Often times when somebody talks about, say religion that is not empirical or provable. Can you prove to me there is a God, an afterlife, if you’re good you will be rewarded, if you’re bad you’re punished? – NO, in believing in something you take on faith. It’s only 3, 4, 5 generations that people in the cities have moved away from their rural lives, and those lives are much more in tune to the cycles of life and uncertainties of nature. Is the volcano going to erupt, is there good hunting? – how do you deal with that sort of stuff, rationalize it and put faith in it? In cities people are putting things too much on the other side, putting too much faith in science. I think this juxtaposition (between science and myth) is important for this film as Wallace the man.

Q: Why do you think Wallace’s story is important and deserves to be re-told today?

A: It is reassuring to us that it’s OK to break the mold. It’s OK to go on an adventure where you might lose your life. It’s OK to risk your career to say unpopular things. It’s OK to ask big questions.

The jury is out. Wallace was an amazing and complex man, but underappreciated and unrecognized. So then, the question is — why is genius like that under-recognized? Why Darwin, but not Wallace?

Learn more at Paul’s excellent website, http://www.sochaczewski.com/.

Pun Pun means “thousand varieties” in Thai. In Thailand there ARE thousands of varieties of various plants and animals . Fantastic bulbous shapes of eggplants, rice varieties beyond description, melons, fruits, and animals like water buffalo and catfish. Today the corporate takeover of the world has even reached the rural towns and rice paddied fields of this place and those thousands of varieties are being replaced by just a few meant for the international market. The knowledge and beauty contained in the DNA of every plant variety is unique, as unique as the traditional knowledge that carries it on. But the war has begun…

Pun Pun began as an idea by Jon and Peggy to create a place to experiment with sustainable living,  to save seeds, and to save knowledge. It is a place where  they, and a growing community of others, can  live by values and  example of  sustainable, organic and diverse natural living . Today it is like a beautiful laboratory of appropriate technologies and do-it-yourself (DIY) sustainable living. The aura that surrounds this place is pure goodness and that is why I have come back here again.

The story of seed – why here? Does biodiversity equal agricultural diversity? The variety of plants and animals we grow and raise are indeed just another form of biodiversity, are they not? I find it amazing sometimes that Darwin or Wallace, or someone else, never caught on to the idea of evolution earlier by simply observing our endless “unnatural selections” of crop varieties and barnyard animals. We have guided evolution locally this way for thousands and thousands of years. It was not until Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk with an eccentric interest in pea plants, hit on the idea of genetic selection and diversity in 1865. He actually wrote to Darwin about it, but Darwin never read the letter!

What if he had though? Would he have hit upon his “great idea” sooner – or would it confound and confuse his theories even more? The “what ifs” in history are remarkable…

 “At about 5,000 feet I first saw horsetails (Equisetum), very like our own species. At 6,000 feet, Raspberries abound, and thence to the summit of the mountain there are three species of eatable Rubus. At 7,000 feet Cypresses appear, and the forest trees become reduced in size, and more covered with mosses and lichens.

At about 8,000 feet European forms of plants become abundant. Several of Honeysuckle, St. John’s-wort, and Guelder-rose abound, and at about 9,000 feet we first meet with the rare and beautiful Royal Cowslip (Primula imperialis), which is said to be found nowhere else in the world but on this solitary mountain summit.

The fact of a vegetation so closely allied to that of Europe occurring on isolated mountain peaks, in an island south of the Equator, while all the lowlands for thousands of miles around are occupied by a flora of a totally different character is very extraordinary, and has only recently received an intelligible explanation.”

~ Alfred Russel Wallace. Mount Gedes, Java. The Malay Archipelago 1857.

Climbing Doi Inthanon in Northern Thailand I can’t help feeling the same nostalgia, wonder, and curiosity that Wallace felt climbing Mount Gedes in Java over 150 years ago. Although Wallace never made it as far north as Thailand, he explored other tropical “sky islands” further south throughout the vast Malay Archipelago.

Wallace was amazed by the strangeness of the plant genera he found on these tropical peaks and his observations of these botanical aberrations surely contributed to his ideas on biogeography and evolution.  As the highest peak in Thailand, Doi Inthanon is a welcome relief from the stifling heat of the lowlands. Up here it is cool and fresh. Ferns, horsetails, and mosses thrive in these cooler elevations and benefit from the abundant rainclouds that congregate around the summit. Oaks like those  in Europe and bright red rhodendrans like those found further north in the Himalaya proliferate on these slopes. Near the summit the forest gives way to a high meadow beaten down to tall grasses by the incessant winds. It looks and feels like a temperate landscape. How did these species get here?

The science of the distribution of plants and animals, and more importantly, how they came to be distributed, is now known as biogeography – a field pioneered by Wallace. Before anyone else knew, and at a time when the Earth was looked upon as an immutable constant, Wallace figured out that ancient geologic upheaval and change had to play a large role in the distribution of the plants and animals he saw throughout the Malay Archipelago. Remnants from a colder period, the showy rhododendrums and flamboyant tree ferns lining the forest paths offer a tantalizing clue to the ongoing saga of global change and evolution waged over the centuries and still going on today. Listening to the echoes of birdsong rebound through these silent fern forests and looking down on the hills marching away on the horizon, oh I wonder what Wallace would say of this place!

Welcome to the home page for the Wallacea Project!

Retracing the momentous eureka! moment of discovery that conceived the great theory of evolution independent of Darwin, the Wallacea Project is about one of the greatest science stories of all time not told. Rich in history, characters, and creatures, the project  will follow  in the footsteps of Alfred Russel Wallace over his epic eight year journey through the Malay Archipelago during the 1800’s and into today.

Over the next few months I will be  filming, photographing, and blogging my way down the panhandle of South-East Asia to Borneo, Sulawesi, and the fabled Spice Islands where it all began to re-discover history, science, and the beauty of a single brilliant idea that changed the world. Please join me for what promises to be a visual tour-de-force adventure through the jungles, villages, and innumerable islands of the largest archipelago on Earth in celebration of tropical nature and one of the most unsung heros of science!