SOUTH AMERICAN INDIAN CULTURES KRIEGER 417 



tity. The development of irrigation in connection witli dry upland 

 valley agriculture, for example, extends all the way from the Pueblo 

 southwest to Peru. 



Not a single plant has been discovered by European or Negro 

 immigrants the properties of which were unknown to Indians occu- 

 pying the area, and not a single additional animal species has been 

 domesticated by these later immigrants whose qualities w^ere un- 

 known to the Andean South American tribe inhabiting that area. 

 The upland tribes developed the cultivation of the potato, cinchona, 

 coca, along with maize and cotton, which were cultivated in Central 

 America as well. The effect of the practice of using the llama as a 

 pack animal and of herding the wool-bearing alpaca was far- 

 reaching. The further development of metal working to the stage 

 of welding and alloying, though significant, was not as important 

 as such mental achievements as the invention of the decimal count- 

 ing system based on use of quipus, which resembles very much the 

 well-known Chinese abacus. Each of the several inventions dis- 

 cussed must have been first used in South America because of their 

 entire absence either in North America or in any part of the Old 

 World. Furthermore, they are for the most part restricted in use 

 and distribution to Amazonia or to the Andean uplands. Few of 

 these discoveries made by native South American Indians have 

 spread to the North American continent. The language of the 

 Arawak carried from its most northerly outpost in Cuba and the 

 Bahamas to the coast of Florida was accompanied by several Ara- 

 wak inventions pertaining to the manufacture of flour from roots, 

 to the carving of wooden seats, and to a limited extent in the shaping 

 of polished stone implements — the celt and the monolithic ax, and 

 in pottery forms and designs. Here we are on uncertain ground and 

 cannot definitely cite the exact point of origin for traits having a 

 Caribbean distribution including Central America. On the other 

 hand, certain culture traits of southern South America resemble 

 those of temperate and northern North America. These include the 

 wearing of skin clothing, the chipping of stone weapon points, stone 

 boiling, and the use of the sucking tube. The absence of these traits 

 in Amazonia is not to be explained as proof that the peoples living 

 in the Amazonian backwash were of Oceanic origin, but simply as 

 illustrative of traits not suitable to a tropical people. 



Other generally distributed traits, such as the use of the digging 

 stick, the bone awl, fire-drill apparatus for fire making, ear plugs, 

 the spear thrower, bow and arrow", the knobbed-head bird arrow, 

 the spear, the harpoon, and fish nets are useful alike to fishing, 

 hunting, and agricultural tribes throughout America. It is not at 

 all unlikely that such tribes as have departed farthest from the 



