The Valley of the Huatanay
The valley of the Huatanay is one of many valleys tributary to the
Urubamba. It differs from them in having more arable land located under
climatic conditions favorable for the raising of the food crops of the
ancient Peruvians. Containing an area estimated at less than 160 square
miles, it was the heart of the greatest empire that South America has
ever seen. It is still intensively cultivated, the home of a large
percentage of the people of this part of Peru. The Huatanay itself
sometimes meanders through the valley in a natural manner, but at
other times is seen to be confined within carefully built stone walls
constructed by prehistoric agriculturists anxious to save their fields
from floods and erosion. The climate is temperate. Extreme cold is
unknown. Water freezes in the lowlands during the dry winter season,
in June and July, and frost may occur any night in the year above
13,000 feet, but in general the climate may be said to be neither
warm nor cold.
This rich valley was apportioned by the Spanish conquerors to
soldiers who were granted large estates as well as the labor of
the Indians living on them. This method still prevails and one may
occasionally meet on the road wealthy landholders on their way to and
from town. Although mules are essentially the most reliable saddle
animals for work in the Andes, these landholders usually prefer horses,
which are larger and faster, as well as being more gentle and better
gaited. The gentry of the Huatanay Valley prefer a deep-seated saddle,
over which is laid a heavy sheepskin or thick fur mat. The fashionable
stirrups are pyramidal in shape, made of wood decorated with silver
bands. Owing to the steepness of the roads, a crupper is considered
necessary and is usually decorated with a broad, embossed panel,
from which hang little trappings reminiscent of medieval harness. The
bridle is usually made of carefully braided leather, decorated with
silver and frequently furnished with an embossed leather eye shade or
blinder, to indicate that the horse is high-spirited. This eye shade,
which may be pulled down so as to blind both eyes completely, is more
useful than a hitching post in persuading the horse to stand still.
The valley of the Huatanay River is divided into three parts, the
basins of Lucre, Oropesa, and Cuzco. The basaltic cliffs near Oropesa
divide the Lucre Basin from the Oropesa Basin. The pass at Angostura,
or "the narrows," is the natural gateway between the Oropesa Basin and
the Cuzco Basin. Each basin contains interesting ruins. In the Lucre
Basin the most interesting are those of Rumiccolca and Piquillacta.
At the extreme eastern end of the valley, on top of the pass which
leads to the Vilcanota is an ancient gateway called Rumiccolca (Rumi =
"stone"; ccolca = "granary"). It is commonly supposed that this was
an Inca fortress, intended to separate the chiefs of Cuzco from those
of Vilcanota. It is now locally referred to as a "fortaleza." The
major part of the wall is well built of rough stones, laid in clay,
while the sides of the gateway are faced with carefully cut andesite
ashlars of an entirely different style. It is conceivable that some
great chieftain built the rough wall in the days when the highlands
were split up among many little independent rulers, and that later one
of the Incas, no longer needing any fortifications between the Huatanay
Valley and the Vilcanota Valley, tore down part of the wall and built
a fine gateway. The faces of the ashlars are nicely finished except
for several rough bosses or nubbins. They were probably used by the
ancient masons in order to secure a better hold when finally adjusting
the ashlars with small crowbars. It may have been the intention of the
stone masons to remove these nubbins after the wall was completed. In
one of the unfinished structures at Machu Picchu I noticed similar
bosses. The name "Stone-granary" was probably originally applied to
a neighboring edifice now in ruins.
On the rocky hillside above Rumiccolca are the ruins of many ancient
terraces and some buildings. Not far from Rumiccolca, on the slopes
of Mt. Piquillacta, are the ruins of an extensive city, also called
Piquillacta. A large number of its houses have extraordinarily high
walls. A high wall outside the city, and running north and south,
was obviously built to protect it from enemies approaching from the
Vilcanota Valley. In the other directions the slopes are so steep as
to render a wall unnecessary. The walls are built of fragments of lava
rock, with which the slopes of Mt. Piquillacta are covered. Cacti and
thorny scrub are growing in the ruins, but the volcanic soil is rich
enough to attract the attention of agriculturists, who come here from
neighboring villages to cultivate their crops. The slopes above the
city are still extensively cultivated, but without terraces. Wheat
and barley are the principal crops.
