200. The Andean Area
The triumphs of Mexican civilization were in the spiritual or intellectual field; those of Peru lay rather in practical and material matters. The empire of the Incas was larger and much more rigorously organized and controlled, their roads longer and more ambitious as engineering undertakings, their masonry more massive; their mining operations and metal working more extensive. The domestication of the llama and the cultivation of certain food plants such as the potato gave their culture an added stability on the economic side.
The extent of the Inca empire, and of the smaller states that no doubt preceded it, was of influence in shaping Andean culture. Organized and directed efforts of large numbers of men were made available to a greater degree than ever before in the New World. The empire also operated in the direction of more steady industry, but its close organization and routine probably helped dwarf the higher flights of the mind. In the quality of their fabrics, jewelry, stone fitting, and road building, as well as in exactness of governmental administration, the Peruvians excelled. It is remarkable how little, with all their progress in these directions, they seem to have felt the need of advance in knowledge or art for its own sake. They thought with their hands rather than their heads. They practised skill and inhibited imagination.
The Incas, like the Aztecs in Mexico, represent merely the controlling nation during the last stage of development. Their specific culture was the local one of the highlands about Cuzco. Prehistoric remains from the coast both north and south, and in the Andean highland southward of Cuzco in the vicinity of Lake Titicaca and the adjacent parts of Bolivia, demonstrate that this Inca or Cuzco culture was only the latest of several forms of Andean culture. At the time of Inca dominion, the great temple of Tiahuanaco near Lake Titicaca was already a ruin. Pottery of a type characteristic of the Tiahuanaco district, and similar in style to its stone carvings, has been found in remote parts of the Andean area, thus indicating the district as an early center of diffusion. Other centers, more or less contemporaneous, some of them perhaps still earlier, can be distinguished along the coast. In short, the inner history of the Andean region is by no means summed up in that picture of it which the Inca domination at the time of discovery presented. New scientifically conducted excavations throughout the area will no doubt unravel further the succession of local cultural developments.
201. Colombia
The Chibchas of Colombia, the intermediate member of the three-linked Middle American chain, fell somewhat, but not very far, below the Mexicans and Peruvians in their cultural accomplishments. Their deficiency lay in their lack of specific developments. They do not show a single cultural element of importance peculiar to themselves. They chewed coca, slept in hammocks, sat on low chairs or stools; but these are traits common to a large part of South America. Consequently the absence or weak development of these traits in Mexico is no indication of any superiority of the Chibchas as such. The great bulk of Colombian culture was a substratum which underlay the higher local developments of Mexico and Peru; and this substratum—varied agriculture, temples, priesthood, political organization—the Chibchas possessed without notable gaps. Whatever elements flowed from Mexico to Peru or from Peru to Mexico at either an early or a late period, therefore probably passed through them. In isolated matters they may have added their contribution. On the whole, though, their rôle must have been that of sharers, recipients, and transmitters in the general Middle American civilization.
202. The Tropical Forest
The line of demarcation between the narrow Pacific slope of South America and the broad Atlantic drainage is sharp, especially in the region of Peru. The Cordilleran stretch is arid along the coast, sub-arid in the mountains, unforested in all its most characteristic portions. East of the crest of the Andes, on the other hand, the rainfall is heavy, often excessive, the jungle thick, communication difficult and largely dependent on the waterways. Even the Caucasian has made but the slightest impression on the virgin Amazonian forest at its densest. The Inca stretched his empire a thousand miles north and a thousand to the south with comparative ease, establishing uniformity and maintaining order. He did not penetrate the Tropical Forest a hundred miles. At his borders, where the forest began, lived tribes as wild and shy as any on earth. The Andean civilization would have had to be profoundly modified to flourish in the jungle, and the jungle had too little that was attractive to incite to the endeavor. Some thousands of years more, perhaps, might have witnessed an attempt to open up the forest and make it accessible. Yet when one recalls how little has been done in this direction by Caucasian civilization in four centuries, and how superficial its exploitation for rubber and like products has been, it is clear that such a task would have been accomplished by the Peruvians only with the utmost slowness.
Yet various culture elements filtered over the Andes into the hidden lowlands. The Pan’s pipe, for instance, an element common to the Andes and the Forest, is likely to have originated in the higher center. Elements like the blowgun, the hammock, the chair or stool, are typical of the northern Forest and Antilles, and may have infiltrated these areas from Colombia or even been locally developed. The same is true of the cultivation of the cassava or manioc plant, from which we draw our tapioca. This, the great staple of the Forest region, is better adapted to its humid climate than is maize, which flourishes best in a sub-arid environment. Cassava may therefore be looked upon as perhaps a local substitute for maize, evolved as a domesticated plant under the stimulus of an already established maize agriculture. Its cultivation has evidently spread through the Forest region from a single source, since the specialized processes of preparing it for food—the untreated root is poisonous—are relatively uniform wherever it is grown. Maize is not unknown in the area, but less used than cassava wherever the forest is dense.
A characteristic quality of those Forest culture-traits which are not common ancient American inheritance, is that, whether of Middle American or local origin, they are detached fragments, particular devices having little or no relation to one another, like the hammock and the blowgun, or cassava and the Pan’s pipe. Original fundamental processes, higher accomplishments necessitating order or organization of effort, are lacking. This is precisely the condition which might be anticipated when a culture too low to take over a higher one in its entirety had borrowed from it here and there, as the Forest peoples undoubtedly have borrowed from Middle America.