The Insane and Exciting Future of the Bionic Body From i-limbs to artificial organs, advances in technology have

led to an explosion of innovation in the increasingly critical field of prosthetics Bertolt Meyer pulls off his left forearm and gives it to me. Its smooth and black, and the hand has a clear silicone cover, like an iPhone case. Beneath the rubbery skin are skeletal robotic fingers of the sort you might see in a sci-fi moviethe cool factor, Meyer calls it. I hold the arm in my hand. Its pretty light, I say. Yes, only a couple of pounds, he responds. I try not to stare at the stump where his arm should be. Meyer explains how his prosthetic limb works. The device is held on by suction. A silicone sheath on the stump helps create a tight seal around the limb. It needs to be comfortable and snug at the same time, he says. Can I touch it? I ask. Go ahead, he says. I run my hand along the sticky silicone and it helps dispel my uneasethe stump may look strange, but the arm feels strong and healthy. Meyer, 33, is slightly built and has dark features and a friendly face. A native of Hamburg, Germany, currently living in Switzerland, he was born with only an inch or so of arm below the left elbow. He has worn a prosthetic limb on and off since he was 3 months old. The first one was passive, just to get his young mind accustomed to having something foreign attached to his body. When he was 5 years old, he got a hook, which he controlled with a harness across his shoulders. He didnt wear it much, until he joined the Boy Scouts when he was 12. The downside is that it is extremely uncomfortable because youre always wearing the harness, he says. This latest iteration is a bionic hand, with each finger driven by its own motor. Inside of the molded forearm are two electrodes that respond to muscular signals in the residual limb: Sending a signal to one electrode opens the hand and to the other closes it. Activating both allows Meyer to rotate the wrist an unnerving 360 degrees. The metaphor that I use for this is learning how to parallel park your car, he says as he opens his hand with a whir. At first, its a little tricky, but you get the hang of it. Touch Bionics, the maker of this mechanical wonder, calls it the i-limb. The name represents more than marketing. Improved software, longer-lasting batteries and smaller, more powerefficient microprocessorsthe technologies driving the revolution in personal electronics have ushered in a new era in bionics. In addition to prosthetic limbs, which are more versatile and user-friendly than ever before, researchers have developed functioning prototypes of artificial organs that can take the place of ones spleen, pancreas or lungs. And an experiment al implant that wires the brain to a computer holds the promise of giving quadriplegics control over artificial limbs. Such bionic marvels will increasingly find their way into our lives and our bodies. We have never been so replaceable. I met Meyer on a summer day in London, in the courtyard of a 19th- century cookie factory. Meyer is a social psychologist at the University of Zurich, but his personal experiences with prosthetics have instilled in him a fascination with bionic technology. He says the past five years, in particular, have seen an explosion of innovation. As we chatted over coffee, engineers worked on a novel demonstration in a nearby building. During the past few months, they had been gathering prosthetic limbs and artificial organs from around the world to be assembled into a single, artificial structure named the Bionic Man. You can see the startling results in a documentary airing October 20 on the Smithsonian Channel. Engineers designed the Bionic Man to enable several of its human-dependent parts to operate without a body. For instance, although the robot is fitted with i-limbs, it doesnt possess the nervous system or brain to make them work. Instead, the Bionic Man can be controlled remotely via a computer and specially designed interfacing hardware, while a Bluetooth connection can be used to operate the i-limbs. Nonetheless, the robot vividly showcases how much of our bodies can be replaced by circuits, plastic and metal. Adding to the dramatic effect, the Bionic Mans face is a silicone replica of Meyers.

