PERUVIAN ANTIQUITIES.
TWO EPOCHS OF PERUVIAN CIVILIZATION -- ABORIGINAL
GOVERNMENT, RELIGION, AND ARTS -- CONTRASTS -- THE HUACAS
-- HUMAN REMAINS -- ARTICLES OF METAL -- COPPER IMPLEMENTS
-- GOLD AND SILVER VASES AND ORNAMENTS -- USE OF IRON
UNKNOWN -- ABORIGINAL ENGINEERING -- PAVED ROADS --
PERUVIAN POTTERY -- RUINS OF PACHACAMAC -- MAUSOLEUM OF
CUELAP -- GRAN-CHIMÚ -- HUACA OF MISA -- TEMPLE OF THE SUN
-- REMAINS ON THE ISLAND OF TITICACA -- CHAVIN DE HUANTA
-- HUANUCO EL VIEJO -- CUZCO -- MONUMENTS OF TIAHUANACO --
ISLAND OF COATI.
I conclude with a short chapter on Peruvian antiquities, made up for
the most part from the work of Rivero and Tschudi, and illustrated
with the cuts copied from that work for Mr Baldwin's account.[XIV-1]
Ancient Peru included also modern Ecuador, Bolivia, and a large part
of Chili; and the most remarkable monuments of antiquity are
considered the works of a people preceding that found by Pizarro in
possession of the country, and bearing very much the same relation to
the subjects of the Incas as the ancient Mayas bore to the Quichés of
Guatemala, or perhaps the Toltecs to the Aztecs. The Peruvians that
came into contact with the Spaniards were superior in some respects to
the Aztecs. At least equally advanced in the various mechanical and
fine arts, except sculpture and architectural decoration, they lived
under as perfect a system of government, and rendered homage to less
bloodthirsty gods. They kept their records by means of _quipus_, or
knotted strings, a method probably as useful practically as the Aztec
picture-writing, but not so near an approach to an alphabet; while the
more ancient nations have left nothing to compare with the
hieroglyphic tablets of Central America, and the evidence is far from
satisfactory that they possessed any advanced art in writing. It will
be seen from the specimens to be presented that their architecture,
though perhaps more massive than that of Mayas or Nahuas, is not on
the whole of a superior character. The most marked contrasts are found
in the occurrence in Peru of cyclopean structures, the use of larger
blocks of stone, the comparative absence of the pyramidal foundations,
of architectural and hieroglyphic sculpture, and the more extensive
use of adobes as a building-material.
[Sidenote: METALLIC RELICS.]
[Illustration: Peruvian Copper Implements.]
[Illustration: Golden Vase from Peru.]
_Huaca_ is the Peruvian name for any venerated or holy structure, but
is usually applied to the conical mounds of the country, mostly mounds
of sepulture. Thousands of these have been opened and from them have
been taken a great variety of relics, together with preserved mummies
wrapped in native cloth. The relics include implements and ornaments
of metal, stone, bone, shell, and wood. The Peruvians seem to have had
a more abundant supply of metals than the civilized nations of North
America, and to have been at least equally skillful in working them.
The cuts show specimens of copper cutting implements, of which a great
variety are found. Besides copper, they had gold and silver in much
greater abundance than the northern artisans, and the arts of melting,
casting, soldering, beating, inlaying, and carving these metals, were
carried to a high degree of perfection. Every one has read the
marvelous accounts, naturally exaggerated, but still with much
foundation in truth, of the immense quantities of gold obtained by the
Spaniards in Peru; of the room filled with golden utensils by the
natives as a ransom for the Inca Atahuallpa. A golden vase is shown in
the cut. Large quantities of gold have been taken in more modern times
from the huacas, where it was doubtless placed in many cases to keep
it from the hands of the conquerors. Most of the articles have of
course gone to the melting-pot, but sufficient specimens have been
preserved or sketched to show the degree of excellence to which the
Peruvian smiths had attained. The following cut shows a silver vase.
The search for treasure in the huacas still goes on, and is not always
unrewarded. Tin, lead, and quicksilver are said to have been worked by
the natives. Iron ore is very abundant in Peru, but the only evidence
that iron was used is the difficulty of executing the native works of
excavation and cutting stone without it, and the fact that the metal
had a name in the native language. No traces of it have ever been
found. The cut shows two copper tweezers.
[Illustration: Silver Vase from Peru.]
[Illustration: Copper Implements from Peru.]
[Sidenote: ABORIGINAL ROADS.]
