Page 60 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

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only guess. It seems unlikely that a way of life so like that of the
other northern agricultural area was developed by independent
invention. But it did not come from the south. For between north

China and the southern agriculturalists of the Ganges valley lies
all south China and Indochina, a land of mountain and jungle

whose inhabitants know nothing of planting and harvesting. Only
around the coasts are there scattered settlements of fishermen
who have learned to plant taro and yams by the digging-stick

methods of the rice growers—and they are more interested in
expanding to the islands of the southeast than to the cold win­

ters of the northern lands. We can guess that the idea of agricul­
ture, and with it the millet seed and domestic animals, had
moved slowly from oasis to oasis along the northern foothills of

the Tibetan plateau, and across the half-desert grasslands which
then covered the Taklamakan and the Koko Nor.

As on the coasts of south China, so on the coasts of Peru
there are settled communities of gardener-fishermen. But it is

hardly necessary to postulate a traffic across the Pacific bearing
the idea of plant cultivation (though that would explain the pres­

ence of cotton on both sides of that ocean). These villagers live
where their ancestors have lived for five centuries and more, upon
the gradually mounting mounds of mussel shells and general

refuse of their occupation, lying close to the sea at the mouths of
the steep and arid valleys running down from the Andes. They

live mainly on fish and shellfish, with an occasional sea lion or
porpoise when luck is with their hunting. But in the low marshy

meadows by the river they plant and harvest peppers and beans,
squashes and gourds and cotton. Their shawls are colorful and
attractively woven, and form their only item of clothing. They

have no pottery and, of course, no consciousness that it is lack­
ing from their inventory. What more, anyway, could they need

than the gourds they grow and the baskets and nets they are so
adept at constructing? After all, they are the most advanced
people in the world as they know it, and they have reason to be

proud of the fact.