Details

Titel

Pre-industrial agriculture

Ist Teil von

• Global Environmental History, 2013, p.52-108

Ort / Verlag

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The emperor of the Inca singing with a llama. The chosen llama was a musical guide at court performances. The chronicler, Guaman Pomo de Ayala was also responsible for the first map of Peru (in the sixteenth century) and was probably an administrator in the Spanish government of that country; he was though a native Andean. There are 398 full-page drawings which form an integral part of his 1200-page Nueva coránica y buen gobierno of c.1615-16. The idea of the chief of the Inca singing along with (and apparently taking the note from) a llama is somehow symbolic of the relationships in domestication. While talking to plants is regarded in most postforager cultures as eccentric, talking to animals is not. So from the earliest communication between humans and domesticates (presumably centred on command), there has evolved a diverse set of practices beyond the, so to speak, instrumental. Not many cultures, however, cultivate this kind of intimacy: a few people sing along with their dogs, and play music to cows but to be led is unsual. It does signify, however, a closeness of the human and non-human which was common in pre-industrial agriculture but which began to disappear as the technologies of fossil fuels appeared. In colonial regimes, however, these closenesses might be victims of the social disruptions that occurred. Guaman Poma sought to convince the king of Spain to halt the destruction of Andean society in which the native Andeans were being exploited in the countryside and driven to death in the mines.