I was led to this project by three things; (i) reading ‘The Weirdest People in the World’ (Joseph Henrich, Penguin, London; 2021) which seeks to explain cultural development as a function of evolutionary fitness (ii) recalling an academic article linking C17th ideologies to landscapes and (iii) standing on top of Coombe Hill with an honorary niece (thanks, Juliet!) and a 1:25,000 Map, looking down into the Vale of Aylesbury, having spent a day looking at moated sites in the Chilterns.

Henrich describes the Matisgenka People of south-east Peru as ‘true individualists’.

“From my perspective, Matsigenka appeared hardworking, brave, peaceful, soft-spoken, independent and self-reliant.  But they didn’t take orders, not from the schoolteachers or the elected village leaders, nor did the acquiesce to the general will of the community.”

Households are economically independent, live in small extended family scattered hamlets, clearing new land by assarting.  Above the household, there are no decision making or organisational institutions.  Social life is highly egalitarian, and kin-based.  The Matisgenka believe that individual action matters, and can influence their fate.  At large social gatherings, many Matsigenka remain noticeably uneasy; most prefer a solitary life among intimate family members.

“The Matsigenka permits neither repression nor criticism.  Should someone, even the missionary whose moral authority he recognises, try to orientate, correct or prevent his behaviour, he departs immediately with the phrase: ‘Here one can’t live; nothing but gossip and rumours; I’m going where no-one will bother me and I will bother no-one’.”

The description of the culture and the landscape of the Matsigenka immediately reminded me of the work of David Underwood, who had sought to link landscape and allegiance in the English Civil War. The contemporary Peruvian Amazon rain forest may be a long way in time and space from South-West England in the C17th, but the similarities between Henrich’s forest-pastoral ‘true individualists’ and the radical, dissenting, non-conformist, egalitarian Protestantism ideology in Underwood’s wood-pasture landscapes was striking.

I remembered standing on the top of Coombe Hill, a mile south-west of Wendover, the highest point in the Chiltern ridge (852 ft / 260m).  I’ve done a lot of walking in the county and am familiar with the landscape, conveniently and dramatically bifurcated by the Chiltern Ridge. To the north and west the landscape is the clay-heavy, low-lying ‘champion’ open-field of much of the Midlands; nucleated villages, clustered around the church, at the centre of each parish, linked by enclosure roads direct to neighbouring settlements, a lightly wooded landscape of straight hedge lines and rural efficiency.  To the south and east a complete contrast; dispersed farmsteads and hamlets, a dense network of tracks, paths and substantially hedged winding lanes, incised by sharp little valleys cut by glacial meltwaters, thickly wooded with carefully managed coppice and timber.