Professional Documents
Culture Documents
INSTRUCTOR NOTE: Due to the great variability in unknown labs across microbiology courses, this
adaptive lab was designed to offer several different approaches that can be used to teach the identification
tests to various degrees. Use the Instructor Notes below to help you understand how each section is
designed so you can make assignments appropriate for your students. Also, please note that the PDF lab
report generated for this lab will provide a single score for all five unknown cases, not individual scores for
each of the five. This is because the general learning outcomes are the same for all five cases.
Identification Exercise:
Task: Click on each case to read about a scenario involving an unknown gram-negative bacterium. Then,
you will conduct phenotypic investigations to determine the identity of each causative bacterium.
Please use the Learn More button to get more information about the nine tests used in this identification process.
198. Writing
Related to calendar and mathematics in its origin was writing,
which passed out of the stage of pictographs and simple ideograms
only in the Mexican area. The Aztecs used the rebus method (§
130), but chiefly for proper names, as in tribute lists and the like. The
Mayas had gone farther. Their glyphs are highly worn down or
conventionalized pictures, true symbols; often indeed combinations
of symbols. They mostly remain illegible to us, and while they appear
to contain phonetic elements, these do not seem to be the dominant
constituents. The Maya writing thus also did not go beyond the
mixed or transitional stage. The Chibcha may have had a less
advanced system of similar type, though the fact that no remains of it
have survived argues against its having been of any considerable
development. The Peruvians did not write at all. They scarcely even
used simple pictography. Their records were wholly oral, fortified by
mnemonic devices known as quipus, series of knotted strings. These
were useful in keeping account of numbers, but could of course not
be read by any one but the knotter of the strings: a given knot might
stand equally for ten llamas, ten men, ten war clubs, or ten jars of
maize. The remainder of South America used no quipus, and while
occasional pictographs have been found on rocks, they seem to
have been less developed, as something customary, than among the
North American tribes. All such primitive carvings or paintings were
rather expressions of emotion over some event, concrete or spiritual,
intelligible to the maker of the carving and perhaps to his friends,
than records intended to be understood by strangers or future
generations.
Connected with the fact that the highest development of American
writing took place in southern Mexico, is another: it was only there
that books were produced. These were mostly ritualistic or
astrological, and were painted on long folded strips of maguey fiber
paper or deerskin. They were probably never numerous, and
intelligible chiefly to certain priests or officials.
201. Colombia
The Chibchas of Colombia, the intermediate member of the three-
linked Middle American chain, fell somewhat, but not very far, below
the Mexicans and Peruvians in their cultural accomplishments. Their
deficiency lay in their lack of specific developments. They do not
show a single cultural element of importance peculiar to themselves.
They chewed coca, slept in hammocks, sat on low chairs or stools;
but these are traits common to a large part of South America.
Consequently the absence or weak development of these traits in
Mexico is no indication of any superiority of the Chibchas as such.
The great bulk of Colombian culture was a substratum which
underlay the higher local developments of Mexico and Peru; and this
substratum—varied agriculture, temples, priesthood, political
organization—the Chibchas possessed without notable gaps.
Whatever elements flowed from Mexico to Peru or from Peru to
Mexico at either an early or a late period, therefore probably passed
through them. In isolated matters they may have added their
contribution. On the whole, though, their rôle must have been that of
sharers, recipients, and transmitters in the general Middle American
civilization.
203. Patagonia
Patagonia is par excellence the peripheral region of South
America, culturally as well as geographically. As regards civilization,
this is true in the highest degree at the extreme tip of the continent
about Tierra del Fuego. Many of the most widely spread South
American culture traits being lacking here, there is a curious
resemblance to the northerly tribes of North America.
Yet even this culturally disinherited area is not without a few local
developments of relatively high order. The most striking is the plank-
built canoe of the south Chilean archipelago. The skill to carpenter
such boats was exercised in only one other region in the
hemisphere; the Santa Barbara Islands of California. Curiously
enough the latter is also a district of comparatively backward culture.
In any event this built-up canoe of the rude people of the extreme
south contrasts strikingly with the lack of any real boats among the
advanced nations in the Andean area. The moral would seem to be
that it is speculative to base much theory or explanation on any
single culture trait.
Of other elements specific to the Patagonian region, there might
be mentioned coiled basketry (§ 104) and the bolas. This is a
hunting weapon of three stones attached to ropes swung so as to
wind around the neck or legs of game. Except at the extreme south,
Patagonian culture was profoundly modified by the introduction of
the horse, which soon after the arrival of the Spaniards multiplied on
the open plains. The horse enlarged the ability of the Patagonian
tribes to take game, especially in the Pampas in the north, increased
their wealth, and strengthened their warlike interests. The same
change occurred in the Chaco.