South American Camelids (Monograph)

by Duccio Bonavia

"One of the most significant differences between the New World's major areas of high culture is that Mesoamerica had no beasts of burden and wool, while the Andes had both. Four members of the camelid family - wild guanacos and vicunas, and domestic llamas and alpacas - were native to the Andes. South American peoples relied on these animals for meat and wool, and as beasts of burden to transport goods all over the Andes." "In this book, Duccio Bonavia tackles major questions about these camelids, from their domestication to their distribution at the time of the Spanish conquest. One of Bonavia's hypotheses is that the arrival of the Europeans and their introduced Old World animals forced the Andean camelids away from the Pacific coast, creating the (mistaken) impression that camelids were exclusively high-altitude animals.^ Bonavia also addresses the diseases of camelids and their population density, suggesting that the original camelid populations suffered from a different type of ma