South American Mythology [antikvár]

IntroductionThe Peoples of South AmericaSpeculation about the origin of human beings in the Western Hemisphere has been rife ever since the discovery of America. In an age when the Old Testament was accepted as inspired history the discovery of populations in the New World raised a theological rather than a scientific problem - or at any rate a scientific problem which had to be settled within an established theological framework. The naive speculations of the early Conquistadores were inevitably committed to the traditional Biblical world-picture and had to find a place for the native peoples of America within that picture. While these wild and groping guesses are no more than a historical curiosity today, the attitude of mind which they represent is of interest to us since it was antipathetic to the serious preservation of native cosmological myths and local beliefs about origins. In so far as these were in conflict with Biblical 'truth', they were contemptuously rejected by the early chroniclers as pernicious follies and deceits of the devil. Thus a wealth of material which might have been of inestimable value to the modern student was irretrievably lost.Only slightly later 'nativist' views were put forward which took the form of locating the Biblical Creation and the Garden of Eden in the New World. These claims have not stood up to criticism and it is now generally accepted to be pretty well beyond dispute that people first entered America by migration across the Bering Strait during the last phases of the final glacial period, probably about 20,000 B.C. At that time the ice-cap held captive vast quantities of water with the result that the sea level was threehundred feet lower than at present. Thus the present Bering Strait was a broad isthmus forming a land bridge between Asia and North America.The native peoples of America, who were of predominantly Mongoloid stock, immigrated from the region of Siberia and slowly spread from Alaska southwards, reaching-Tierra del Fuego not later than about 5,000 B.C. They brought with them the elements of a Stone Age culture, which included the use of fire, techniques of cutting and grinding bones, flint chipping, the dressing of skins and perhaps various shamanistic religious observances and rituals such as birth, puberty and death rites. It is not possible to determine over what period the waves of immigration by way of the Bering Strait continued, but we can be confident that they did not go on after the melting of the last great ice-cap. They therefore ceased before agriculture was known anywhere in the world and the hunting and food-gathering stage of development lasted in America some 10,000 to 15,000 years - or in some regions which are unsuited to agriculture virtually until the present day.Probably between 4,000 and 3,000 B.C., at a reasonable estimate, native American plants began to be domesticated in a few areas and the three prime American food products, maize, beans and squash, spread widely over South and North America in a large number of varieties adapted to local conditions. The pastoral stage, during which the llama, alpaca and cavey or guinea-pig were domesticated for use, is thought to have been roughly contemporary. Relics of a pre-ceramic culture from about 2,500 to 1,800 B.C. have been studied chiefly in Huaca Prieta at the