Rich Walker, the managing director of the project, says his team was able to rebuild more than 50 percent of the human body. The level of progress in bionics surprised not only him but even the researchers who had worked on the artificial organs, he says. Although multiple artificial organs cant yet function together in a single human body, the scenario has become realistic enough that bioethicists, theologians and others are contending with the question, How much of a human being can be replaced and still be considered human? For many, the criterion is whether a device enhances or interferes with a patients ability to relate to other people. Theres broad agreement, for instance, that technology that restores motor functions to a stroke victim or provides sight to the blind does not make a person less human. But what about technology that could one day transform the brain into a semi-organic supercomputer? Or endow people with senses that perceive wavelengths of light, frequencies of sounds and even types of energy that are normally beyond our reach? Such people might no longer be described as strictly human, regardless of whether such enhancements represent an improvement over the original model. These big questions seem far away when I first see engineers working on the Bionic Man. It is still a faceless collection of unassembled parts. Yet the arms and legs laid out on a long black table clearly evoke the human form. Meyer himself speaks to that quality, describing his i-limb as the first prosthetic he has used in which the aesthetics match the engineering. It truly feels like part of him, he says. David Gow, a Scottish engineer who created the i-limb, says one of the most significant accomplishments in the field of prosthetics has been making amputees feel whole again, and no longer embarrassed to be seen wearing an artificial limb. Patients actually want to shake peoples hands with it, he says. Gow, 56, has long been fascinated by the challenge of designing prosthetics. After briefly working in the defense industry he became an engineer at a government research hospital attempting to develop electrically powered prosthetics. He had one of his first breakthroughs while trying to figure out how to design a hand small enough for children. Instead of employing one central motor, the standard approach, he incorporated smaller motors into the thumb and fingers. The innovation both reduced the size of the hand and paved the way for articulated digits. That modular design later became the basis for the i-limb: Each finger is powered by a 0.4-inch motor that automatically shuts down when sensors indicate sufficient pressure is applied to whatever is being held. Not only does that prevent the hand from crushing, say, a foam cup, it allows for a variety of grips. When the fingers and thumb are lowered together, they create a power grip for carrying large objects. Another grip is formed by closing the thumb on the side of the index finger, allowing the user to hold a plate or (rotating the wrist) turn a key in a lock. A technician or user can program the i-limbs small computer with a menu of preset grip configurations, each of which is triggered by a specific muscle movement that requires extensive training and practice to learn. The latest iteration of the i-limb, released this past April, goes a step farther: An app loaded onto an iPhone gives users access to a menu of 24 different preset grips with the touch of a button. To Hugh Herr, a biophysicist and engineer who is the director of the biomechatronics group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Media Lab, prosthetics are improving so quickly that he predicts disabilities will be largely eliminated by the end of the 21st century. If so, it will be in no small part thanks to Herr himself. He was 17 years old when he was caught in a blizzard while climbing New Hampshires Mount Washington in 1982. He was rescued after three-and-a-half days, but by then frostbite had taken its toll, and surgeons had to amputate both his legs below the knees. He was determined to go mountain climbing again, but the rudimentary prosthetic legs he had been fitted with were only capable of slow walking. So Herr designed his own legs, optimizing them to maintain balance on mountain ledges as narrow as a dime. More than 30 years later, he holds or co-holds more than a dozen patents related to prosthetic technologies, including a computer-controlled artificial knee that automatically adapts to different walking speeds.

Herr personally uses eight different kinds of specialized prosthetic legs, designed for activities that include running, ice climbing and swimming. Its extremely difficult, he says, to design a single prosthetic limb to do many tasks as well as the human body. But he believe s that a prosthesis capable of both walking and running that performs at the level of the human leg is just one or two decades away. *** The oldest known prosthetics were used some 3,000 years ago in Egypt, where archaeologists have unearthed a carved wooden toe attached to a piece of leather that could be fitted onto a foot. Functional mechanical limbs didnt come along until the 16th century, when a French battlefield surgeon named Ambroise Par invented a hand with flexible fingers operated by catches and springs. He also built a leg with a mechanical knee that the user could lock into place while standing. But such advances were the exception. Throughout most of human history, a person who lost a limb was likely to succumb to infection and die. A person born without a limb was typically shunned. In the United States, it was the Civil War that first put prosthetics into widespread use. Amputating a shattered arm or leg was the best way to prevent gangrene, and it took a practiced surgeon just minutes to administer chloroform, lop off the limb and sew the flap shut. Around 60,000 amputations were performed by both North and South, with a 75 percent survival rate. After the war, when the demand for prosthetics skyrocketed, the government stepped in, providing veterans with money to pay for new limbs. Subsequent wars led to more advances. In World War I, 67,000 amputations took place in Germany alone, and doctors there developed new arms that could enable veterans to return to manual labor and factory work. Following World War II, new materials such as plastics and titanium made their way into artificial limbs. You can find major innovations after every period of war and conflict, says Herr. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are no exception. Since 2006, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has put some $144 million into prosthetic research to help the estimated 1,800 U.S. soldiers who have suffered traumatic limb loss. Some of that investment went to Herrs most prominent invention, a bionic ank le designed for people who have lost one or both legs below the knees. Known as the BiOM and sold by Herrs company iWalk (there are a lot of lowercase is floating around the prosthetics industry these days), the devicefitted with sensors, multiple microprocessors and a batterypropels users forward with each step, helping amputees regain lost energy as they walk. Roy Aaron, a professor of orthopedic surgery at Brown University and the director of the Brown/VA Center for Restorative and Regenerative Medicine, says people who use a BiOM compare it to striding on a moving walkway at an airport. Herr envisions a future where prosthetics such as the BiOM can be merged with the human body. Amputees who sometimes have to endure chafing and sores while wearing their devices might one day be able to attach their artificial limbs directly to their bones with a titanium rod. Michael McLoughlin, the engineer leading development of advanced prosthetics at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, also wants to see bionic limbs that are more integrated with the human body. The Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL), an artificial arm-and-hand mechanism that was built by the Johns Hopkins lab, has 26 joints controlled by 17 separate motors and can do just about everything a normal limb can do, says McLoughlin. But the MPLs sophisticated movements are limited by the level of technology available for interfacing with the bodys nervous system. (Its comparable to owning a top -of-the-line personal computer thats hooked up to a slow Internet connection.) Whats needed is a way to increase the data flowpossibly by establishing a direct uplink to the brain itself. In April 2011, researchers at Brown achieved just that when they connected a robotic arm directly into the mind of Cathy Hutchinson, a 58-year-old quadriplegic who is unable to move her arms and legs. The results, captured on video, are astounding: Cathy can pick up a bottle and lift it to her mouth to drink.