Among the most remarkable Peruvian remains are the paved roads which
crossed the country in every direction, especially from north to
south. Two of the grandest highways extended from the region north of
Quito southward to Cuzco, and according to some authors still farther
to Chili. One runs over the mountains, the other chiefly through the
plains. Their length is at least twelve hundred miles, and the grading
of the mountain road presented, as Mr Baldwin believes, far greater
difficulties than the Pacific Railroad. These roads are from eighteen
to twenty-six feet wide, protected at the sides by a thick wall, and
paved generally with stone blocks, but sometimes with a mixture of
cement and fine stone--an aboriginal infringement on the 'Macadam'
process. The highways followed a straight course, and turned aside for
no obstacle. Ravines and marshes were filled up with masonry, and the
solid rock of the mountains was cut away for many miles. But when
rivers were encountered, light suspension bridges seem to have been
resorted to instead of massive stone bridges. It is true that the most
glowing accounts of these roads are found in the writings of the
Conquistadores, and that only ruined portions now remain; but the
reports of Humboldt and others, respecting the remains, leave little
doubt of their former imposing character.
[Illustration: Peruvian Pottery.]
Articles of pottery, of which three specimens are shown in the cuts,
are at least equal in material and finish to those produced by Nahua
and Maya potters. The finest specimens are vases found in sepulchral
deposits, and many utensils designed for more common use are preserved
by the present inhabitants, and are preferred for their solidity to
the work of modern potters. Small images of human and animal forms in
terra cotta, as in gold and silver, are of even more frequent
occurrence than utensils. There is no evidence that the images were
fashioned with a different purpose here and in the north; some were
simply ornaments, a few probably portraits, others miniature deities,
deposited from superstitious motives with the dead.
[Illustration: Peruvian Pottery.]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: CITY OF THE INCAS.]
About twenty miles south of Lima, in the valley of Lurin, and
overlooking the sea, are the ruins of Pachacamac, shown in the cut.
This was a city of the Incas, that is, it belonged to the later period
of Peruvian civilization. All the structures were built of adobes, and
are much dilapidated. The Temple of the Sun stands on a hill six
hundred feet high, the upper portion of which shows traces of having
been divided into terraces over thirty feet high and five to eight
feet wide. The adobe wall which surrounds the temple is from eight to
eleven feet thick, and is only standing to the height of four to five
feet. The ruined structures are very numerous, and on one of the inner
walls some traces of red and yellow paint are visible.
[Illustration: Ruins of Pachacamac.]
In the district of Santo Tomas in the north, at Cuelap, a grand and
peculiar ruin is described by Sr Nieto in an official government
report. A mass--of earth, probably, although not fully examined in the
interior--is faced with a solid wall of hewn stone, and is thirty-six
hundred feet long, five hundred and seventy feet wide, and one hundred
and fifty feet in perpendicular height. On the summit stands another
similar structure six hundred by five hundred feet and also one
hundred and fifty feet high. The lower wall is pierced with three
entrances to an inclined plane leading in a curved line to the summit,
with sentry-boxes at intervals and on the summit. These passages are
six feet wide at the base but only two at the top, and those of the
second story are similar. In both stories there are chambers, in the
walls of which and in the outer walls there are small niches
containing skeletons. Some of the upper chambers are paved with large
flat stones, on each of which lies a skeleton. The report of this
immense structure is probably founded on fact but greatly exaggerated.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: RUINS OF GRAN-CHIMÚ.]
[Illustration: Adobe Walls at Gran-Chimú.]
[Illustration: Decorations at Gran-Chimú.]
The ruins of Gran-Chimú, in the vicinity of Truxillo, cover an area of
three quarters of a league, and beyond these limits are seven or eight
great enclosures with adobe walls, in some of which are conical
mounds, or huacas, and some traces of buildings. The two principal
structures, called palaces, are surrounded by walls one hundred and
forty feet high, sixteen feet thick at the base, but tapering to three
or four feet at the top. Round one of the palaces the wall is double,
as shown by the section in the cut. The English translation of Rivero,
instead of surrounding one of the palaces with a double wall like the
original, represents one wall as being twice as high and thick as the
other. These walls, like all the structures of Gran-Chimú, are of
adobes nine by eighteen inches, resting on a foundation of rough
stones laid in clay. In connection with the larger palace is a square
containing apartments, the walls of which are a conglomerate of gravel
and clay, smooth, and whitewashed on the interior. There are also
plazas and streets regularly laid out, and a reservoir which by a
subterranean aqueduct was supplied with water from the Rio Moche two
miles distant. This palace--and by palace, a group of edifices within
an enclosure, rather than a single edifice, seems to be meant--has two
entrances, one in the middle of each long side. The second palace is
one hundred and twenty five yards further east, and is also divided by
squares and narrow streets. At one end is the huaca of Misa,
surrounded by a low wall, pierced by galleries and rooms in which have
been found mummies, cloths, gold and silver, implements, and a wooden
idol with pieces of pearl-shell. All the inner walls are built of a
mass of clay and gravel or of adobes. The cut shows specimens of the
ornamentation, which seem to bear outwardly a slight resemblance to
the mosaic work of Mitla, although the method of their construction is
not explained. "Outside of these notable edifices, there is an
infinite number of squares and small houses, some round and others
square, which were certainly dwellings of the lower classes, and
whose great extent indicates that the population must have been very
large." Among the ruins are many truncated conical mounds, or huacas,
of fine gravel, from some of which interesting relics and large
quantities of gold have been taken. The so-called Temple of the Sun is
three quarters of a league east of the city near Moche, in connection
with which are several adobe structures, one of them, perhaps the
temple itself, so far as may be determined by Rivero's vague account,
made worse than vague in the English translation, is a regular pyramid
of adobes. It is four hundred and fourteen by four hundred and thirty
feet at the base, three hundred and forty-five feet wide on the
summit, and over eighty feet high, built in terraces, pierced with a
gallery through the centre, and affording a fine view of the sea and
the city of Truxillo.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: RUINS OF HUANUCO.]
