Devil in the Mountain: A Search for the Origin of the Andes

by Simon Lamb

Book Overview

How do high mountain ranges form on the face of the Earth? This question has intrigued some of the greatest philosophers and scientists, going back as far as the ancient Greeks. Devil in the Mountain is the story of one scientist, author Simon Lamb, and his quest for the key to this great geological mystery.

Lamb and a small team of geologists have spent much of the last decade exploring the rugged Bolivian Andes, the second highest...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691126208
• ISBN13: 9780691126203
• Release Date: July 2006
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

not your grade school place tectonics

How do mountains form? The grade school explanation is that continents smash together and whatever is in the middle gets all crinkled up. Simon Lamb shows us that the story is much more interesting and varied. Stick with the book to the end if you want to understand how the carbon cycle is affected by mountains and therefore how mountains change climate.

How rocks in Bolivia affect your choice of vacation

Here's something to chew on: If it weren't for the existence of the Andes Mountains, Hawaii would be out of business. The argument is way too complicated to summarize in a brief review, but Oxford geologist Simon Lamb presents it with admirable clarity in "Devil in the Mountain." He hardly mentions Hawaii, actually, but the implication is clear enough: The Andes began growing 40 million years ago, at the same time that the Antarctic ice sheet began growing; and these events were causally linked -- together (with lots of other complications) they ended the Warm Ages and introduced the Ice Ages we live in. If follows then, that if the whole world were still warm, there wouldn't be much reason to visit Hawaii. It is extraordinary how recently scientists got to the point where they could make such an argument. In the past four decades, even non-geologists have learned to think that mountains arise where two giant plates collide, driven by currents of molten rock miles beneath the surface. And yet, thought Lamb, as recently as 1989, when he began a 10-year research project centered on Bolivia, it cannot be that simple. There are places where plates collide but high mountains do not rise. And, where they do, why do they take the shape they do? Like any good scientific theory, plate tectonics created more mysteries than it solved. The new mysteries were, of course, at a more profound level of explanation. In particular, the research of Lamb and others has opened the question of whether "the rise of great mountain ranges can significantly change the planet's climate." These days, everything turns out to be about global warming. The short answer is, yes. But it takes a lot of legwork to get there. Lamb's account, designed to suck non-geologists into the mystery, is enlivened with brief anecdotes of working in some of the roughest, poorest country in the world. But "it was earthquake prone, always a good sign to a geologist." So he went searching for the devil -- Tio, the wicked spirit of the mountains whose caprices are appeased by the Bolivian miners. Tio is an excessively manly demon, a point not mentioned by Lamb, whose approach is anything but sensational, although the implications of his (and others') research are. Toward the end of his research, Lamb was led to "the extraordinary thought that the temperature of the water in the oceans can ultimately control the raising of large portions of the Earth's crust." We've come a long way now from the explanation that mountains were made by heroes throwing rocks at each other.

Between science and personal adventure...

I bought this book because, as a geologist myself, I am getting interested in the dynamics and tectonic controls of fluvial "megafans" developed along the Andean chain. I thought this little work, straddling the border between a popularization of geotectonics and personal travel diaries, could help me break the ice with the geological context of Bolivia and surrounds... Spot on! Lamb did a great job, whether you look at it from the technical point of view or from a layman's perspective. Of course the geological insights to gain here are just very basic, they are meant to inform the uninitiated, but the style and the motivation with which a geologist's thoughts are reported, well, they kind of make me proud of my research... (Which I already was anyway!) Maybe the links between orogeny in the Andes and global climatic interactions are way too simplistically explained, and some people might get tricked into believing the climate system is really that! easy and predictable... I doubt... But that's a kind of problem you run into when trying to simplify to the extreme, opening a door for the newbies. No fuss then... If you want to gain a feeling of what geological fieldwork feels like, if you'd like to learn something really cool on how rocks and mountains develop and behave through time on this planet, and maybe if you could use some insider's advice on how to get about in Bolivia (you never know where research might take you some day eh...), then this is a fun, quick, informative and emotionally rewarding read. I guess we're still far from really having understood the whole story about the Andes, but as Lamb shows, from his very personal point of view, sometimes the journey can be more important than reaching your destination too quickly... It all has to grow inside of you...

A stunning overview of a great mountain range

Research geologists rarely spend much energy synthesizing and making their work available to the general public, to both party's loss. But Lamb does that here, giving an accessible overview of the Central Andes that will be of interest to the traveller as well as the geologist. His writing is clear and filled with personal anecdotes that are well-integrated into his story. The combination of travelogue, the tale of a young man building a team and a career, and explanation of modern mountain-building concepts is an unusual way to present the material, but it provides spice and should motivate a wide range of readers to keep turning the pages. It is richly illustrated with detailed illustrations and maps of the highest quality, I can't thank the author and publisher enough for their care in this regard. I have a few quibbles, though. Lamb doesn't note the fact that lithosphere of increasingly young age has been subducted beneath S. America through the Cenozoic, making subduction increasingly difficult and converting an extensional 'Mariana-type' convergent margin into the present 'Andean-type' compressional margin. He doesn't mention the presence and role of 'flat-slab' segments of the S. American subduction zone (and their possible role in raising the Andes). He doesn't consider the importance of trade winds being blocked by Eastern Andes for producing the deserts and empty trenches of the central Andes. But these weaknesses are amply compensated for by the overall product, an ambitious, well-edited, and compelling overview of a great mountain range.