This feat was made possible when neurosurgeons created a small hole in Cathys skull and implanted a sensor the size of a baby aspirin into her motor cortex, which controls body movements. On the outside of the sensor are 96 hair-thin electrodes that can detect electrical signals emitted by neurons. When a person thinks about performing a specific physical task such as lifting her left arm or grabbing a bottle with her right hand the neurons emit a distinct pattern of electrical pulses associated with that motion. In Hutchinsons case, neuroscientists first asked her to imagine a series of body movements; with each mental effort, the electrodes implanted in her brain picked up the electrical pattern generated by the neurons and transmitted it through a cable to an external computer near her wheelchair. Next, the researchers translated each pattern into a command code for a robotic arm mounted on the computer, allowing her to control the mechanical hand with her mind. The whole study is embodied in one frame of the video, and that is Cathys smile when she puts the bottle down, says Brown neuroscientist John Donoghue, who co-directs the research program. Donoghue hopes this study will eventually make it possible for the brain to form a direct interface with bionic limbs. Another goal is to develop an implant that can record and transmit data wirelessly. Doing so would eliminate the cord that presently connects the brain to the computer, allowing mobility for the user and lowering the risk of infection that results from wires passing through the skin. Perhaps the toughest challenge faced by inventors of artificial organs is the bodys defense system. If you put something in, the whole bodys immune system will try to isolate it, says Joan Taylor, a professor of pharmaceutics at De Montfort University in England, who is developing an artificial pancreas. Her ingenious device contains no circuitry, batteries or moving parts. Instead, a reservoir of insulin is regulated by a unique gel barrier that Taylor invented. When glucose levels rise, the excess glucose in the bodys tissues infuse the gel, causing it to soften and release insulin. Then, as glucose levels drop, the gel re-hardens, reducing the release of insulin. The artificial pancreas, which would be implanted between the lowest rib and the hip, is connected by two thin catheters to a port that lies just beneath the skins surface. Every few weeks, the reservoir of insulin would be refilled using a syringe that fits into the port. The challenge is, when Taylor tested the device in pigs, the animals immune system responded by forming scar tissue known as adhesions. They are like glue on internal organs, Taylor says, causing constrictions that can be painful and lead to serious problems. Still, diabetes is such a widespread problemas many as 26 million Americans are afflictedthat Taylor is testing the artificial pancreas in animals with an eye toward solving the rejection problem before beginning clinical trials with people. For some manufacturers of artificial organs, the main problem is blood. When it encounters something foreign, it clots. Its a particular obstacle to crafting an effective artificial lung, which must pass blood through tiny synthetic tubes. Taylor and other researchers are teaming up with biomaterial specialists and surgeons who are developing new coatings and techniques to improve the bodys acceptance of foreign material. I think with more experience and expert help, it can be done, she says. But before Taylor can continue her research, she says she needs to find a partner to provide more funding. And private investors can be hard to come by, since it may take years to achieve the technological breakthroughs that make an invention profitable. SynCardia Systems, an Arizona company that makes an artificial heart device capable of pumping up to 2.5 gallons of blood per minute, was founded in 2001 but wasnt in the black until 2011. It recently developed a portable battery-powered compressor weighing only 13.5 pounds that allows a patient to leave the confines of a hospital. The FDA has approved the SynCardia Total Artificial Heart for patients with end-stage biventricular failure who are waiting for a heart transplant. Makers of bionic arms and legs also fight an uphill financial battle. You have a high -end product with a small market and that does make it challenging, says McLoughlin. This is not like investing in a Facebook or a Google; youre not going to make your billions by investing in prosthetic limbs. Meanwhile, government money for advanced prosthetics could get tighter in