As an illustration of the difficulty of identifying places in ancient
Peru, it is worth noting that the gateway now called Rumiccolca is
figured in Squier's "Peru" as "Piquillacta." On the other hand,
the ruins of the large city, "covering thickly an area nearly a
square mile," are called by Squier "the great Inca town of Muyna,"
a name also applied to the little lake which lies in the bottom of
the Lucre Basin. As Squier came along the road from Racche he saw
Mt. Piquillacta first, then the gateway, then Lake Muyna, then the
ruins of the city. In each case the name of the most conspicuous,
harmless, natural phenomenon seems to have been applied to ruins by
those of whom he inquired. My own experience was different.
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FIGURE
Lucre Basin, Lake Muyna, and the City Wall of Piquillacta
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Dr. Aguilar, a distinguished professor in the University of Cuzco, who
has a country place in the neighborhood and is very familiar with this
region, brought me to this ancient city from the other direction. From
him I learned that the city ruins are called Piquillacta, the name
which is also applied to the mountain which lies to the eastward
of the ruins and rises 1200 feet above them. Dr. Aguilar lives near
Oropesa. As one comes from Oropesa, Mt. Piquillacta is a conspicuous
point and is directly in line with the city ruins. Consequently,
it would be natural for people viewing it from this direction to
give to the ruins the name of the mountain rather than that of the
lake. Yet the mountain may be named for the ruins. Piqui means "flea";
llacta means "town, city, country, district, or territory." Was this
"The Territory of the Fleas" or was it "Flea Town"? And what was its
name in the days of the Incas? Was the old name abandoned because it
was considered unlucky?
Whatever the reason, it is a most extraordinary fact that we have
here the evidences of a very large town, possibly pre-Inca, long since
abandoned. There are scores of houses and numerous compounds laid out
in regular fashion, the streets crossing each other at right angles,
the whole covering an area considerably larger than the important town
of Ollantaytambo. Not a soul lives here. It is true that across the
Vilcanota to the east is a difficult, mountainous country culminating
in Mt. Ausangate, the highest peak in the department. Yet Piquillacta
is in the midst of a populous region. To the north lies the thickly
settled valley of Pisac and Yucay; to the south, the important
Vilcanota Valley with dozens of villages; to the west the densely
populated valley of the Huatanay and Cuzco itself, the largest city
in the highlands of Peru. Thousands of people live within a radius of
twenty miles of Piquillacta, and the population is on the increase. It
is perfectly easy of access and is less than a mile east of the
railroad. Yet it is "abandonado--desierto--despoblado"! Undoubtedly
here was once a large city of great importance. The reason for its
being abandoned appears to be the absence of running water. Although
Mt. Piquillacta is a large mass, nearly five miles long and two miles
wide, rising to a point of 2000 feet above the Huatanay and Vilcanota
rivers, it has no streams, brooks, or springs. It is an isolated,
extinct volcano surrounded by igneous rocks, lavas, andesites,
and basalts.
How came it that so large a city as Piquillacta could have been built
on the slopes of a mountain which has no running streams? Has the
climate changed so much since those days? If so, how is it that the
surrounding region is still the populous part of southern Peru? It is
inconceivable that so large a city could have been built and occupied
on a plateau four hundred feet above the nearest water unless there
was some way of providing it other than the arduous one of bringing
every drop up the hill on the backs of men and llamas. If there
were no places near here better provided with water than this site,
one could understand that perhaps its inhabitants were obliged to
depend entirely upon water carriers. On the contrary, within a radius
of six miles there are half a dozen unoccupied sites near running
streams. Until further studies can be made of this puzzling problem
I believe that the answer lies in the ruins of Rumiccolca, which are
usually thought of as a fortress.
