SOUTH AMERICAN INDIAN CULTURES KRIEGER 419 



broad-headed (brachycephalic) neighbors. The attempt has been 

 made to establish a chronology placing such long-headed tribes earlier 

 than the broad heads. The Botocudos of Brazil and the Ciboneyes of 

 the Greater Antilles are typical of the former. The forests sepa- 

 rating the Panaman Chiriqui high culture from the Chibcha-Colom- 

 bia center served as a filter or even as an effective stopper once the 

 earlier migrations had passed. Once the high cultures of Central 

 America were developed, a certain stagnation in migrations must 

 have effectively shut off the passing of migratory hunters and 

 gleaners across the Isthmus. The nomadism of American tribes 

 ceased in every area once they become agriculturists, hence com- 

 munication ceased. 



Later developments in temperate and Arctic North America did 

 not penetrate South America. Most of those inventions or culture 

 traits borrowed bodily from Asia are late. Included among these 

 are the use of the toboggan and the sledge, the sinew-backed and com- 

 pound bow, decorative work effected with split porcupine quills, and 

 others not in use by South American tribes today. The use of the 

 dog for drawing burdens, the dog travois, may have been known to 

 early South American immigrants and may have supplied the basis 

 for the use of the llama as a beast of burden. Of this we are not cer- 

 tain. The Arawak employed the dog as a guard, also bred it for 

 use of its meat as food. 



The invention of the rubber enema syringe is but one of the many 

 contributions of South American tropical tribes to the knowledge of 

 the uses of rubber and of drugs, narcotics, and medicinal plants 

 generally. 



When European explorers first penetrated Oceania they found 

 domesticated chickens and pigs and certain plants in widespread use. 

 In pre-Colombian times the Indians of tropical South America had 

 no knowledge of such accessories to Polynesian culture. Taro also 

 was known to Oceanic peoples but not to South American Indians, 

 although it is now extensively cultivated in eastern Brazil. The 

 sweetpotato is but a late arrival in the economy of tropical America. 

 The fact that Polynesian voyagers carried with them in their journey- 

 ing samples of their cultivated plants is indicative of the fact that 

 they did not frequent the South American coast or the economic 

 plants known to them would have been found growing by the Spanish 

 explorers. Tortoise shell is widely used by Polynesians, and although 

 tortoises are fished on the Pacific coast of Panama, the shell is not 

 used in the handicrafts. In the same manner, regardless of the pos- 

 sible existence of coconut palm on the Pacific coast of tropical Amer- 

 ica, Indians did not include its use in their primitive technology. The 



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