The claims in this OP are from memory and may be somewhat inaccurate. I’m told that llamas were the only domesticated animals in pre-Columbian South America. They must have been used as pack animals- they are really good for that. Maybe they were used for food and wool. They can be kind of like gigantic sheep, or maybe really tall, pale buffalo. It may be possible they were used as mounts, though I can’t recall any examples of this one.
The relationship was different than existed between the North American Indians and the buffalo. The buffalo were practically exterminated in numbers that people have bothered to estimate. But llamas? I’m not so sure.
For one thing, in some instances the wars were more like coups than anything else. The leader is captured or killed, a decisive battle fought, and suddenly the empire is conquered. Then everyone dies of disease, except the Spaniards. You get the point- the kind of warfare involved didn’t really require mass llama slaughter, and they probably would have survived human plagues to boot. Except… the conquest went on for centuries, and plenty of episodes played out like genocidal massacres- at least that is the notion I seem to remember. Did the conquistadors go after the llamas to achieve their ends?
I can’t recall the legends of guys like Pizarro or Cortez intersecting the fate of llamas in any context, good or bad. Maybe some layers of sediment contain scads of llama droppings, then suddenly the layers are clean, allowing for estimates of llamas lost. Maybe herds of llamas were slain to cripple the natives’ abilities. Maybe they couldn’t survive in the wild and just faded away. I’m brainstorming here. What’s the answer, 'dopers?
The first thing to realise is that Llamas would have been as badly affected by disease as the human populations. Diseases like cowpox, brucellosis, tuberculosis and foot and mouth would have presumably decimated the herds, but considering this would have been simultaneous with with effects on the human population I doubt anybody bothered to record it.
Then there is the issue of what happens to domestic animals when the human population becomes too small to sustain the herds: they die. Not all of them, but even without disease large numbers of animals would have died from lack of food and water and loss of protection from predators.
Nobody would have bothered targetting llama herds as part of a war, because that’s pointless, just as nobody in Asia targetted cattle herds.
The exact numbers that died nobody could say. By all accounts the herds weren’t large to begin with. I imagine that >75% of the animals died, just as was the case with the people.
BTW, South Americans also had domesticated Cavies, dogs and chickens.
Interesting. I thought it was mostly smallpox (and TB) that did in the natives. Do llamas get smallpox? Is their susceptibility to disease effectively the same as humans then?
It isn’t that I doubt you, but are you sure? I don’t have a clear idea of how the natives related to the llamas for one- were they even kept in herds? for instance. And how sure are you that llamas wouldn’t have survived in the wild? If you’ve ever been up close to one they seem like they could be rather dangerous if threatened and that not many predators could take one out. Unless they are just utterly docile. Again not that I doubt you, I’m just ignorant overall about llamas.
Hmmm… if we knew about how many llamas per native were kept, we might devise some kind of estimate. I am not sure how to answer this either.
Sorry, the distinction I was thinking of comes from Guns, Germs and Steel, having to do with animals that do work as distinct from pets or farmed animals. I seem to remember the natives using dogs to pull things though, so maybe GGS didn’t quite get it right…
But thanks. I especially hadn’t considered other disease threats besides smallpox.
Besides llamas, there as vicunas, alpacas, and guanacos. As noted, they had dogs and hickens. The important distinctioon about dogs, in your context, is that they’re not really efficient as sources of food. Dogs eat meat, at less than 100% efficiency. If you can get the meat, you’re better off eating it yourself than feeding it t a dog who will be eaten later. I’ve read that some American tribes tried to breed dogs that could be fed on grain, without notable success.
Lacking large meat animals, the indians might have turned to people as a supply of food. That was the suggestion of anthropologist Michael Harner, and was supported by Mrvin Harris. It’s not quite as simple as “we needed meat, and he was just standing there.” This sort of ritualized cannibalism seems to have started with war captives. They sacrificed thousands of them at some times,and Harner and Harris provide evidence that the bodies were eaten.
But we’re getting far afield from our llamas (which they didn’t have in Central America). In nothing that I’ve read was there any talk about getting rid of the llamas to starve out the local population or to reduce them to need. I suspect that, for one thing, the conquering Spaniards found them as usefu;l as the locals, and probably came to depend on them. In the secod place, your parallel is not with colonial-era America (wher the didn’t go out of their way to try to kill off the food animals. They probably couldn’t, anyway), but from the much later post-Industral-Revolution era, where the white Americans had railroads and horses and guns and didn’t need the buffalo, while the Indians did, and it was relatively easy to slaughter entire herds.