Squier says that this "fortress" was "the southern limit of the
dominions of the first Inca." "The fortress reaches from the mountain,
on one side, to a high, rocky eminence on the other. It is popularly
called 'El Aqueducto,' perhaps from some fancied resemblance to an
aqueduct--but the name is evidently misapplied." Yet he admits that the
cross-section of the wall, diminishing as it does "by graduations or
steps on both sides," "might appear to conflict with the hypothesis
of its being a work of defense or fortification" if it occupied
"a different position." He noticed that "the top of the wall is
throughout of the same level; becomes less in height as it approaches
the hills on either hand and diminishes proportionately in thickness"
as an aqueduct should do. Yet, so possessed was he by the "fortress"
idea that he rejected not only local tradition as expressed in the
native name, but even turned his back on the evidence of his own
eyes. It seems to me that there is little doubt that instead of the
ruins of Rumiccolca representing a fortification, we have here the
remains of an ancient azequia, or aqueduct, built by some powerful
chieftain to supply the people of Piquillacta with water.
A study of the topography of the region shows that the river which
rises southwest of the village of Lucre and furnishes water power
for its modern textile mills could have been used to supply such
an azequia. The water, collected at an elevation of 10,700 feet,
could easily have been brought six miles along the southern slopes
of the Lucre Basin, around Mt. Rumiccolca and across the old road,
on this aqueduct, at an elevation of about 10,600 feet. This would
have permitted it to flow through some of the streets of Piquillacta
and give the ancient city an adequate supply of water. The slopes
of Rumiccolca are marked by many ancient terraces. Their upper limit
corresponds roughly with the contour along which such an azequia would
have had to pass. There is, in fact, a distinct line on the hillside
which looks as though an azequia had once passed that way. In the
valley back of Lucre are also faint indications of old azequias. There
has been, however, a considerable amount of erosion on the hills,
and if, as seems likely, the water-works have been out of order for
several centuries, it is not surprising that all traces of them have
disappeared in places. I regret very much that circumstances over
which I had no control prevented my making a thorough study of the
possibilities of such a theory. It remains for some fortunate future
investigator to determine who were the inhabitants of Piquillacta,
how they secured their water supply, and why the city was abandoned.
------
FIGURE
Sacsahuaman: Detail of Lower Terrace Wall
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------
FIGURE
Ruins of the Aqueduct of Rumiccolca
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Until then I suggest as a possible working hypothesis that we have at
Piquillacta the remains of a pre-Inca city; that its chiefs and people
cultivated the Lucre Basin and its tributaries; that as a community
they were a separate political entity from the people of Cuzco;
that the ruler of the Cuzco people, perhaps an Inca, finally became
sufficiently powerful to conquer the people of the Lucre Basin, and
removed the tribes which had occupied Piquillacta to a distant part of
his domain, a system of colonization well known in the history of the
Incas; that, after the people who had built and lived in Piquillacta
departed, no subsequent dwellers in this region cared to reoccupy the
site, and its aqueduct fell into decay. It is easy to believe that
at first such a site would have been considered unlucky. Its houses,
unfamiliar and unfashionable in design, would have been considered not
desirable. Their high walls might have been used for a reconstructed
city had there been plenty of water available. In any case, the ruins
of the Lucre Basin offer a most fascinating problem.
In the Oropesa Basin the most important ruins are those of Tipon,
a pleasant, well-watered valley several hundred feet above the
village of Quispicanchi. They include carefully constructed houses
of characteristic Inca construction, containing many symmetrically
arranged niches with stone lintels. The walls of most of the houses
are of rough stones laid in clay. Tipon was probably the residence
of the principal chief of the Oropesa Basin. It commands a pleasant
view of the village and of the hills to the south, which to-day
are covered with fields of wheat and barley. At Tipon there is a
nicely constructed fountain of cut stone. Some of the terraces are
extremely well built, with roughly squared blocks fitting tightly
together. Access from one terrace to another was obtained by steps made
each of a single bonder projecting from the face of the terrace. Few
better constructed terrace walls are to be seen anywhere. The terraces
are still cultivated by the people of Quispicanchi. No one lives at
Tipon now, although little shepherd boys and goatherds frequent the
neighborhood. It is more convenient for the agriculturists to live
at the edge of their largest fields, which are in the valley bottom,
than to climb five hundred feet into the narrow valley and occupy the
old buildings. Motives of security no longer require a residence here
rather than in the open plain.
