Re: Amerindian navigators

[agdndmc@showme.missouri.edu (Domingo Martinez)]

(This is a follow-up of the type I do not like: I tried first to clear things 
up with a private exchange, but got no private response.  So, with the 
allowance of the rest, I will try to be informative at the same time that I 
clean my good name ;-) .)

First of all, my post was a follow up to one note by Yuri Kuchinsky (that guy 
that makes "isolationists" tremble with his "smoking guns"; for an example, 
see, among many other "scholarly" texts, the p.s. of 
http://www.andes.missouri.edu/personal/dmartinez/diffusion/msg00048.html --if 
you wonder, that was the pompous preannouncement/threat of the statues in 
India holding mythical plants that some people interpret as maize cobs.)

But Larry Elmore decided to tackle it in defense of a Yuri in distress, I 
suppose. 

In article <01bc96d4$7c85ade0$826700cf@ljelmore>, "Larry J. Elmore" 
<ljelmore@montana.campus.mci.net> wrote:
>Domingo Martinez <agdndmc@showme.missouri.edu> wrote in article
><5r2khh$1erq$1@news.missouri.edu>...
>
><SNIP>
>
>> I 
>> really doubt that Heyerdahl mentions "reed boats" in Lambayeque today,
>>really.
>
>If you've been following the newsgroup, I think the answer's pretty
>apparent. And of course Heyerdahl doesn't mention reed boats in that area
>today, except to mention the very small ones you just brought up. But if
>you read Heyerdahl, you'd know that already.

So, Larry, we agree on this!  But, sadly, Yuri does not.  In a post of his he 
states and quotes Heyerdahl about some public competition of those "boats".  
Yuri has no idea of what fishermen do with the caballitos de totora, and he, 
as he always does, takes Heyerdahl verbatim (my point in the post that you are 
following up).  Those non-traditional competitions are sporting events that 
have been created in the Huanchaco beach near Trujillo and other ports near 
Chiclayo for the amusement of tourists and the local beach-going people.  And 
they are not what I would call a "boat", unless a surfing board is a boat as 
well.   (By the way: the caballitos are still used by fishermen there: that is 
true.)

Please note that Heyerdahl, to build his reed Egyptian-looking raft, did not 
look for the help from the coastal fishermen from Huanchaco or Pacasmayo, but 
rather from people around the Titicaca, who use true reed boats (none as large 
as Ra, though), which says a lot of where the expertise in reed is today.

The Peruvian Tourism Agency has some pictures of caballitos at Huanchaco, 
which you can see at http://www.foptur.gob.pe/lalib/fotos/truji23.gif  
truji24.gif truji25.gif).

By the way, the totora used in the caballitos is a _Typha_, while the one used 
in the Titicaca lake is _Scirpus totora_.

>However, what does the fact that only small one-man reed boats are used
>today have to do with anything? Does that say _anything_ about hundreds of
>years ago? 

We agree again!!  Neither you or I think that they are relevant.  We are on a 
roll, Larry.  I have no idea why Heyerdahl (and, inevitably, Yuri) consider 
tha the presence of  those little reed "boats" (known as "caballitos de 
totora") are so important for the case of transpacific travel.  To have some 
proof about large reed rafts or boats or whatever, we need some other 
information, like clear iconographic depictions (absent, so far) or clear 
mentions of such in the early chronicles (do you have references of large reed 
rafts?) 

But I guess that our agreements will continue, in spite of your very bad 
misreading of my post.

