THE AJICHAIC HORIZON l!» 



and may have had different places of origin. For in- 

 stance, manioc was doubtless brought under cultivation 

 in a humid lowland region, probably the Amazon Valley, 



and t he same may be said of sweet potato* 1 -. The com- 

 mon potato was found under domestication in Peru and 

 there is no very good evidence that its use extended 

 into ( Yntral America. 



Irrigation would have been necessary before agricul- 

 ture could have been developed to any great extent on 

 the highlands of Mexico. Although irrigation is often 

 looked upon as a remarkable sequel of the introduction 

 of agriculture into an arid country, yet from the best 

 historical evidence at our command we should rather 

 regard it as a conception which accounts for the very 

 origin of agriculture itself. The earliest records of 

 cultivated plants are from Mesopotamia, Egypt, 

 Mexico, and Peru where irrigation was practised. 

 In these regions are also seen the earliest develop- 

 ments of the characteristic arts of sedentary peoples, 

 namely, pottery and weaving, and the elaborate social 

 and religious structures that result from a sure food 

 supply and a reasonable amount of leisure. 



If this theory is true we must admit that below the 

 Archaic Horizon we should find traces of a horizon of 

 non-agricultural peoples. Unfortunately, such peoples 

 make fewer objects and scatter them more widely than 

 do sedentary agriculturists. 



Xo one on the basis of present knowledge can offer 

 more than an opinion concerning the date of the inven- 

 tion of agriculture in the New World and the 1 subse- 

 quent beginning of the pottery art that will now claim 

 our attention. The thick deposits argue great age and 

 a thousand years or even more might have elapsed be- 



thifi archaic art ran its natural course and was suc- 

 ceeded by higher art- at about the time of ( Jurist. 