While I was examining the ruins and digging up a few attractive
potsherds bearing Inca designs, Dr. Giesecke, the President of the
University of Cuzco, who had accompanied me, climbed the mountain above
Tipon with Dr. Aguilar and reported the presence of a fortification
near its summit. My stay at Oropesa was rendered most comfortable
and happy by the generous hospitality of Dr. Aguilar, whose finca
is between Quispicanchi and Oropesa and commands a charming view of
the valley.
From the Oropesa Basin, one enters the Cuzco Basin through an opening
in the sandstone cliffs of Angostura near the modern town of San
Geronimo. On the slopes above the south bank of the Huatanay, just
beyond Angostura, are the ruins of a score or more of gable-roofed
houses of characteristic Inca construction. The ancient buildings
have doors, windows, and niches in walls of small stones laid in clay,
the lintels having been of wood, now decayed. When we asked the name
of these ruins we were told that it was Saylla, although that is
the name of a modern village three miles away, down the Huatanay,
in the Oropesa Basin. Like Piquillacta, old Saylla has no water
supply at present. It is not far from a stream called the Kkaira
and could easily have been supplied with water by an azequia less
than two miles in length brought along the 11,000 feet contour. It
looks very much like the case of a village originally placed on the
hills for the sake of comparative security and isolation and later
abandoned through a desire to enjoy the advantages of living near
the great highway in the bottom of the valley, after the Incas had
established peace over the highlands. There may be another explanation.
It appears from Mr. Cook's studies that the deforestation of the Cuzco
Basin by the hand of man, and modern methods of tillage on unterraced
slopes, have caused an unusual amount of erosion to occur. Landslides
are frequent in the rainy season.
Opposite Saylla is Mt. Picol, whose twin peaks are the most conspicuous
feature on the north side of the basin. Waste material from its
slopes is causing the rapid growth of a great gravel fan north of the
village of San Geronimo. Professor Gregory noticed that the streams
traversing the fan are even now engaged in burying ancient fields by
"transporting gravel from the head of the fan to its lower margin,"
and that the lower end of the Cuzco Basin, where the Huatanay, hemmed
in between the Angostura Narrows, cannot carry away the sediment as
fast as it is brought down by its tributaries, is being choked up. If
old Saylla represents a fortress set here to defend Cuzco against old
Oropesa, it might very naturally have been abandoned when the rule
of the Incas finally spread far over the Andes. On the other hand,
it seems more likely that the people who built Saylla were farmers
and that when the lower Cuzco Basin was filled up by aggradation,
due to increased erosion, they abandoned this site for one nearer the
arable lands. One may imagine the dismay with which the agricultural
residents of these ancient houses saw their beautiful fields at the
bottom of the hill, covered in a few days, or even hours, by enormous
quantities of coarse gravel brought down from the steep slopes of Picol
after some driving rainstorm. It may have been some such catastrophe
that led them to take up their residence elsewhere. As a matter of
fact we do not know when it was abandoned. Further investigation
might point to its having been deserted when the Spanish village of
San Geronimo was founded. However, I believe students of agriculture
will agree with me that deforestation, increased erosion, and aggrading
gravel banks probably drove the folk out of Saylla.