coming years. As the wars wind down, funding for this kind of research is going to drop off, orthopedic surgeon Roy Aaron predicts. Then theres the cost of purchasing a prosthetic limb or artificial organ. A recent study published by the Worcester Polytechnic Institute found that robotic upper limb prosthetics cost $20,000 to $120,000. Although some private insurance companies will cover 50 to 80 percent of the fee, others have payment caps or cover only one device in a patients lifetime. I nsurance companies are also known to question whether the most advanced prosthetics are medically necessary. Herr believes that insurance providers need to radically rethink their cost-benefit analyses. Although the latest bionic prosthetics are more expensive per unit than less-complex devices, he argues, they reduce health care payouts across the lifetime of the patient. When leg amputees use low-tech prostheses, they develop joint conditions, knee arthritis, hip arthritis, and theyre on continual pain medication, says Herr. They dont walk that much because walking is difficult, and that drives cardiovascular disease and obesity. Other trends, however, suggest that artificial limbs and organs may continue to improve and become more affordable. In the developed world, people are living longer than ever, and they are increasingly facing failures of one body part or another. The number one cause of lowerlimb amputation in the United States is not war but diabetes, which in its later stages especially among the elderlycan hamper circulation to the extremities. Moreover, Donoghue believes the brain-prosthetic interface hes working on could be used by stroke patients and people with neurodegenerative diseases to help restore some degree of normalcy to their lives. Were not there yet, Donoghue admits, adding: There will come a time when a person has a stroke and if we cant repair it biologically, there will be an option to get a technology that will rewire their brain. Most of those technologies are still years away, but if anyone will benefit it will be Patrick Kane, a talkative 15-year-old with chunky glasses and wispy blond hair. Shortly after birth, he was stricken by a massive infection that forced doctors to remove his left arm and part of his right leg below the knee. Kane is one of the youngest persons to be fitted with an i-limb prosthetic of the sort Meyer showed me. The thing Kane likes most is the way it makes him feel. Before, the looks I got were an Oh, what happened to him? Poor him, sort of thing, he says as we sit in a London caf. Now, its Ooh? Whats that? Thats cool! As if on cue, an elderly man at the next table chimes in: I gotta tell you something, it looks amazing. Its like a Batman arm! Kane does a demonstration for the man. Such technology is as much about changing the way people see him as it is about changing what he can do. I ask Kane about some of the far-out advances that might be available to him in the coming decades. Would he want a limb that was bolted to his skeletal system? Not really. I like the idea that I can take it off and be me again, he says. What about a prosthetic arm that could directly interface with his brain? I think that would be very interesting, he says. But he would worry about something going wrong. Depending on what happens next, Kanes future may be filled with technological marvelsnew hands and feet that bring him closer to, or even beyond, the capabilities of a so-called ablebodied person. Or progress might not come so fast. As I watch him dart across the road to the bus stop, it occurs to me that hell be fine either way.

How Do Tropical Frogs Get Their Stunning Colors? The vibrant hues that dot the rainforest landscape help them avoid predators and win mates In the animal world as in fashion, bright color makes a bold statement. The vivid hues of the strawberry poison dart frog declare, If you eat me, it could be the last thing you ever do! And thats no bluff. The one-inch amphibian, native to Central and South America, secretes a substance so toxic that a single drop can kill a bird or snake.

Animals that deploy poison to defend themselves often signal their toxicity with striking color, and in the interest of clear communication they tend to rely on unvarying patterns, such as the monarch butterflys signature orange and black stripes. But the poison dart frogs, named for the blowgun darts that indigenous people laced with the toxic secretion, present an exception to this conservative approach. Although many of the frogs have reddish bodies and blue legs, a significant number exhibit colors ranging from brilliant orange-red to neon yellow with spots to ocean blue, and more. And heres another thing: About 10,000 years ago, this species looked fairly uniform. But rising sea levels enveloped part of the frogs territory in modern -day Panama, creating a series of islands called Bocas del Toro, and the frogs, isolated in different habitats, followed different evolutionary paths. Why did they develop a variety of colors that rival a bag of Jolly Rancher candies? Molly Cummings, of the University of Texas at Austin, has been studying these questions, and she recently concluded that the frogs colorations have been shaped by an unu sual combination of pressures to both avoid predators and win mates. Cummings suspected that, over the millennia, frogs on some islands developed poisons that were more lethal than those of frogs living elsewhere in Bocas del Toro and that the more poisonous the frog, the more conspicuous its colors. That co-evolution of traits would make sense in the predator-prey world of natural selection. Frogs that are highly toxic can risk being seen if their color loudly warns predators to back off. And frogs whose poison is less lethal would have a better chance of survival if they were less conspicuous. Cummings and a colleague confirmed this theory by collecting poison dart frogs with ten different color schemes. Next the scientists extracted toxins from each fro gs skin, diluted them and injected the mixtures into lab mice. Several of the mice subjected to toxins from the brightest frogs experienced convulsions and compulsively groomed themselves for