Re: Amerindian navigators

[yuku@mail.trends.ca (Yuri Kuchinsky)]

On Tue, 22 Jul 1997, Domingo Martinez wrote:

	...

> 1. Have you read articles criticizing Heyerdahl? 

Yes.

> Or you take him
> verbatim, as an act of scholarly faith and wishful thinking? 
> 
> 2. Do you know the difference between a "reed boat", as used in the
> Titicaca Lake, and a "caballito de totora" ("reed pony" would be a nice
> translation), as used in the Lambayeque coast?. "You see, Yuri," the
> caballito de totora is mounted like a horse: it is no raft, or boat, or
> anything like that, being its use closer to that of a Hawaiian surfing
> board before it reached LA ("There you have it: contact between Hawaii
> and the Redondo Beach and the Andes!").  I really doubt that Heyerdahl
> mentions "reed boats" in Lambayeque today, really. 

Wrong. According to Heyerdahl, fishermen on Peru's north coast recently
organized

"...paddling competitions with large numbers of their regular one-man
bundle-boats of totora reeds, and also real sailing regattas for their
somewhat larger fishing vessels of balsa logs." (Heyerdahl et al.,
PYRAMIDS OF TUCUME, p. 222-3.)

> 3. Did the "amazing maritime Chincha civilization" (cf. one of Yuri's
> dozens of recent scholarly posts) use reed or balsa-wood rafts? 

AFAIK, they used both.

> If they
> used balsa wood, wher did they get it?

How am I supposed to know? From the forest, I presume...

> "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.

Are you saying it was impossible for them to get any balsa logs? This is
truly bizarre. Experienced sailors couldn't sail whereever they could find
good shipbuilding materials? Don't you see how illogical you sound here?
This sort of illogicality is the usual hallmark of someone blinded by
prejudice!

> (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,

Of course, but in your usual Eurocentric way you would like them to appear
less important/significant. I understand. Old habits die hard...

> 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!)

Indeed. How silly these Natives were! Very funny. But I'm afraid, the
laughs appear to be on you, and not for the first time either...

> 4. What are the best hypotheses to explain the paucity of archaeological
> indications of trade between Mesoamerica and the Andes,

On what basis are you saying this?

> 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.

	...

> Heyerdahl understood, later, that some archaeology was also in order,
> but his intensive excavations in Easter Island and Túcume have yielded
> --for his hypotheses of exchanges between those areas--, so far, only
> some friezes of birdmen in Túcume (subject to interpretation: they are
> not hard evidence of anything!, besides the pictures do NOT look
> similar!) 

According to you.

> and birdmen in the Orongo site in Easter I.  They are
> stylistically different, very different. 

According to you. And you've certainly not demonstrated yourself to be an
objective commentator on this, since your agenda is so obviously to
minimize the achievements of the Amerindians. 

> The other piece of "evidence" is a paddle, *one* small wooden paddle 8 cm 
> long.

Wrong -- in more ways than one. WHATEVER THE SIZE OF THE PADDLE may have
to do with ANYTHING HERE!? I think you've outdone yourself now, Domingo,
in demonstrating your extreme bias!

If you only bothered to read my post, you would have known about ALSO a
silver alloy paddle...

> I got some of this info in the Kon Tiki web site.  On Túcume 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

It would take me some time to read this, so this is all for now.

Yours as always,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky in Toronto -=O=- Specializing in factitious editing 
of other people's posts since 1997 -=O=- http://www.io.org/~yuku

You never need think you can turn over any old falsehoods without a
terrible squirming of the horrid little population that dwells under 
it -=O=- Oliver Wendell Holmes