The Great Divide

Decapitation in the Acari Valley, Peru , 2009; Blood and Beauty: Organised Violence in the Art and Archaeology of Mesoamerica and Central America , 2009. Jane E. Buikstra, an expert on Mayan mortuary techniques, has calculated that the number of scholarly papers on Mayan ritual violence has grown from about two a year before 1960 to fourteen a year in the 1990s, a rate of publication that continued at least until 2011. On top of this, research into ritual violence in pre-Columbian North America has also grown. According to John W. Verano, professor of anthropology at Tulane University in New Orleans, each year brings a significant new discovery. Again, it is not so much the level of violence that fascinates researchers, so much as its organised nature and the specific forms of brutality that existed, and different New World attitudes and practices in regard to the associated pain.
    It was an awareness of these seemingly strange yet significant differences between the hemispheres, and a desire to make sense of the context, that sparked the idea for this book. Initially, my ideas were worked out in discussion with Rebecca Wilson, my editor at Weidenfeld & Nicolson in London, but they have since benefited greatly from the energies of Alan Samson, publisher at W&N. I would also like to thank the indexer Helen Smith, and the following specialist scholars – archaeologists, anthropologists, geographers – for their input, some of whom have read all or parts of the typescript, and have corrected errors and made suggestions for improvements: Ash Amin, Anne Baring, Ian Barnes, Peter Bellwood, Brian Fagan, Susan Keech McIntosh, Chris Scarre, Kathy Tubb, Tony Wilkinson and Sijia Wang. Needless to say, such errors and omissions as remain are the sole responsibility of the author.
    I would also like to thank the staffs of several research libraries: The Haddon Library of Archaeology and Anthropology, in the University of Cambridge; the Institute of Archaeology Library, in the University of London; the London Library, St James’s Square, London; the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies, also in the University of London.
    From time to time, instead of repeating the phrases ‘Old World’/ ‘New World’, I have varied the wording and employed ‘western’/ ‘eastern’ hemisphere or ‘the Americas’/‘Eurasia’. This is simply for the great divide the sake of variety (and, occasionally, strict accuracy), and nothing ideological is implied by this usage.
    I have sometimes used BC to date sites, or events, and sometimes BP (before the present). This respects the wishes of the researchers whose work is being discussed.
    This is a book that concentrates on the differences between Old World and New World peoples. This is not to deny that there are also many similarities between the civilisations that existed in both hemispheres before the Europeans ‘discovered’ America. In fact, investigation of these similarities has thus far been the chief interest of archaeologists. For readers who wish to explore these similarities, they are referred to an appendix available online at www.harpercollins.com/books/greatdivide.

Maps

    Map 1: Human migration, 125,000–15,000 BC

    Map 2: The extent of the major old world ancient civilisations

    Map 3: The natural distribution of the plough, wheeled transport and major food products before AD 1500. Note the minimal overlap between the spread of tubers and roots on the one hand, and cereals on the other

    Map 4: The distribution of certain natural and cultural features discussed in the text

    Map 5: Siberian/Alaskan settlements, the outline of the Bering Landbridge, and the distribution of the Kelp Forests around the Pacific rim

    Map 6: The distribution of the world’s major language families

    Map 7: Natural features of the Pacific rim and South Asia, discussed in the text

    Map 8: Worldwide distribution of tectonic plates and earthquake activity

    Map 9: The maximum wind speed (in mph) achievable by hurricanes over the course of an average year

    Map 10: Origin points of tropical cyclones over a thirty-year period

Introduction: 1500 BC–AD 1500: A Unique Period in Human History
    J ust after sunset, on Thursday, 11 October 1492, Christopher Columbus, in his ship the Santa María , was – by his own calculations, set out in his journal – some 896 leagues (or, roughly, 3,000 miles) west of the Canary Islands and on the verge of reaching, as he thought, Cipangu, or