The southern rim of the Cuzco Basin is broken by no very striking
peaks, although Huanacaurai (13,427 ft.), the highest point, is
connected in Inca tradition with some of the principal festivals
and religious celebrations. The north side of the Huatanay Valley is
much more irregular, ranging from Ttica Ttica pass (12,000 ft.) to
Mt. Pachatucsa (15,915 ft.), whose five little peaks are frequently
snow-clad. There is no permanent snow either here or elsewhere in
the Huatanay Valley.
The people of the Cuzco Basin are very short of fuel. There is no
native coal. What the railroad uses comes from Australia. Firewood is
scarce. The ancient forests disappeared long ago. The only trees in
sight are a few willows or poplars from Europe and one or two groves of
eucalyptus, also from Australia. Cuzco has been thought of and written
of as being above the tree line, but such is not the case. The absence
of trees on the neighboring hills is due entirely to the hand of man,
the long occupation, the necessities of early agriculturists, who
cleared the forests before the days of intensive terrace agriculture,
and the firewood requirements of a large population. The people of
Cuzco do not dream of having enough fuel to make their houses warm
and comfortable. Only with difficulty can they get enough for cooking
purposes. They depend largely on fagots and straw which are brought
into town on the backs of men and animals.
In the fields of stubble left from the wheat and barley harvest we
saw many sheep feeding. They were thin and long-legged and many of
the rams had four horns, apparently due to centuries of inbreeding
and the failure to improve the original stock by the introduction of
new and superior strains.
When one looks at the great amount of arable slopes on most of the
hills of the Cuzco Basin and the unusually extensive flat land near the
Huatanay, one readily understands why the heart of Inca Land witnessed
a concentration of population very unusual in the Andes. Most of the
important ruins are in the northwest quadrant of the basin either in
the immediate vicinity of Cuzco itself or on the "pampas" north of the
city. The reason is that the arable lands where most extensive potato
cultivation could be carried out are nearly all in this quadrant. In
the midst of this potato country, at the foot of the pass that leads
directly to Pisac and Paucartambo, is a picturesque ruin which bears
the native name of Pucará.
Pucará is the Quichua word for fortress and it needs but one glance
at the little hilltop crowned with a rectangular fortification to
realize that the term is justified. The walls are beautifully made of
irregular blocks closely fitted together. Advantage was taken of small
cliffs on two sides of the hill to strengthen the fortifications. We
noticed openings or drains which had been cut in the wall by the
original builders in order to prevent the accumulation of moisture on
the terraced floor of the enclosed area, which is several feet above
that of the sloping field outside. Similar conduits may be seen in
many of the old walls in the city of Cuzco. Apparently, the ancient
folk fully appreciated the importance of good drainage and took pains
to secure it. At present Pucará is occupied by llama herdsmen and
drovers, who find the enclosure a very convenient corral. Probably
Pucará was built by the chief of a tribe of prehistoric herdsmen who
raised root crops and kept their flocks of llamas and alpacas on the
neighboring grassy slopes.
A short distance up the stream of the Lkalla Chaca, above Pucará, is
a warm mineral spring. Around it is a fountain of cut stone. Near by
are the ruins of a beautiful terrace, on top of which is a fine wall
containing four large, ceremonial niches, level with the ground and
about six feet high. The place is now called Tampu Machai. Polo de
Ondegardo, who lived in Cuzco in 1560, while many of the royal family
of the Incas were still alive, gives a list of the sacred or holy
places which were venerated by all the Indians in those days. Among
these he mentions that of Timpucpuquio, the "hot springs" near Tambo
Machai, "called so from the manner in which the water boils up." The
next huaca, or holy place, he mentions is Tambo Machai itself,
"a house of the Inca Yupanqui, where he was entertained when he
went to be married. It was placed on a hill near the road over the
Andes. They sacrifice everything here except children."
