Llamas and alpacas
The Andes domesticate the only large pack animals in the Americas.
- When
- Known to
- ± 500 years
- Era
- Neolithic, Holocene
Llamas are domesticated from guanacos and alpacas from vicunas in the Peruvian highlands by around 4000 BCE, providing meat, wool, dung for fuel and — uniquely in the Americas — transport. No American animal is ever domesticated for traction or riding, which is one reason the wheel remains a toy in Mesoamerica: there is nothing to pull a cart. The absence of large domesticable mammals is a structural difference between the hemispheres.