>> 3. Did the "amazing maritime Chincha civilization" (cf. one of Yuri's
>dozens 
>> of recent scholarly posts) use reed or balsa-wood rafts?  If they used
>balsa 
>> wood, wher did they get it? "You see, Yuri,"  there are no too many balsa
>
>> trees in the Peruvian Coast, especially around Chincha, which sits in a 
>> riverine oasis in one of the driest deserts of the world, and which also
>is 
>> the coastal region which is among the farthest away from any jungle. (The
>
>> Chincha, by the way, were co-opted by the Inca to carry our trade in both
>land 
>> --cotton, camelid fiber, and so on-- and along the Coast, to get the very
>
>> valuable Spondylus shells from what today is Ecuador. Maria Rostworowski 
>> mentions, if my memory does not fail, around 6,000 traders.  They were 
>> important, of course, so much so that during the Cajamarca tragedy, the 
>> Spaniards could not very well tell who was more important: the Inca, or
>the 
>> Apu of Chincha.  Later, Atawallpa, a friend of tall tales, would tell the
>
>> Spaniards that the Chincha had a float of 100,000 rafts!)
>
>This is really obtuse, to say the least. 

What is obtuse, here? My writing or your reading?  It is true that Atawallpa 
said that (according to a chronicler, but I will have to dig the reference), 
and it is true that Atawallpa was extremely arrogant, as he was the ruler of 
what at the time was perhaps the largest polity on earth.  The fact that there 
were 6,000 Chincha traders is documented by Rostworowski in a 1970 paper which 
she herself quotes in her later _Historia del Tawantinsuyu_.  She is the one 
that has established the fact of the Chincha's importance in trade along the 
Coast (if you have not read her works, then you may be out of your depth here: 
boats is one thing, trade and ethnohistory quite another; I am sure Yuri does 
not even know who she is, and doubt he cares).  There are very few studies on 
trade along the Pacific, but everything seems to point that the Tumbes, Moche, 
and Chincha traders went North only as far as Las Perlas or thereabouts (read 
Cieza for a description of all the dismal *ports* -Puerto Quemado, Puerto del 
Hambre, etc.- between Panama and Tumbes), where they traded their wares for 
things of ceremonial value, being tops the pink Spondylus shells that had a 
very high value all over the Andes.

There is no evidence that there were regular traders from Tumbes, Moche, Wari, 
Chincha, Inca or any Andean allegiances going further north.  They may have, 
but in any case (i) there is no evidence (ii) if they did it,  it was not 
customary.

Also, note that none of the notices the Spaniards gathered in Dari�n, 
including the famed Pascual de Andagoya story that all kids know in Peru, 
included any mention of the people from those lands coming to Panama: only 
that they knew the existence of that fabled and rich land from second hand 
sources (most likely, the traders that met with them in the trade islands off 
today's Ecuadorian coast).  Note that a decade had easily passed since the 
"d�scovery" by Balboa of the Mar del Sur, that Panama was already an 
established city (Pizarro was a "vecino"), and ask yourself how come they had 
not had contact with any trader that was actually from the Andean region.  It 
is of course impossible to provide evidence of un-happenings but, time and 
again, paucity of evidence is most of the time evidence of paucity (I like 
this sentence: I am hereby claiming a copyright to it).

>I guess the Spaniards just
>_imagined_ meeting balsa rafts at sea, making their way upwind sometimes.

Who said that?  You are using Yuri's style here, putting in my post things I 
did not write.  Quote me on that.

The episode of Bartolome Ruiz meeting the Tumbes raft is known, again, by all 
kids that learn Inca history. Depictions, both documented and totally 
ficticious, of such one encounter are abundant in history books, both serious 
and "light".  What we know is that the people in the raft were  from Tumbes 
(not from the Chincha "amazing maritime etc."), which fact is confirmed by 
Felipillo himself (a man captured from that very raft, taken to Spain where he 
learned Spanish, and then sent back to serve as the main interpreter or 
"lengua" in Cajamarca and beyond).

By the way, there are not abundant depictions of large rafts in the 
chronicles.  If you have any additional references, we could collect them and 
pass them to Maria Rostworowski.  She will sure like to have them.

>And Pizarro just _imagined_ frequently using the damned things. Jeez, just
>because you're ignorant of the facts,

Sure, Larry, sure..., but do not get mad at me.  Hopefully, when I learn 
something, I will first read well before spitting at the moon.  (Again, I have 
no idea where you get all those things that you write as if I hade written 
them.)  Pizarro used rafts, yes: that is documented.  Lots of large trade  
rafts going north and south: gimme references)


>... don't spout off as all-knowledgeable.
>You guys demand proof and references, then instead of looking up the
>references, claim we didn't provide enough.