hours before the effect wore off and they fell asleep. Poison from frogs that were blander in appearance elicited a less prolonged reaction. A brilliant orange-red creature from Solarte Island turned out to be 40 times as toxic as a matte green frog from Coln Island. Among the poison dart frogs, dressed to kill has a literal meaning. What really matters, though, is how the frogs look to predators. Animals perceive colors differently. Birds see more colors than we do. Snakes view the world in a unique set of shades, including infrared, which we cant see. Many different viewers pay attention to color, Cummings says, so the question is, who shapes the signal? Cummings found that, among the various animals that dine on the frogs, only birds have the visual capacity to discern all the frog color varieties. Birds, she says, must have long been the frogs most lethal predator, and the Technicolor skin evolved in response to that threat. But theres more to a color than just its hue or shade, and the poison dart frogs evolution takes advantage of that, too. Some frogs that share the same color are brighter than others. And while birds are good at telling different colors apart, theyre not so hot at detecting different levels of brightness. So the intensity of the frogs coloration must be about sex, Cummings thought. Cummings discovered that the frogs eyes are fine -tuned to gauge brightness, which she theorized is involved in mate selection: Females prefer males with the shiniest skin. From an evolutionary perspective, the poison dart frogs lucked out, since extravagant physical traits that help males attract a female often make them more vulnerable to predators. Peacocks with long colorful tails are a hit with the ladies, but the tails make it harder for them to fly away from danger. Not so with the dandiest poison dart frogs, which get to have it both ways: Their flashy colors simultaneously attract mates and warn predators. To the envy of other animals, they didnt have to sacrifice sex for survival.

Following in the Footsteps of Balboa The first European to glimpse the Pacific from the Americas crossed Panama on foot 500 years ago. Our intrepid author retraces his journey Juan Carlos Navarro delights in pointing out that John Keats got it all wrong in his sonnet On First Looking into Chapmans Homer. The Romantic poet, he says, not only misidentified the first European to glimpse the Pacific Ocean, but his account of the mountain looming over a tropical wilderness in what is now Panama was, by any stretch, overly romantic. Navarro, an environmentalist who served two terms as the mayor of Panama City and is the early favorite in his countrys 2014 presidential elections, notes that it was actually the Spanish conquistador Vasco Nez de Balboa who did the glimpsing, and that countryman Hernn Cortsthe cutthroat conqueror of the Aztec Empirewasnt even in the neighborhood during the 1513 isthmus crossing. Nor was the peakPechito Paradotechnically in Darin, the first permanent mainland European settlement in the New World. Today, the Darin is a sparsely populated region of Panama, says Navarro, the only presidential candidate who has ever campaigned there. In Balboas day, it was just a townSanta Mara la Antigua del Darinon the Caribbean side. Of all the inaccuracies in the sestet, the one Navarro finds the most laughable is the reaction of the expedition party after spotting the Pacific, which, to be persnickety, Balboa named Mar del Sur (the South Sea). The look of the men hardly could have been one of wild surmise, Navarro says, disdainfully. Before starting his journey, Balboa knew pretty much what hed discover and what he could expect to find along the way. The same cant be said for my own Darin adventure, a weeklong trudge thats anything but poetry in motion. As Navarro and I lurch up Pechito Parado on this misty spring morning, I realize it isnt a peak at all, but a sharply sloped hillock. We plod in the thickening heat through thorny underbrush, across massive root buttresses and over caravans of leaf-cutter ants bearing banners of pale purple membrillo flowers. The raucous bark of howler monkeys and the deafening cry of chicken-like chachalacas are constant, a Niagara of noise that gushes between the cuipo trees that tower into the canopy. The late humorist Will Cuppy wrote that the howl of the howler was caused by a large hyoid bone at the top of the trachea, and could be cured by a simple operation on the neck with an ax. Imagine what Balboa thought as he hiked through the rainforest, says Na varro while pausing beside the spiny trunk of a sandbox tree, whose sap can cause blindness. He had just escaped from the Spanish colony of Hispaniola the island that comprises present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republican arid, spare place with a rigid system of morality. He lands in a humid jungle teeming with exotic wildlife and people who speak a magical, musical language. Hes told that not far off are huge amounts of gold and pearls and an even huger sea. He probably thought, Im gonna be rich! For him, the Darin must have been mind-blowing. This month marks the 500th anniversary of the exploration that not only blew Balboas mind, but eventually caused him to lose his head. (Literally: Based on false charges brought by Pedro Arias Dvila, the father-in-law who had displaced him as governor of Darin, Balboa was decapitated in 1519.) The occasion is being celebrated with great fanfare in Panama City, where the crossing was a theme of this years annual carnival. Nearly a million people took part in the five days of spectacles, which featured a 50-float parade, 48 conga-dancing groups and 10 culecosenormous trucks that blast music and drench spectators with (somewhat inaptly) tap water. *** While conquistadors like Corts and Francisco Pizarro are reviled throughout Latin America for their monstrous cruelty, the somewhat less ruthless but equally brutal Balboa (he ordered native chieftains to be tortured and murdered for failing to bend to his demands, and gay indigenes to be torn to pieces by dogs) is revered in Panama. Statues of the explorer abound in city parks,

