In order to effectively hunt and gather, Vietnam’s indigenes
trekked through the mountains over an ancient network of
footpaths. These trails had first been developed by Indochina’s
non-human mammalian species. Thousands of years ago, such
creatures as the Asian elephant, Indochinese tiger, gaur, wild
water buffalo, and Asian black bear discovered the routes of
least resistance through the Annamese cordillera. They not only
located the most gradual gradients across difficult terrain,
they also found the mountain passes, and they located the driest
routes through otherwise boggy lowland areas. The pounding of
hooves and feet over thousands of years deepened and widened the
most-used routes into veritable animal superhighways. The
mammalian road network largely adhered to the contours of
watersheds, with the widest, deepest, most-heavily-trodden
routes through the region’s valleys. Where valleys became too
narrow, trails ran along the tops of adjacent ridgelines or
along the sides of nearby hills. Additional tr