I am providing some names.  If you want the exact references, you will have to 
wait until tonight, when I get home (this is just a lunch time post).
 
> What do you want us to do,

Who is "us", Larry?  And who is "You guys"?  What is this? 

>> 4. What are the best hypotheses to explain the paucity of archaeological 
>> indications of trade between Mesoamerica and the Andes, let alone between
>
>> Polynesia and the Andes? (Question that arises from the purported
>"evidence" 
>> of large trade networks by "amazing maritime civilizations" around the 
>> Pacific.) Trade most likely happened, but there does not seem evidence of
>it 
>> being an established fact.
>
>No, the Cuna Indians of Panama just made it all up, and by an amazing
>coincidence, their fairytales just happened to fit hand-in-glove with
>reality.
> 

Tell me about those people... Are you referring to what here?  Were Cun� the 
people that told the story to those Castillian Caucasians like Andagoya and 
thence Pizarro?  And most importantly, did they have regular contact with 
Andean traders?  Tell me what your are referring to here.  I want to know.  I 
said above that it was unusual for the Spaniards not to have met any Andean 
traders if such trade was regular.  Did the Cun�s meet regularly with Andean 
people?

>> 5.  In the chronicles, there is only, I believe, one account (among
>thousand 
>> of pages and hundreds of chroniclers) of one Inca, T�pac Yupanqui, I
>believe, 
>> that mentions an expedition to the Western seas.  Heyerdahl was basically
>
>> inspired by that account to carry out the Kon-Tiki expedition.
>
>Wrong.
>

I accept that.  He had other myths and stories suggesting it.  You are right, 
I am wrong.

<snip me>

>>Heyerdahl understood, later,
>that 
>> some archaeology was also in order, but his intensive excavations in
>Easter 
>> Island and T�cume have yielded --for his hypotheses of exchanges between
>those 
>> areas--, so far, only some friezes of birdmen in T�cume (subject to 
>> interpretation: they are not hard evidence of anything!, besides the
>pictures 
>> do NOT look similar!)  and birdmen in the Orongo site in Easter I.  They
>are 
>> stylistically different, very different.
>
>So maybe the inspiration for the Easter Island stuff didn't come directly
>from Tucume. Maybe they changed over a couple of hundred years, like such
>stuff does everywhere else in the world. No one doubts diffusion when it
>occurs by land with similar evidence, only when by sea. Why? Because we
>_know_ they couldn't sail worth a damn until Europeans showed them how?

This sentence is all yours.  You are underwriting Yuri's childish and baseless 
accusation of Eurocentrism against his "opponents", and in the process you are 
becoming "Yuricentrist" (copyright, again, by me).  Good company, Larry!

By the way, I doubt diffusion in some contexts by land as well.  With the 
major exception of maize and some few other crops, there was not a lot of 
diffusion between South and Mesoamerica.  (We can discuss that in a different 
thread though.  I would recommend Jared Diamond's _Germs, Guns and Steel_ for 
starters.)  There was trade, of course, but many factors impeded a massive 
exchange of culture, technologies, cultigens, and domesticated animals, as it 
happened in Eurasia (Diamond's explanation: the axes of the continents, etc.)

(Those maybes in your paragraph above are very sensible, by the way.)

>Are you talking about Easter Island (in which case there are eyewitness
>accounts anyway), or Tucume, in which case there was more than just one
>small wooden paddle.

The wooden toy "paddle" was found in T�cume (my take: at 3 inches, it could be 
anything else: I have not seen a persuasive case that the thingy is a paddle).