coins bear his likeness, the currency and the nations favorite beer are named for him, and the Panama Canals final Pacific lock is the Port of Balboa. As depicted in Balboa of Darin, Kathleen Romolis indispensable 1953 biography, the Spanish born mercenary was as resourceful as he was politically nave. Balboas greatest weakness, she observed, was his lovable and unfortunate inability to keep his animosities alive. (He underestimated Dvila even after Daddy-in-Law Dearest had him put under house arrest, locked him in a cage and ordered his head to be chopped off and jammed on a pole in the village square.) Navarro argues that Balboas relatively humane policies toward indigenous people (befriending those who tolerated his soldiers and their gold lust) put him several notches above his fellow conquistadors. He was the only one willing to immerse himself in the native culture, says Navarro. In Panama, we recognize the profound significance of Balboas achievement and tend to forgive his grievous sins. He was consumed by ambition and lacking in humanity and generosity. Was he guilty of being part of the Spanish power structure? He was guilty as hell. He was also an authentic visionary. Navarro has been following in Balboas bootsteps since the summer of 1984. He had graduated from Dartmouth College and was about to begin a masters program in public policy at Harvard University. Balboa was my childhood hero, and I wanted to relive his adventure, he says. So my older brother Eduardo and I got some camping gear, hired three Kuna Indian guides and started from the Ro Aglaitiguar. When we reached the mountains at dawn on the third day, the guides warned us that evil spirits inhabited the forest. The Kuna refused to go farther. For the final nine days we had to muddle through the jungle on our own. I accompanied Navarro on his second traverse, in 1997. He was then 35 and running the National Association for the Conservation of Nature (Ancon), the privately funded nonprofit he started that became one of the most effective environmental outfits in Central America. In defense of the Darin, he prevailed against powerful lumber barons, getting tariffs on imported lumber abolished; lobbied successfully for the creation of five national parks; and discouraged poaching by setting up community agro-forestry farms. On his watch, Ancon bought a 75,000acre cattle ranch that bordered the Gulf of San Miguel and turned it into Punta Patio, Panamas first and still largest private nature preserve. Now 51 and the presidential candidate of the Partido Revolucionario Democrtico (PRD), hes a bit rounder around the middle and his face has some well-earned lines, but his enthusiasm is scarc ely diminished. Despite the atrocities Balboa committed, Navarro says, he brought to the Darin an attitude of discovery and empathy and wonderment. The leader of our last Darin Gap trek was ANCON naturalist Hernn Arauz, son of Panamas foremost explorer and its most accomplished anthropologist. Affable, wittily fatalistic and packed with a limitless fund of Balboa lore, he shepherds hikers through ant swarms and snake strikes while plying a machete the size of a gatepost. Alas, Arauz cant escort me this time around, and Navarro is unable to join the expedition until Pechito Parado. As a consolation, Arauz leaves me with the prayer a dying conquistador is said to have chiseled in rock in the Gulf of San Miguel: When you go to the Darin, commend yourself to the Virgin Mary. For in her hands is the way in; and in Gods, the way out. *** Ever since Balboa took a short walk across a long continent, the swamp forests that fuse the Americas have functioned as a gateway. Theyre also a divider, forming a 100-mile strip thats the only break between the northern section of the 30,000-mile Pan-American Highway, which starts in Alaska, and the southern part, by which you can drive to the Strait of Magellan. Half a millennium later, theres still no road through the territory. When Balboa made his 70-mile slog through this rough country, he was governor of Darin. Sure that he would provide the Spanish a faster passage to the spices of the Indies, he had petitioned King Ferdinand for men, arms and provisions. While awaiting a response, the conquistadorhaving crushed a plot by local natives to burn Santa Mara la Antigua del Darin,

