PREHISTORIC AGRICULTURE SHOWN BY TERRACING. 17 



tions. The same has recently been found to be true of the uninhab- 

 ited coast regions of eastern Guatemala. 



It is not probable that more than a small proportion of the native 

 tribes which have inhabited the Central American region were 

 builders of stone structures or other permanent monuments by which 

 ancient occupations could be proved. The likelihood that many tribes 

 might pass without leaving any permanent evidence of their existence 

 makes it the more remarkable that all parts of Central America have 

 in one prehistoric age or another been the scenes of primitive agri- 

 cultural civilizations sufficiently advanced to work in stone, or at least 

 to pile up terraces or earthworks of regular form. Some of the more 

 barbarous tribes might occupy a region for thousands of years and 

 yet leave no traces other than the fragments of broken pottery. These 

 fragments are so abundant and so generally distributed in Central 

 America that they appear as a regular constituent of alluvial soils 

 and surface deposits. 



But even the pottery may not mark the limits of primitive civiliza- 

 tion, for the Central American pottery is not glazed, and after a suffi- 

 cient lapse of time it crumbles away. A more striking evidence of 

 antiquity could scarcely be imagined than the gradual crumbling 

 down of large earthenware pots left by prehistoric man in dry caves 

 of eastern Guatemala. Of the skeletons beside the pots only the teeth 

 remain, and of the pots themselves only the rims or little circular 

 mounds of earth. YVe can not know how long it has taken the pottery 

 to crumble, but we can at least contrast the condition of these decayed 

 pots with other pieces of pottery placed in caves of the same district 

 in later prehistoric ages, which -till appear fresh and new, as though 

 recently burned. And yet the bones beside these apparently new pots 

 have also crumbled nearly to dust, and there has been time for the 

 surrounding country to be occupied with old forests of hard-wood 

 trees, like true virgin growth. 



PREHISTORIC AGRICULTURE SHOWN BY TERRACING OF LAND. 



Terracing of the land shows that agriculture was extensively prac- 

 ticed in former times in regions now unoccupied. Two principal 

 forms of prehistoric stone terraces, built evidently for agricultural 

 purposes, may be recognized in the Central American region, in addi- 

 tion to the narrow terraces of earth described in a previous section. 

 There are (1) narrow, high terraces to hold drainage water and pre- 

 vent erosion in the narrow valleys or on steep slopes of mountains 

 and (2) broad, low terraces aj;>parently leveled to keep rain water 

 from running off rather than to apply irrigation. 



Terraces of the first type are frequently met with in the heavily 

 forested region in eastern Guatemala. Similar terraces are used at 



145 



