The Pre-columbian Economy

Introduction Latin America constitutes a large and geographically diverse region of the New World. Physiographically it is characterized by a high precipitous mountain range, the Sierra Madres in Central America and the Andes in South America with a narrow Pacific coastal plain. Broad welldrained low-lying basins are found on the eastern slopes of these mountains that run into the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico while there are extensive high arid plains such as the Altiplano of Mexico and South America and the punas of Peru, Bolivia and Chile. There are also a number of tropical islands extending north from South America forming an archipelago in the Caribbean Sea terminating in the Bahamas. These can be humid or desert depending on their situation with respect to prevailing winds and mountains. A number of large islands notably Cuba and Hispaniola, form the northwestern arm of this island chain. One distinctive feature of Latin America is that it has a very long north/south axis, while having little continental area that is east/west and that which exists is broken by the continental divide of the north/south trending mountain ranges. This north south spine crosscuts latitudes, making it difficult for animals and plants to naturally migrate east/west. Typically, similar climates lie along common latitude, but in Latin America the same latitude is dissected by altitudinal gradients that result in incredibly diverse ecosystems. This has important consequences for the development of agriculture and economy. What results is a patchwork of environmental regimes and cultures that have adapted to them. Some more extensive and large-scale political systems have taken advantage of the juxtaposition of different environmental and climatic regimes to integrate them into complex economies. In other situations, this extreme dissection has resulted in the isolation and differentiation of economic systems with political systems unable to expand the boundaries of local economies.