and held a settler insurrection at baynot-so-wildly surmised that intriguers in Seville were scheming to have him recalled. He set off on September 1 with a force of 190 heavily armed Spaniards and hundreds of Native American warriors and porters, some of whom knew the way. Today, Santa Mara no longer exists. The colonial town was abandoned soon after Balboas beheading, and, in 1524, was burned down by the indigenous people. The area is now a refuge for Colombian guerrillas known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Which is why we launch the trek in Puerto Obaldia, a tiny village some 30 miles north, and why the frontier police that accompany us wear bandoleers and shoulder M-16s and AK-47s. Our small retinue is drawn from the three cultures of the region: Choc, Afro-Darienite and Kuna, whose village of Armila is the first along the trail. The Kuna are notoriously generous and hospitable. They hold a spontaneous evening jam session, serenading my party with maracas, pan flutes and song. We all join in and toast them with bottles of Balboa beer. The following morning I befriend a scrawny, tawny junkyard dog, one of the many strays that scavenge the Armila streets. I wonder if he could have possibly descended from Leoncico, the yellow mutt that, in 1510, famously stowed away with Balboa on a ship bound for the Darin. Sired by Becerrillo, the warrior dog of Juan Ponce de Len, Leoncico was so fierce that Balboa later awarded him a bowmans pay and a gold collar. This pooch doesnt look lively enough to chase a paperboy. I wish I could say as much for Darin insects. Into the rainforest I have brought reckless optimism, a book on native birds and what I had hoped was enough bug spray to exterminate Mothra. I miscalculated. As I slog through the leaf litter on the forest floor, the entire crawling army of the jungle seems to be guarding it: Mosquitoes nip at my bare arms; botflies try to burrow into them; fire ants strut up my socks and ignite four-alarm blazes. Bullet ants are equally alarming. Of all the worlds insects, t heir sting is supposed to be the most painful. Arauzs secret to knowing when marauding soldier ants are on the move? The sweet bell tones of antbirds that prey on them fleeing a swarm. Darin wildlife is spectacularly varied. We chance upon an astounding array of mammal tracks: tapirs, pumas, ocelots and white-lipped peccaries, a kind of wild hog that roves in herds of up to 200. In case of a peccary charge, Arauz suggested that I climb at least eight feet up in a nearby tree since they reputedly have the ability to piggyback. I know of a hunter who shared a tree with a jaguar while a pack passed beneath them, he told me. The hunter swore the worst part was the smell of the cats intestinal gas. At a Choc encampment, we dine on peccary stew. I rememb er Arauzs yarn about a campfire meal his parents had with the Choc on the National Geographic Societys 1960 trans -Darin expedition. His dad looked into a pot and noticed a clump of rice bubbling to the surface. He looked a little closer and realized the rice was embedded in the nose of a monkey. The Choc chef confided that the tastiest rice was always clenched in the monkeys fist. Too late, Arauz said. My father had already lost his appetite. Through a translator, I recite the tale to our Choc chef. He listens intently and, without a tickle of irony, adds that the same monkey would have yielded three pints of cacarica fruit punch. It turns out Chocs have a delicious sense of humor. I know this because one of our Choc porters laughs uproariously whenever I try to dismantle my tent. I laugh uneasily when he shows me the three-foot pit viper he has hacked in half beside my backpack. The jungle air is heavy and moist; the tropical sun, unrelenting. When the Darin gets too dense to chop through with machetes, our guides navigate like sailors in a fog, with a compass, counting their steps to measure how far weve gone and when to change directions. We average seven or eight miles a day. During the homestretch I cheat a littleOK, a lotby riding in a piragua. With Navarro in the prow, the motorized dugout cruises past the patchwork of cornfields and pastures that have supplanted Balboas jungle. Sandbanks erupt in butterfly confetti as our canoe putters by. Balboa foraged through this countryside until September 25 (or possibly the 27th the facts in

the travel records dont match), when his procession reached the foot of Pechito Parado. According to legend, he and Leoncico clambered up the rise together, conquistador and conquistadog. From a hilltop clearing Balboa looked south, saw a vast expanse of water and, dropping to his knees, raised eyes and arms heavenward. Then he called his men to join him. Erecting a pile of stones and a cross (Balboa would understandably build something the size of his ego, allows Navarro), they sang a Catholic hymn of thanksgiving. No monument marks the spot of Balboas celebrated sighting. The only sign o f humanity is a circle of stones in which a Bible, sheathed in plastic, lays open to the Book of Matthew. Having summited the historic peak, I, too, raise my fists in exultation. Rather than commend myself to the Virgin Mary, I peer at the cloudless sky and repeat a line from a 20th-century Balboa: Yo, Adrian! If Balboa had a rocky start, he had a Rocky finish. On September 29, 1513 St. Michaels Dayhe and 26 handpicked campaeros in full armor marched to the beach. He had seen breakers from afar, but now an uninviting sand flat stretched for a mile or more. He had muffed the tides. Obliged to at least stand in ocean he was about to own, Balboa lingered at the seas edge till the tide turned. Like a true conqueror, Navarro observes, he waited