28.8 America: a.d. 1301 to 1400  (Page 3/3)

The Aztec medical profession had an hereditary character and healers were divided into specialties, such as the "tictl", who used magic and some anatomical knowledge and the properties of plants and minerals. Others were teeth pullers, bone setters, etc. At Mayapan in the Yucatan there was somewhat of a Maya renaissance, founded by colonists from Chichen Itza. (Ref. 138 , 125 , 45 )

Up to this time in this outline, we have had little or nothing to say about the Caribbean, when discussing Middle America. This is not to say that there were no people living on those islands, but simply that specific information has been meagre. It has been established, however, that Taino Indians, with ancestors in South America, were now spreading from Haiti out over Cuba, Jamaica and the Bahamas. These Arawak-speaking people pushed back or enslaved a more primitive tribe, the Siboney. They grew corn and yams, made cassava bread from yucca, spun and wove cotton and made ornamented, fine, brown pottery. Artificial flattening of infants' heads produced low foreheads in the adults. They used honey for sweetening and smoked cigars through their noses. The more southern islands, including Porto Rico, were inhabited by the cannibalistic Caribs. (Ref. 213 )

South america

The Cuculis and Puerto Viejos, who lived along the lowlands of coastal Peru in this and the next century, used an ancient technique of digging wells that slowly filled over a 24 hour period, so that at the end of each day, a small sluice could be opened to let water into a network of canals leading into a man's garden. People of a hundred villages lived in this way in an area where today one cannot even find a lizard. Although the pottery of these people was poor, they had rich fabrics and some metal devices, including beam scales. Two Puerto Viejo villages have been unearthed, one at the southern tip of Chica, where the mountains enter the ocean and cut off the beach. The inhabitants had returned to the use of part underground houses, not previously used in this region for 3,000 years, although such structures had been found among the Diaguites on the Argentine slopes of the Andes. The Puerto Viejo built temples and palaces, too. One of these had a base of some 3,600 square yards and was built on a cliff. Some 3,000 acres of land were used for agriculture, chiefly for corn. (Ref. 62 )

Legends state that the Incas already had a flourishing capital at Cuzco in this century, but certainly it could not compare with the great urban site of Chan Chan, capital of the Chimu Empire existing on the desert north coast, in this and adjacent centuries. No one knows exactly when Chan Chan was built on the threshold of the modern city of Trujillo. The Chimus dominated some 12 coastal valleys and a territory of some 125,000 arable acres. They apparently did not impose their rule beyond the boundaries of the Sechura Desert in the north. The use of supplementary and more stable water resources may have been the factor that favored the setting up of this kingdom, as the area is actually an oasis, extended by irrigation canals. Early Chimu art depicted many bird-men with long, hooked beaks. As on Easter Island, these men were frequently depicted navigating reed vessels. Except that the Chimu were urban dwellers with highly organized military and social systems, little was reported about them until very recently. A possible clue as to the origin of these people is in the report of Father Miguel Cabello de Balboa who interviewed Peruvians in the 16th century. The natives said that in "ancient times" a large group of families left the place of the Mochicas with a great fleet of "Balsas" (rafts) and sailed north to establish the Chimu Dynasty and culture. (Ref. 62 , 88 , 95 )

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