Americans were afflicted by a huge range of diseases. Fatal epidemics of diphtheria, measles, common cold, mumps, rubella and influenza were all commonly recorded. The reason why disease had such a huge impact was because of the sheer number of novel microbes. Had it been only one or two diseases the effect would have been much less, since resistance would have developed within a single generation. The problem is that those resistant to one disease were not resistant to the hundreds of others. Smallpox doesn’t seem to have caused any more problem than any other Eurasian disease.
Any isolated population of animals will be susceptible to novel diseases. Humans are not unique in that regard. In the same way that diseases from American rabbits decimated Eurasian rabbits, so European diseases decimated American rabbits.
The reason why the American species suffered most is because the trade in livestock, and hence microbes, was mostly one-way. Added to that Eurasian domestic species had already been exposed to a huge range of diseases through the practice of keeping half a dozen species of related animals together in the same building. Since Americans only had one domestic ungulate it had only ever developed resistance to its own disease pool. As such the wide range of diseases brought in with Eurasian ungulates would have had a devastating effect.
The first thing to note is that llamas are a domestic species, descended from the wild guanaco, so they have been considerably changed by domestication.
It’s not that llamas can;t survive in the wild. Almost any domestic animal will. The problem is that humans keep domestic animals at artificially high densities. We do that by supplying them with food, either as fodder or by herding them to new pastures, with water, and by protecting them form predators and the weather. Once you remove humans these populations simply aren’t sustainable, even over the short term.
This isn’t unique to llamas. The same is true of cattle, horses pigs and any other domestic animal. If you removed humans from the picture the vast majority of any of those species would be dead within a few years, despite the fact that feral populations are common worldwide. the population densities that humans maintain their domesticates at aren’t sustainable in a natural setting.
For some background on this, you might try “Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond. I haven’t read the book, but there is a 3-episode documentary available on Netflix. I don’t believe llamas were ridden, and were also never used as plow-pullers. They may be too delicate for that type of work.
The correlation that Diamond makes between the proximity of Indo-Europeans to their animals and the development of resistance to diseases such as smallpox and other diseases with animal origins is fascinating. The estimated numbers of Indians in the New World that are thought to have died as a result of smallpox is staggering. IIRC, something like 95% of the population was wiped out within just a few short years.
I know this has strayed from the OP’s question, but there may be better answers in Diamond’s work.
Llamas and Guanacos can carry no more than 35 kilos, they are terrible pack animals. However, since they were the only pack animal (other than humans) they were used extensively.
The arrival of the horse, mule, and donkey meant that their job as pack animals was reduced incredibly and only in very special circumstances. I have seen not a single source indicating any death/killings of llamas.
Alpacas were used for meat, but Andean indians had a low-meat diet so all four andean camelids were relatively unharmed by hunting. Deer was also hunted and guinea pigs were extensively raised for food.
Alpacas and Vicuñas are more important for their wool production, Vicuñas having one of the finest in the world.
Cows, sheep, and pigs quickly became much more important sources of meat.
Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel (IIRC) says that the Llama was not suited for riding like the horse and only of limited use as pack animal because it could carry only little weight*; that’s probably why the Incas never developed the wheel further, because they had no draft animals; and why messages were delivered by runners and not riders.
Their biggest advantage was probably simply being able to exist at 4 000 m where the Indios lived, and give high-quality wool and milk and being domesticable. That riding was not an option - well you can’t have everything, right?
As you rightly say, in Middle- and South America, the empires fell rather quickly, compared to the long drawn out phases of conquering the Wild West in the US. In addition, killing the buffalo was a deliberate method of “burned earth” warfare to leave the Indians fighting guerrilla style without food.
In South America, once the empire was conquered, there was no need for the conquistadors to kill animals excessively that gave wool and milk.
And llamas didn’t die out, they still exist today, and products from their wool are in high demand - Alpakas are a kind of llama.
No, it wasn’t. I know this is popularly belived, but there is no evidence that such a hing ever happened.
Far from being a kind of llama, alpacas are not even the same Genus. They are about as closely related to llamas as orangutans are to humans.
Herds of llamas do indeed still exist. They are called llamas. The wild ancestor of the llama is also still alive, they are called guanacos. Alpacas and their wild ancestors, the vicuna, are not “a type of llama”, except in the sense that both are types of camel.
Llamas can be handy if you are trying to haul something up a 19000’ Andean mountain. They can be useful in places like the American Rockies. Try it yourself: backpack up to 13,500’, hike around for a week, come back. Now do the same thing with a llama carrying your gear. Notice a difference?
And I know they still exist. I’ve met them. They are impressive.