![\"llama\"](\"http:\/\/www.rightreading.com\/blog-images-11\/llama.jpg\")
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When you attempt something ambitious you’re bound to make some mistakes along the way. I’m sure the book I’m working on will have its fair share (recently I realized I had confused the Mughal painters Bichitr and Bishandas). But sometimes a mistake is so stunning that it’s hard to recover from.<\/p>\n
I was finding Charles H. Parker’s Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, 1400-1800<\/em> generally interesting and credible. Then I came upon this sentence:<\/p>\n The lack of any indigenous pack animals, except for the llama, and the absence of a wheel meant that humans formed the primary source of portage in Mesoamerican trade.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Probably another reason Mesoamericans depended on humans for portage is that the nearest of their “indigenous” llamas was nearly 2000 miles away in the South American Andes.<\/p>\n This reminds me of a visit to the market in Chichicastenango in Guatemala a few decades ago. The blanket vendors all touted their blankets as pura lana,<\/em> which means “pure wool.” At the market I met a foolish young Spanish-challenged gringo carrying a blanket he had bought. He’d paid a high price, but it was worth it, he assured me, proudly proclaiming it “pure llama!”<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n