NO. 1 CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN LATIN AMERICA 
127 
pattern. Known village sites are small in area, and frequently shallow 
in refuse accumulation. Neither material culture remains nor burials 
offer any features that could be interpreted as reflecting differences in 
social status. Life appears to have been simple and relatively change- 
less for the prehistoric inhabitants of southern Brazil. 
No archeological evidence has been reported to confirm the exist- 
ence of the large communities mentioned by early European explorers 
along the central Brazilian coast, but it is impossible to judge whether 
this is because large habitation sites do not exist or because the area 
is as yet so superficially explored. 
CONCLUSION 
If we return in conclusion to the image of a cultural continental 
divide, separating the Amazon Basin on the north and the west from 
the coastal uplands on the east and south, we find that the picture on 
both sides, although culturally distinct and independently derived, is in 
one respect similar : both regions were marginal to centers of develop- 
ment and diffusion, so that inventions and discoveries came to them 
relatively late if at all. The Amazon Basin, closer geographically to the 
Andean center and accessible by easily traveled river routes, made 
the transition to agriculture and pottery making earlier than the re- 
gion to the south. It is possible that the abundant food resources from 
the sea put off for some time in the south the transition to an agricul- 
tural subsistence that may not, initially at least, have been as produc- 
tive. Climate and soil are more suitable for intensive agricultural ex- 
ploitation here, however, than in the tropical forest, and it would be 
of interest to know why the potential was so little developed in 
aboriginal times. 
There are many fascinating problems to be investigated on both 
sides of the cultural continental divide, relevant both to the recon- 
struction of prehistory on the South American continent and to prob- 
lems of cultural theory. The principal ingredient lacking is the ar- 
cheologists to undertake the work. 
REFERENCES 
BiGARELLA, J. J. ; TiBURTius, G. ; and Sobanski, A. 
1954. Contribugao ao estudo dos sambaquis do literal norte de Santa Cata- 
rina. Arquiv. Biol, e Tecnol. vol. 9, art. 8, pp. 99-140. 
Crane, H. R. 
1956. University of Michigan radiocarbon dates I. Science, vol. 124, No. 
3224. 
