THE AMERICAN ORIGIN OF AGRICULTURE. 501 



cereal crop from a pigweed (Chenopodium quinoa), another of many 

 evidences of a very general tendency to agricultural civilization in 

 ancient America. 



As long recognized by historians and ethnologists, maize was the 

 most important factor in the material progress of ancient America, and 

 the American civilizations remained on a much more strictly agricul- 

 tural basis than those of the old world, a fact not without practical 

 significance to modern agriculture since it undoubtedly conduced to 

 the more careful selection and improvement of the many valuable plants 

 which we owe to the ancient peoples of America. Subordinate only to 

 maize from the agricultural standpoint was the domestication of the 

 beans, while the materials for a developed culinary art and a varied 

 and wholesome diet were furnMied by a variety of minor products like 

 the Cayenne pepper, the tomato, the tree tomato (Cyphomandra) , the 

 pineapple, several species of the strawberry tomato (Physalis) , the paw- 

 paw (Carica), the granadilla {Passiflora quadrangularis) , the gourd, 

 the squash and the peanut. American fruit trees, such as the custard 

 apple and related species of Anona, the alligator pear (Persea), the 

 sapodilla, Mammeas and Lucumas afford refreshing acids, beverages, 

 relishes or salads, but do not furnish substantial food like the banana. 

 Contrary to the opinion of De Canclolle there is every probability that 

 the banana reached America from the west long before the arrival of 

 the Spaniards, but it evidently did not come until after the agriculture 

 and cultivated plants of America had spread into the Pacific. 



No Pastoral Period. 



The agricultural history of the Malays, Chinese, Japanese, and other 

 Mongoloid peoples of the western shores of the Pacific, is exactly 

 that of the American races, and differs fundamentally from that of 

 the peoples of western Asia and the Mediterranean region in giving no 

 indications of a primitive pastoral stage which so many writers have 

 taken to be man's first step from savagery toward civilization. The 

 straight-haired peoples made, however, early and vigorous use of a large 

 number of Asiatic plants and showed skill in agriculture and irriga- 

 tion equaled in prehistoric times only along the western coasts of 

 America, among the congeries of primitive civilizations commonly not 

 distinguished from the terminal members of the series, the Peruvians 

 and Mexicans. 



That the Aztec and Inca empires were comparatively recent organi- 

 zations has caused many ethnological writers to forget that they incor- 

 porated much more ancient culture. For centuries still unnumbered the 

 Andean region of South America supported crowded populations. On 

 the western slopes of Peru every inch of irrigable land was cultivated, 



