FOOD PLANTS OF ANCIENT AMFKECA. ' 495 



other arts,^' was "a short, robust people, with coarse, black hair; 

 peaceful, industrious, and skillful hus))andnien, with a surprising- 

 knowledo-e of irrigating- processes.''" 



It is a long reach from Babylonia to tropical America, but the com- 

 munity of ancient food plants will prevent biologists, at least, from 

 passing as a meaning-less coincidence the fact that these earl}- agricul- 

 tural civilizations of Asia differed in no essential respect from those of 

 our own so-called New World, not even in the physical characteristics 

 of the people, so that the same words describe Ijoth equally well. If 

 it be found that the same taro plant was in reality cultivated in ancient 

 Egypt. Southern Arabia, Hindustan, Polynesia, and America, ancient 

 human communication between these remote parts of the world is as 

 definitel}^ established as thoug-h coins of Alexander the Great had been 

 dug- up. It is no empty fancy, but the most direct and practical 

 explanation of concrete facts, to believe that the robust, straight-haired 

 race may have brought from America some of the plants they culti- 

 vated in Asia. It was among such men that agriculture, navigation, 

 and other arts of civilization reached high development in America at 

 a very remote period. The ancient cultures of the Old World left 

 traces of no such infancy and gradual growth as those of America. 

 Eg3'pt and Babj^onia arose suddenly to civilizations further advanced 

 than those of Mexico and Peru. 



That the Aztec and Inca empires were comparatively recent political 

 organizations has caused many writers to forget that they incorpor- 

 ated 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 culti- 

 vated — houses, towns, and cemeteries being relegated to waste places 

 to save the precious soil. Irrigation was practiced with a skill and 

 thoroughness unexcelled in modern times, though by methods closely 

 duplicated in ancient Arabia, even including the boring- of deep tun- 

 nels for coll(K'ting- subterranean water. 



To claim that the Polynesians, Malays, Phcenecians, Egyptians, 

 Hindoos, or Chaldeans came from America would be a careless anachro- 

 nism, to say the least, for the very terms of the problem place its 

 solution far beyond the period in which these peoples, nations, and 

 languages were differentiated. It is doubly unreasonable to expect 

 any very close resemblance of languages or arts in the Tropics of Asia 

 and America at the time of their discovery l)y Europeans, since change 

 and diversification had continued on both sides of the Pacific. To 

 accomplish the dissemination of the tropical food plants there was 

 necessary only a primitive people with the skill in agriculture and 

 navigation possessed by the Polynesians and Malays. It has long been 



« Keane, Man, Past and Present, Cambridge, 1899. 



