Diffusionistic Fantasies

Part VI

Prescott’s Good Sense



William H. Prescott

William H. Prescott, was a noted American Historian. Today he is best known for his massive History of the Conquest of Mexico and his History of the Conquest of Peru.1 Both still in print and often published together as a single volume.

Prescott who lived 1796-1859 C.E., did not have available to him the vast corpus of resources and findings that would help a modern scholar do a book about the conquest of Mexico and Peru. He instead had to rely on the limited, and it was limited, first hand accounts, further he had to rely on the limited ethnographic and to the extent there was any archaeological data that was available concerning the indigenous civilizations of the New World. His History of the Conquest of Mexico was published in 1843 and his History of the Conquest of Peru in 1847. Although Prescott did visit various Spanish archives he never did visit either Mexico or Peru.

Further given the limited nature of researches into the indigenous civilizations there flourished a veritable industry of fantasy concerning these cultures. This makes Prescott’s achievement even more remarkable.

Prescott wrote a short essay in his Appendix, Part I, called Origin of the Mexican Civilization – Analogies With the Old World.2 This essay despite more than a century and a half since it was written merits re-reading especially by those who still take hyper-diffusionism seriously.