for the ocean to come to him. When it finally did, Balboa waded into the salty waters of the gulf he would name San Miguel. Brandishing a standard of Madonna in his right hand and a raised sword in his left, he claimed the whole shebang (not quite knowing exactly how big a shebang it was) for God and Spain. My own party skips the beachhead. Hopping aboard the piragua, Navarro and I head for the backwater settlement of Cucunati. For three years Navarro has been canvassing voters across Panama, from the big, shiny cities to frontier outposts where no presidential hopeful has gone before. At an impromptu town meeting in Cucunati, residents air their frustrations about the lack of electricity, running water and educational funding. One out of four Panamanians live i n poverty, and 90 percent of them live in indigenous comarcas, Navarro later says. The conditions in these rural communities are not unlike what Balboa encountered. Unfortunately, the Indians of the Darin are not on the governments radar. On a boat to the Punta Patio reserve, Navarro points out the gumbo limbo, nicknamed the turista tree because its burnt umber bark is continually peeling. Nearby is a toothpaste tree, so named because it oozes a milky sap that has proven to be an effective dentifrice when used in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care. Twined around an enormous cuipo is a strangler fig. I call this fig a politician tree, says Navarro. Its a parasite, its useless and it sucks its host dry. Five hundred years after Balboa led a straggle of Spanish colonialists from the Caribbean across to the Pacific, the wilderness he crossed is imperiled by logging, poaching, narcotrafficking and slash-and-burn farming. The biggest obstacle is 500 years of neglect, says Navarro, who, if elected, plans to seat an Indian leader in his cabinet, transfer control of water treatment and hydroelectric plants to local government, and form a new agency to guarantee sustained investment in indigenous areas. None of the native peoples Balboa encountered in 1513 exist in 2013. The current inhabitants migrated to the Darin over the last several hundred years. Diseases and colonial wars brought by the Europeans basically wiped out the Indian populations, says Navarro. The tragic irony was that the Spanish conquest helped preserve the rainforest. The Indians had stripped much of the jungle to plant corn. In a strange way, the human holocaust Balboa unleashed was the Darins salvation. The conquistador, he says, was an accidental greenie. Nested inside Arauzs home on the outskirts of Panama City are the weird and wonderful oddities he and his parents accumulated during their travels in the Darin. Among the bric-abrac is a tooth from a giant prehistoric shark that once cruised the channels, a colorful mola (cloth panel) bestowed on his mother by a Kuna chief and a Spanish soldiers tizona (El Cids signature sword) Hernn bought off a drunk in the interior. Arauz particularly prizes a photo album devoted to the 1960 trans-Darin expedition. He was, after all, conceived during the journey.

On the walls of his living room are 65 original maps and engravings of the Caribbean from five centuries; the earliest dates to 1590. Many are as cartographically challenged as a Keats poem. Some show the Pacific in the east, a mistake thats easy to make if you think the earth is flat. Others ignore all inland features, focusing entirely on coastlines. One rendering of the Gulf of Panamawhich Balboa once sailed acrossfeatures a grossly oversize Chame Point peninsula, an error perhaps deliberately made by Dutch surveyors feeling heat to come up with something fresh to justify their expense accounts. Arauz masterfully applies his jungle know-how to antique maps of the Darin. Three years ago the Library of Congress awarded him a research fellowship. While in Washington, D.C., he spent a lot of time gazing at the Waldseemller Map, a 12-section woodcut print of the world so old that the intended users biggest concern wo uld have been sailing over the edge of it. Published at a French monastery in 1507 15 years after Columbus first voyage to the New Worldthe chart casts serious doubt on Balboas claim. The Waldseemller Map was the first to show a separate continent in the Western Hemisphere and to bear the legend America. It suggests that Portuguese navigators first explored the west coast of South America and ventured north as far as Acapulco. The shoreline of Chile is rendered so accurately that some believe it must have been based on firsthand knowledge. Even if it were, argues Arauz, the navigators didnt discover anything. Discovery implies uncovering and making the world aware, he insists. Had the date been correct, the Spanish Crown would have certainly known about it. They were quite good at cartographic spying and ferreting out the geographical knowledge of rival nations. The Spanish kept a large secret map called the Padrn Real in Seville that was updated as soon as each expedition returned. This master schema of the known world was used as a treasure map to the worlds riches. As late as 1529, the Chilean coast didnt appear on the Padrn Real, says Arauz, with the most mischievous of grins. That tells me Balboa really was the Manthat, atop Pechito Parado, he spied the Pacific before any other European. The conquistador had left his mark. He hadone could safely sayput himself on the map.