Fall 2017, Featured Articles, Discoveries
The "Little Victims" of Civilization
By Brian Fagan Tue, Sep 12, 2017
How fishing for anchovies helped create the earliest monumental civilizations of the Americas.
In 1865, the American archaeologist and diplomat Ephraim Squier, who would later provide some of the first descriptions of Inka ruins, landed on Peru’s North Coast. His ship’s crew rowed him ashore through a sluggish swell, passing over “a solid mass of the little fishes [anchovies] . . . which were apparently driven inshore by large and voracious enemies in the sea . . . The little victims crowded each other, until their noses, projecting to the surface, made the ocean look as if covered over with a cloak of Oriental mail. We could dip them up by handfuls and by thousands.” The belt of anchovies extended about a mile along the shore. Women and children scooped them up “with their hats, with basins, baskets, and the fronts of their petticoats.” Squier had arrived at one of the richest coastal fisheries in the world. Centuries earlier, these small fish helped create some of the most spectacular Pre-Columbian kingdoms in the Americas.
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/fall-2017/article/the-little-victims-of-civilization
