322 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1919. 
populations. The rich, luxuriant grasslands of the Russian steppes, 
the prairies of our Western States, the South American pampas, 
and the open country of tropical Africa probably do not represent 
original conditions.® 
It seems more likely that the first domestication of animals was 
accomplished by settled agricultural people like the Peruvians or the 
ancient Egyptians and Chaldeans of the Old World than that 
wandering herdsmen should have begun the cultivation of plants. 
Pastoral habits have been adopted in recent centuries by tribes of 
Indians both in North and in South America, using domesticated 
animals brought by settlers from Europe. Among our western 
Indians horses, cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, and chickens have been 
adopted before taldng up the culture of wheat or other European 
plants, the reason being no doubt that crops require more labor 
than the herding of animals. In the highlands of Guatemala, as 
among the Navahos of New Mexico, many thousands of sheep are 
kept by the Indians, and wool is spun and woven by primitive native 
methods that were applied in former times to cotton. With horses 
to ride some tribes that had lived previously by agriculture adopted a 
still more nomadic existence, following the buffalo herds. 
Before the arrival of Europeans animal husbandry was prac- 
ticed in America only in the southern Andes, by the people who had 
the most specialized and intensive systems of irrigation and terrace 
agriculture, as well as the largest series of cultivated plants. 
(PL 7, fig. 1.) The Peruvian agriculture covered the entire range 
of production from tropical eastern valleys to the upper limits of 
potatoes and other Andean crops, which are grown in some valleys at 
altitudes of more than 14,000 feet. But still higher slopes and 
plateau districts are denuded and grass grown, and there the flocks 
of llamas and alpacas are tended and sheared, like sheep and long- 
haired goats in Mediterranean countries, Avith the male Hamas 
serving also as beasts of burden, like camels or donkeys. 
In thus combining animal industry with irrigation and terrace 
farming the agriculture of the ancient Peruvians was closely parallel 
to that of the early dynastic period of Egypt, and to the system in- 
troduced by the Sumerians into the Persian Gulf region. In America 
many stages of development can be traced, leading up to the Peru- 
vian agriculture, whereas in the ancient seats of Old World civiliza- 
tion agriculture appears abruptly, with no provenience recognized. 
If Egypt and Chaldea represent the beginnings, as usually sup- 
posed, agriculture in the Old World would seem to have reached 
all at once the highest, most specialized stage of development, with- 
" Busse, W., 1908, Die Periodischen Grasbraende im Troplschen Afrika, ihr Elnfluss auf 
die Vegetation und ihre Bedeutung fuer die Landeskultur, Mitthl. aus den Deutschen 
Schutzgebicten, 21 : 2. 