>> I got some of this info in the Kon Tiki web site.  On T�cume and Easter 
>> Island, read (basically reed boats and birdmen with lots of preaching 
>> included):
>> 
>> http://www.media.uio.no/kon-tiki/tucume/modus_vivendi.html
>> 
>> where author Johansen, curiously, complains about how closed and
>overzealous 
>> some archaeologists are (in this case, he refers to Polynesian
>archaeologists, 
>> but it sounds mighty familiar in some newsgroups).
>> 
<snip me>
>> 
>> 1. conspiracy of statu-quo archaeologists who don not allow new points of
>view
>
>That's not quite what they say and you know it. Why not be accurate, oh you
>stickler for accuracy from all others...
>

  I will quote from  �ystein Kock Johansen's article 
athttp://www.media.uio.no/kon-tiki/tucume/modus_vivendi.html


but it will have to be later (web is very slow now), and the reader will make 
up her/his mind, as this is a clearly subjective matter.  I believe I am 
accurate in stating that Johansen complains about what he calls the "modus 
vivendi" in Polynesian archaeology, you think I am not.  What else can I do.



>From what I've seen, they would in any context not requiring sea travel...
>
>> 3. Sentences like "This bead probably belongs to the same
>>                            cultural and chronological tradition as the
>T�cume
>>                            relief, even if its provenance is rather
>obscure. "
>> 
>> in which the author (referring to a Pun� pot) cannot hide a lot of
>wishful 
>> thinking.  The provenance is obscure (ergo not any good to make major 
>> assertions), but I throw my interpretation anyway (so I can strengthen my
>
>> case, or at least create the illusion I am doing it).
>
>And there's just as much speculation and wishful thinking on your side
>explaining such stuff away. Why is speculation on your side supposed to be
>accepted as iron-clad while anyone else's speculation is trash? It's still
>just speculation.

Which speculation?  I am asking for additional proofs.  I mean, Easter Island 
is way off the Coast of Peru, and the ocean currents do not seem to contribute 
to exchanges.  I could accept a stray boat here and there, without any 
problem, but tell me that it is not true that Heyerdahl and his people (and 
apparently you as well) believe there were two-way contacts, as purported by 
the birdmen (from T�cume to Easter Island, according to Johansen) and the 
two-way "paddles" (from Rapa Nui to T�cume).  That is a very tall order, 
Larry, and I would like to know more about how the Pacific very strong 
currents would have to behave to make that possible.

>
>> 4. Or sentences like:
>> 
>>                            "Primarily from
>>                            a purely logical point of view. I find it
>quite
>>                            unlikely that the highly civilized peoples who
>>                            dominated South America from the time before
>>                            our era and until the arrival of the
>Spaniards, did
>>                            not know how to build sea-worthy craft, let
>alone
>>                            use them in open waters. This is pure logic,
>>                            which always comes in handy in archaeology,
>but
>>                            I am also of the opinion that it can be proved
>as
>>                            far as archaeology is concerned."
>> 
>> I will take him by his word.  It can be proved, yes.  Has it been proved?
> 
>> Not.
>
>No, the conquistadors and their chroniclers just imagined it all. Just a
>bad fever dream. The fact that balsa log rafts were in use up through the
>end of the last century wherever modern ports had not yet been constructed
>has not been "proven". The photograph of a large one tacking upwind in 1899
>was a hoax. Any and all evidence is inadmissable because it just _can't_ be
>true...

This has already been argued above.  You are creating straw, or totora men 
here.

An additional piece of information and questions here.  The original chronicle 
(the Samano-Xerez relation) in which the encounter of Bartolome Ruiz with the 
Tumbes raft occurs, refers to a raft mad with thick "ca�as" (a Gramineae 
stem), which people have translated as "poles".  If anybody has Corominas 
handy (I do not), it would be interesting to know if "ca�as" and "palos" were 
used interchangeably at that time.  In today's Spanish, "ca�a" is not a wooden 
pole, but rather a hollow or soft body.  The better known "ca�a" is of course 
sugar cane, but there are bamboo-like plants in the Pacific coast which are 
very thick and could be used to make rafts.  In particular there something 
that is called "ca�a de Guayaquil".  The thick carrizo, also common in the 
coast, was introduced from Spain.

A linguist's and a botanist's help would be appreciated here.

Regards,

Domingo.



Domingo Martinez-Castilla
agdndmc@showme.missouri.edu