Cinque Terra - Darwinism at Work

At first glance, citizens of Cinque Terra seem to have set things up in a way to maximise difficulties. They have chosen the most difficult headlands on which to build their towns... in the most remote parts of the Mediterranean coast. No, Dorothy, in the 14th century, the peasants did not anticipate the tourist hiking craze of 2013, and did not select village sites on their aesthetic quality. As usual for the 14th century, defence lay at the heart of town planning.

From the land, invading empires gave the locals a hard time. The conquerors wanted payment of taxes... and young men for armies. The locals didn't always think this a good thing. So locals saw some attractions in setting up their communities at locations where land conquerors couldn't be bothered reaching them... locations for small villages well back into rugged mountain ranges started to make more sense. But how do you get to market to trade your produce... buy essentials not locally available (salt, looms). If you could get access to the coast and your conquering empire is not particularly interested in coastal surveillance... you could get the local pirates to help you out. This is what the early citizens of Cinque Terra did... and these steps solved many of their problems... but not all.

The locals had to adapt their strategies to accommodate the unfriendly pirates... in this case from the north coast of Africa. Once the Africans discovered the isolated ports in the Cinque Terra area... they organised yearly picnics... sail over the waters, do a little bit of rape and pillage... collect a few women and children for the slave market... and make it back home in time for evening prayers. The men in Cinque Terra had a meeting and decided to build forts on the most inaccessible parts of the coast. When the Africans sailed into harbour, the alarm would be sounded and all the citizens would flee into the fort. For this to work, the citizens had to live within a short walk from the fort. Gradually, these amazing villages took shape... in what appears to be the most unlikely place to build a village.

Genoans tried to muscle in on the action... they said to the Cinque Terra citizens, "pay us some taxes and we'll get rid of the pirates". The Cinque Terra citizens said, "you get rid of the pirates first... then you can talk to us about taxes". That was the last they heard from the Genoans. They were left alone... too small to matter... too smart to lose their independence. Their numbers have remained very small... even today, when you take away the number of tourists, the villages are in the range of 200 to 400 citizens... with larger numbers of farmers living up in the fertile valleys.

When we tourists are trudging along the donkey trails, we may be inclined to criticise the locals for living with such inadequate donkey trails for so long. Even Joye has asked, "Why don't they build better donkey trails?" Now we know that difficult movement from town to town was a defensive strategy that served Cinque Terra so well for century after century.