File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (17972798140).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo17amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
The Invention and Spread of Agriculture in America' Ba- H E K B E K T .1. S P I N D E N OX tlie foreland of ancient American history the inven- tion of agriculture is the one outstanding fact. For without a sure and abundant food supply, to be se- cured only by domesticating plants, the American Indians could never have risen above the status of hunters, herd- ers, or lowly fishermen. Agriculture was indeed the indispensable inven- tion that made possible all the higher arts, both in the Old World and the New. Yet agriculture began independently in the two hemispheres. The plants found under domestication among the American Indians are distinct as a group from those known in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific islands, before the discovery of America. "We have, then, in the New World and the Old two unrelated families of civiliza- tion, each dependent upon agriculture, but with unrelated groups of plants as the bases. In each area, the increase in population and the accumulation of wealth that resulted from this conquest of the vegetable kingdom made pos- sible intellectual and artistic expres- sion upon a grand scale. The idea of agriculture may have had several points of origin in Amer- ica, but this does not seem likely, since maize, beans, and squashes were com- mon products wherever agriculture was practised. Other plants, fitted for special environments, had a more lim- ited distribution, examples being tlie manioc of the humid lowlands of the Anuizon basin and of the West Indies, and the common potato that was cul- tivated most extensively in the rather arid highlands of Peru. Wild stocks for some of the aboriginal food plants of America are often difficult to ob- tain, but botanical knowledge is far from complete for the more significant regions. The cradle of New World agricul- ture appears to have been the high-
Text Appearing After Image:
Pottery reproductions of maize, cast in molds tliat were made over actual ears of maize, liave much scientific value. These reproductions were sometimes used as details on great ceremonial urns in southern Mexico ' The substance of this ai'ticle was presented at the Second Pau-Anicviciui Cou^ro Washington, D. C., December, 1910. 181

Note About Images