The stonework of the ruins here is so excellent in character, the
ashlars being very carefully fitted together, one may fairly assume
a religious origin for the place. The Quichua word macchini means
"to wash" or "to rinse a large narrow-mouthed pitcher." It may be
that at Tampu Machai ceremonial purification of utensils devoted to
royal or priestly uses was carried on. It is possible that this is
the place where, according to Molina, all the youths of Cuzco who had
been armed as knights in the great November festival came on the 21st
day of the month to bathe and change their clothes. Afterwards they
returned to the city to be lectured by their relatives. "Each relation
that offered a sacrifice flogged a youth and delivered a discourse to
him, exhorting him to be valiant and never to be a traitor to the Sun
and the Inca, but to imitate the bravery and prowess of his ancestors."
Tampu Machai is located on a little bluff above the Lkalla Chaca,
a small stream which finally joins the Huatanay near the town of San
Sebastian. Before it reaches the Huatanay, the Lkalla Chaca joins the
Cachimayo, famous as being so highly impregnated with salt as to have
caused the rise of extensive salt works. In fact, the Pizarros named
the place Las Salinas, or "the Salt Pits," on account of the salt
pans with which, by a careful system of terracing, the natives had
filled the Cachimayo Valley. Prescott describes the great battle which
took place here on April 26, 1539, between the forces of Pizarro and
Almagro, the two leaders who had united for the original conquest of
Peru, but quarreled over the division of the territory. Near the salt
pans are many Inca walls and the ruins of structures, with niches,
called Rumihuasi, or "Stone House." The presence of salt in many of
the springs of the Huatanay Valley was a great source of annoyance
to our topographic engineers, who were frequently obliged to camp in
districts where the only water available was so saline as to spoil
it for drinking purposes and ruin the tea.
The Cuzco Basin was undoubtedly once the site of a lake, "an ancient
water-body whose surface," says Professor Gregory, "lay well above
the present site of San Sebastian and San Geronimo." This lake is
believed to have reached its maximum expansion in early Pleistocene
times. Its rich silts, so well adapted for raising maize, habas beans,
and quinoa, have always attracted farmers and are still intensively
cultivated. It has been named "Lake Morkill" in honor of that loyal
friend of scientific research in Peru, William L. Morkill, Esq.,
without whose untiring aid we could never have brought our Peruvian
explorations as far along as we did. In pre-glacial times Lake Morkill
fluctuated in volume. From time to time parts of the shore were
exposed long enough to enable plants to send their roots into the fine
materials and the sun to bake and crack the muds. Mastodons grazed
on its banks. "Lake Morkill probably existed during all or nearly
all of the glacial epoch." Its drainage was finally accomplished
by the Huatanay cutting down the sandstone hills, near Saylla, and
developing the Angostura gorge.
In the banks of the Huatanay, a short distance below the city of
Cuzco, the stratified beds of the vanished Lake Morkill to-day
contain many fossil shells. Above these are gravels brought down by
the floods and landslides of more modern times, in which may be found
potsherds and bones. One of the chief affluents of the Huatanay is the
Chunchullumayo, which cuts off the southernmost third of Cuzco from
the center of the city. Its banks are terraced and are still used for
gardens and food crops. Here the hospitable Canadian missionaries have
their pleasant station, a veritable oasis of Anglo-Saxon cleanliness.
On a July morning in 1911, while strolling up the Ayahuaycco quebrada,
an affluent of the Chunchullumayo, in company with Professor Foote
and Surgeon Erving, my interest was aroused by the sight of several
bones and potsherds exposed by recent erosion in the stratified gravel
banks of the little gulch. Further examination showed that recent
erosion had also cut through an ancient ash heap. On the side toward
Cuzco I discovered a section of stone wall, built of roughly finished
stones more or less carefully fitted together, which at first sight
appeared to have been built to prevent further washing away of that
side of the gulch. Yet above the wall and flush with its surface
the bank appeared to consist of stratified gravel, indicating that
the wall antedated the gravel deposits. Fifty feet farther up the
quebrada another portion of wall appeared under the gravel bank. On
top of the bank was a cultivated field! Half an hour's digging in
the compact gravel showed that there was more wall underneath the
field. Later investigation by Dr. Bowman showed that the wall was
about three feet thick and nine feet in height, carefully faced on
both sides with roughly cut stone and filled in with rubble, a type
of stonework not uncommon in the foundations of some of the older
buildings in the western part of the city of Cuzco.
