Written by Ramiro Escobar
Friday, 23 September 2011 03:55
More than 15 years after the expedition called Amazon Source (1996), a group of Peruvian, Polish and Italian scientists confirmed on Thursday, September 15, that the precise origin of the Amazon River is in a bofedal (a high Andean water body), at the foot of the Nevado Quehuisha, in Peru, at 5.174 meters of altitude above sea level. The site is located in the province of Cailloma, in Arequipa, in the country’s southern Andean region.
According to Jacek Palkiewicz, a Polish explorer and the expedition organizer, it is clear now that Amazon is the longest and the "world's most powerful" river as well as being the most abundant of all. Measured from the bofedal, overlooking the ravine of the Apacheta and the several rivers to which it is supplier (Apurímac, Ene, Tambo, Ucayali), it is about 7.040 kilometers long. The Nile, believed to be the longest, covers 6.671 kilometers, starting in Uganda.
The Geographical Society of Lima also corroborated the finding and in 2009 the book 'Geo Amazon', by the Organization of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty, stated that "the Amazon starts its journey in the gorge of the Apacheta". As suggested by the geographer Zaniel Novoa, one of the Peruvian explorers that acted in the past and now, "that will be in the new geography books" because, finally, they met the source of the greatest river, which in turn feeds the largest tropical ecosystem in the planet.
Theory of the past
According to Novoa, this also dismisses the theory put forth in 1971 by National Geographic magazine. "What they did was an office job, not a scientific work," he explains. He says that the famous publication processed aerial photographs of nearby Nevado Mismi and sent photographer Loren McIntyre to the area. He took several shots, named a small lake after himself (lagoon McIntyre) and reported that the Amazon was born in that body of water and went down through the gorge called Carhuasanta. The proof that this is not the case, as Novoa says, is a satellite photo showing that the lagoon McIntyre does not give rise to any stream, which actually comes from the bofedal where the gorge Apacheta begins.
