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that Abkhasians are universally very strong and slender people, with no excess fat on their bodies. They eat slowly and chew thoroughly, savoring each moment and deeply enjoying one another’s company.
    When an Abkhasian host invites a guest for dinner, the wording of the invitation says a great deal about the priorities of these remarkable people. The invitation always says, “Come and be our guest.” It never says, “Come for dinner.” 39 Of course dinner is served, and it is prepared and shared with joy. But the emphasis is never on the food, but rather on the pleasures of being together. These are a people who relish the joys of friendship above all others.

LEARNING FROM THEIR WISDOM
     
    Of course, people in Abkhasia have always struggled with the trials and crises that exist in all human life. In addition, the modern world has been encroaching in recent years, and there have been particularly challenging events since the breakup of the former Soviet Unionin the early 1990s. I will speak more about these later, but I want to focus now on what those of us in the more modern world can learn from these friendly, long-living, happy, and extraordinarily healthy people.
    Not long ago, I unconsciously equated aging with the loss of mental agility, sensory acuity, physical limberness, sexual desire, and a host of other human abilities. I thought it almost certain that we will all become more frail and disease-prone as we get older. I thought that the best we could do was to be satisfied to accept these “inevitable” losses with dignity. But the more I have learned from the people of Abkhasia, the more hopeful I have become. They seem to suggest that there might be another possibility for us entirely. If we choose wisely, maybe we, too, can live long lives in good health and spirits. Maybe our wisdom years can, after all, be rich with vitality, joy, and fulfillment. Particularly when, as we shall now see, the Abkhasians are far from the only culture representing this fascinating possibility.

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Vilcabamba: The Valley of Eternal Youth
     
    A society’s quality and durability can best be measured by the respect and care given to its elder citizens.
    —Arnold Toynbee
     
    T he second people famous for their longevity and health who were visited and studied by Dr. Alexander Leaf for
National Geographic
were the Vilcabambans.
    Vilcabamba is a small, extremely inaccessible town tucked away in Ecuador’s Andes mountains. Perched serenely at an altitude of some 4,500 feet, the Vilcabamban valley is not far from the Peruvian border, and about a hundred miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. In the language of the Inca Indians, Vilcabamba means “Sacred Valley,” and there is indeed something magical about the place. For one thing, the climate could hardly be more benign. With an average year-round temperature of 68 degrees and almost no seasonal variation, Vilcabamba is an idyllic land of lush, subtropical agriculture where a wide variety of grains, fruits, and vegetables can be easily cultivated, and many grow wild for the picking.
    In 1981, the physician and medical journalist Morton Walker conducted a series of studies of Vilcabambans’ health and wrote effusively of what he found:
In the Western Hemisphere, a place exists where degenerative diseases seldom if ever affect the population. The people have no heart disease, no cancer, no diabetes, no stroke, no cirrhosis, no senility, no arteriosclerosis, nor any other morbid conditions connected with an interruption in blood flow that are commonly responsible for illness, disability, and death among industrialized people. Since they don’t die of degenerative diseases, the inhabitants of this place are able to live the full complement of mankind’s years—more than a century.…
    Vilcabamba is a veritable paradise on earth.…Over the years the Sacred Valley has been variously called “The Land of Eternal Youth,” “The Valley of Peace and Tranquility,” and “The