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FIGURE
Huatanay Vallye, Cuzco, and the Ayahuaycco Quebrada
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Even at first sight it was obvious that this wall, built by man,
was completely covered to a depth of six or eight feet by a compact
water-laid gravel bank. This was sufficiently difficult to understand,
yet a few days later, while endeavoring to solve the puzzle,
I found something even more exciting. Half a mile farther up the
gulch, the road, newly cut, ran close to the compact, perpendicular
gravel bank. About five feet above the road I saw what looked like
one of the small rocks which are freely interspersed throughout the
gravels here. Closer examination showed it to be the end of a human
femur. Apparently it formed an integral part of the gravel bank,
which rose almost perpendicularly for seventy or eighty feet above
it. Impressed by the possibilities in case it should turn out to be
true that here, in the heart of Inca Land, a human bone had been buried
under seventy-five feet of gravel, I refrained from disturbing it
until I could get Dr. Bowman and Professor Foote, the geologist and the
naturalist of the 1911 Expedition, to come with me to the Ayahuaycco
quebrada. We excavated the femur and found behind it fragments of
a number of other bones. They were excessively fragile. The femur
was unable to support more than four inches of its own weight and
broke off after the gravel had been partly removed. Although the
gravel itself was somewhat damp the bones were dry and powdery,
ashy gray in color. The bones were carried to the Hotel Central,
where they were carefully photographed, soaked in melted vaseline,
packed in cotton batting, and eventually brought to New Haven. Here
they were examined by Dr. George F. Eaton, Curator of Osteology in
the Peabody Museum. In the meantime Dr. Bowman had become convinced
that the compact gravels of Ayahuaycco were of glacial origin.
When Dr. Eaton first examined the bone fragments he was surprised
to find among them the bone of a horse. Unfortunately a careful
examination of the photographs taken in Cuzco of all the fragments
which were excavated by us on July 11th failed to reveal this
particular bone. Dr. Bowman, upon being questioned, said that he had
dug out one or two more bones in the cliff adjoining our excavation
of July 11th and had added these to the original lot. Presumably
this horse bone was one which he had added when the bones were
packed. It did not worry him, however, and so sure was he of his
interpretation of the gravel beds that he declared he did not care
if we had found the bone of a Percheron stallion, he was sure that
the age of the vertebrate remains might be "provisionally estimated
at 20,000 to 40,000 years," until further studies could be made of
the geology of the surrounding territory. In an article on the buried
wall, Dr. Bowman came to the conclusion that "the wall is pre-Inca,
that its relations to alluvial deposits which cover it indicate its
erection before the alluvial slope in which it lies buried was formed,
and that it represents the earliest type of architecture at present
known in the Cuzco basin."
Dr. Eaton's study of the bones brought out the fact that eight
of them were fragments of human bones representing at least three
individuals, four were fragments of llama bones, one of the bone
of a dog, and three were "bovine remains." The human remains agreed
"in all essential respects" with the bones of modern Quichuas. Llama
and dog might all have belonged to Inca, or even more recent times,
but the bovine remains presented considerable difficulty. The three
fragments were from bones which "are among the least characteristic
parts of the skeleton." That which was of greatest interest was the
fragment of a first rib, resembling the first rib of the extinct
bison. Since this fragmentary bovine rib was of a form apparently
characteristic of bisons and not seen in the domestic cattle of the
United States, Dr. Eaton felt that it could not be denied "that
the material examined suggests the possibility that some species
of bison is here represented, yet it would hardly be in accordance
with conservative methods to differentiate bison from domestic cattle
solely by characters obtained from a study of the first ribs of a small
number of individuals." Although staunchly supporting his theory of
the age of the vertebrate remains, Dr. Bowman in his report on their
geological relations admitted that the weakness of his case lay in the
fact that the bovine remains were not sharply differentiated from the
bones of modern cattle, and also in the possibility that "the bluff
in which the bones were found may be faced by younger gravel and that
the bones were found in a gravel veneer deposited during later periods
of partial valley filling, ... although it still seems very unlikely."
