Early Man in the New World

by Kenneth Macgowan; Joseph A. Hester

Inventions—Some New, Some Old

Let us forget, for the moment, white conquerors like Alexander and white gods like Quetzalcoatl. Let us suppose that the Indian actually invented his own culture.

This does not mean that we throw diffusion out of the window; for the Indian may have invented things in the Old World and brought them to the New—which is one kind of diffusion. On the other hand, he may have invented in the Americas the same things that other peoples were inventing—before or after him—in Eurasia. That, of course, is independent invention.

There is a third possibility: that the Indian invented things in the New World which none of the peoples of the Old World ever invented. If he could do this, then it is obvious that he could invent some things which other people had also invented. The Indians ability to invent uniquely is a far stronger argument for independent invention than the theory of “psychic unity.” It is also an argument for early man, if the things invented can be dated far back in time.

Nordenskiöld and others list a number of inventions that are unique to the New World.[1] Among them are the hammock; the tube of diagonally woven fibers which enabled the lowland Indians of South America to squeeze the poison from the manioc and produce wholesome tapioca; the ventilating and cooling system of the kivas (the subterranean religious chambers of the pueblos); the Peruvian whistling jar; the cigar, cigarette, tobacco pipe, cigar holder; the quipu (a set of knotted strings for counting); the enema syringe; the hollow rubber ball; elastic rings; the toboggan; the Maya calendar and hieroglyphs; and possibly the snowshoe. If the list is not very impressive, consider how few unique inventions the Old World could muster in the same kind of stone age.

The significance of the list is reinforced by our knowledge of certain parallel inventions which the Indian is presumed to have made without aid from the Old World. One is metallurgy. In South America, he discovered rather late how to smelt metals and make bronze. This lateness, according to Nordenskiöld, proves independent invention. If migrants brought over the knowledge of metallurgy, they left no trace of it along their journey, either in North America or in the South Seas; and there is no Indian folklore telling of how their forefathers or their gods brought bronze to the New World. Nordenskiöld makes the further point that, having invented the casting of metal, the Indians must also have invented the forms in which they cast it—the socketed ax, for example, the bell, and the pincers. On the basis of these inventions in metallurgy, and other inventions, Nordenskiöld writes, “It is surely a matter of logical reasoning to suppose that independent inventions may have been made by them in the realms of architecture, weaving, ceramics, etc.”[2] This would be a very much better argument, of course, if bronze had never been invented in the Old World. Then no boatload of Alexandrians could ever refute it.

Nordenskiöld might have added agriculture to his list of unique Indian inventions—or rather the products of agriculture. The Indian discovered and cultivated plants unknown to the Old World. He developed special varieties suited to special conditions of soil and climate. In a sense he even invented one very important plant, for botanists have been unable to find any wild ancestor of Indian corn.

[NEW WORLD PLANTS AND PRODUCTS]

CULTIVATED FOOD CROPS maize (Indian corn)* white potato sweet potato tomato pumpkin squash peanut lima bean kidney bean tepary bean chili pepper cacao (for chocolate) agave (for pulque) sunflower seed custard apple pineapple chayote (vegetable) quinoa (cereal) strawberry arracacha (root) avocado manioc (for tapioca) Jerusalem artichoke WILD FOODSTUFFS persimmon papaw papaya wild rice guava arrowroot cashew nut jacote (plum) Paraguay tea (maté) soursop vanilla bean tonka bean capulin (a cherry) FIBERS New World cottons* henequen DYES cochineal (red)* annatto (red and yellow) anil (indigo blue) GUMS rubber copal balsam of Peru chicle DRUGS tobacco* coca* (for cocaine) cinchona (for quinine) cascara sagrada ipecac *Cultivated

A more exhaustive list could include many natural products which the Indian used locally, such as flour made from acorn and mesquite.

American Plants and Their Cultivation

The list of important plants that made up the Indian’s agriculture is impressive. It is also unique, for it contains few Old World species. In the northeastern United States there were a few wild fruits and berries—grapes and blackberries, for example—that are common to the north temperate zones of both hemispheres. In Middle America were two plants which are found in Asia and the South Sea Islands—the bottle gourd and the coconut palm—and cotton of a different species from that of Eurasia and Africa. Otherwise, “of cultivable plants,” says Nordenskiöld, “the ancient American higher civilizations possessed none in common with the Old World.”[3]

There are two very curious facts about primitive husbandry in the New World. The Americas provided the Indian with few animals that could be domesticated, and no draft animals at all. Because he had no ox and no horse, he could not use a plow, and did not invent one. Fortunately, on the other hand, the Americas had no plants that required plow cultivation and field sowing. Wild rice grew in lakes. The rest of the plants responded to hoe culture. Or, rather, since the Indian used the hoe only in limited areas—and probably quite late, at that—the seeds could be placed in the ground with a planting stick, and after a little hand cultivation the shade of the abundant leaves would take care of the weeds. Beans, corn, manioc, and potatoes—the four major crops—were ideally suited to the only means the Indian possessed for planting and cultivating.

This difference between agriculture in the Mediterranean area and the New World is quite as great as the difference between the pastoral activities of the Fertile Crescent and the scanty domestication of animals in the Americas. Here there is no solace for the diffusionist. As Lowie has said, “There is more resemblance between the Ionic capital and a Papuan headrest than between the sowing of cereals and the planting of a banana shoot.” (If he had been thinking specifically of our present problem, he would have substituted corn kernel or potato eye for banana shoot.) “Bee-keeping is not the same as training elephants or herding horses; and sowing seeds is not equivalent to planting a side-shoot or a tuber, let alone ridding a tuber [manioc] of its prussic acid.”[4]