Reports of glacial man in America have come from places as widely
separated as California and Argentina. Careful investigation, however,
has always thrown doubt on any great age being certainly attributable
to any human remains. In view of the fragmentary character of the
skeletal evidence, the fact that no proof of great antiquity could
be drawn from the characters of the human skeletal parts, and the
suggestion made by Dr. Bowman of the possibility that the gravels
which contained the bones might be of a later origin than he thought,
we determined to make further and more complete investigations in
1912. It was most desirable to clear up all doubts and dissolve all
skepticism. I felt, perhaps mistakenly, that while a further study
of the geology of the Cuzco Basin undoubtedly might lead Dr. Bowman
to reverse his opinion, as was expected by some geologists, if
it should lead him to confirm his original conclusions the same
skeptics would be likely to continue their skepticism and say he
was trying to bolster up his own previous opinions. Accordingly, I
believed it preferable to take another geologist, whose independent
testimony would give great weight to those conclusions should he
find them confirmed by an exhaustive geological study of the Huatanay
Valley. I asked Dr. Bowman's colleague, Professor Gregory, to make the
necessary studies. At his request a very careful map of the Huatanay
Valley was prepared under the direction of Chief Topographer Albert
H. Bumstead. Dr. Eaton, who had had no opportunity of seeing Peru,
was invited to accompany us and make a study of the bones of modern
Peruvian cattle as well as of any other skeletal remains which might
be found.
Furthermore, it seemed important to me to dig a tunnel into the
Ayahuaycco hillside at the exact point from which we took the bones
in 1911. So I asked Mr. K. C. Heald, whose engineering training had
been in Colorado, to superintend it. Mr. Heald dug a tunnel eleven
feet long, with a cross-section four and a half by three feet, into
the solid mass of gravel. He expected to have to use timbering, but
so firmly packed was the gravel that this was not necessary. No bones
or artifacts were found--nothing but coarse gravel, uniform in texture
and containing no unmistakable evidences of stratification. Apparently
the bones had been in a land slip on the edge of an older, compact
gravel mass.
In his studies of the Cuzco Basin Professor Gregory came to the
conclusion that the Ayahuaycco gravel banks might have been repeatedly
buried and reëxcavated many times during the past few centuries. He
found evidence indicating periodic destruction and rebuilding of some
gravel terraces, "even within the past one hundred years." Accordingly
there was no longer any necessity to ascribe great antiquity to the
bones or the wall which we found in the Ayahuaycco quebrada. Although
the "Cuzco gravels are believed to have reached their greatest extent
and thickness in late Pleistocene times," more recent deposits have,
however, been superimposed on top and alongside of them. "Surface
wash from the bordering slopes, controlled in amount and character by
climatic changes, has probably been accumulating continuously since
glacial times, and has greatly increased since human occupation
began." "Geologic data do not require more than a few hundreds of
years as the age of the human remains found in the Cuzco gravels."
But how about the "bison"? Soon after his arrival in Cuzco, Dr. Eaton
examined the first ribs of carcasses of beef animals offered for sale
in the public markets. He immediately became convinced that the "bison"
was a Peruvian domestic ox. "Under the life-conditions prevailing in
this part of the Andes, and possibly in correlation with the increased
action of the respiratory muscles in a rarefied air, domestic cattle
occasionally develop first ribs, closely approaching the form observed
in bison." Such was the sad end of the "bison" and the "Cuzco man,"
who at one time I thought might be forty thousand years old, and
now believe to have been two hundred years old, perhaps. The word
Ayahuaycco in Quichua means "the valley of dead bodies" or "dead
man's gulch." There is a story that it was used as a burial place
for plague victims in Cuzco, not more than three generations ago!