[Illustration: Ruin at Titicaca.]
The cut represents a ruin on the Island of Titicaca in the lake of
the same name. These island remains are among the oldest of Peruvian
antiquities, and all the structures are built of hewn stone.
Respecting these ruins we only learn from the explorers that "though
not very imposing" they are well preserved, "with windows and doors,
with posts and thresholds of hewn stone also, these being wider below
than above." Another ruin on the same island is shown in the cut on
the following page.
At Chavin de Huanta the structures are built of hewn stone very
accurately joined without any mortar in sight on the outside, and a
rubble of rough stones and clay on the inside. In a building spoken of
as a fortress there is a covered way with rooms at its sides, all
covered with sandstone blocks about twelve feet long. The walls are
six feet thick, and in the interior is the opening to a subterranean
passage which is said to lead under the river to another building. In
the gallery human bones and some relics were found. The modern town is
built mostly over the ruins of an ancient aqueduct, and a bridge over
the stream is built of three immense stones, each over twenty feet
long, taken from the fort. The ancient people were especially skillful
in the construction of aqueducts, some of which were reported by the
early writers as several hundred miles in length, and a few of which
of less extent are still in actual use.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: RUINS OF HUANUCO.]
[Illustration: El Mirador--Huanuco.]
[Illustration: Ruins at Titicaca.]
The cut represents the Mirador, or look-out, at Huanuco el Viejo.
This structure measures about one hundred by one hundred and sixty
feet at the base, and is about fifteen feet high, in a pyramidal form
without terraces and furnished with a parapet wall enclosing the
summit platform. The foundation is of rough stones, which form two
steps projecting four or five feet, not clearly indicated in the cut.
The walls or facings are of hewn blocks of limestone about four feet
and a half long by a foot and a half thick. The blocks are very
accurately cut and laid in cement. The interior is filled with gravel
and clay, with a concavity in the centre popularly supposed to
communicate by means of a subterranean gallery with the palace some
half a mile distant. From a doorway in the parapet wall on the south
an inclined plane--which seems often to have taken the place of a
stairway in Peru--leads down to the ground. On the wall at each side
of the entrance crouches an animal in stone, so much damaged that its
kind cannot be determined.
[Illustration: Gateway at Huanuco.]
Another noted ruin at Huanuco is that whose entrance is shown in the
cut. The walls are of round stones irregularly laid in mortar, a kind
of rubble called by the Peruvians _pirca_, but the gateway, shown in
the cut, is built of hewn blocks three varas--as Rivero says, probably
meaning feet--by one and a half. The lintel is one stone block eleven
feet long, and the inclined posts are said to be of one piece,
although the cut indicates that each is composed of four. The animals
sculptured over the gateway at the sides are called monkeys by Rivero.
Within the structure there are five similar gateways shown in the
preceding cut and in the following ground plan. In the interior are
rooms of cut stone, with niches in the walls, an aqueduct, and a
reservoir. The quarries that supplied the stone for the Huanuco
structures are still seen about half a mile away. Many traces of
buildings of round stones in clay are found in the same vicinity.
[Illustration: Ground Plan--Huanuco.]
Near Chupan, a tower is mentioned on the verge of a precipice
overhanging the Rio Marañon. In the district of Junin there is a line
or system of fortifications on the precipitous cliffs of a ravine,
built mostly of micaceous slate. At Cuzco are some remains of the city
of the Incas, and there is said to be some evidence that this city was
founded on the ruins of another of an earlier epoch; the latter
including part of the fortification of Ollantaytambo, built of stones
cut in irregular forms, some of them of great size, and very neatly
joined.
[Sidenote: MONUMENTS OF TIAHUANACO.]
The ruins at Tiahuanaco, ten or twelve miles from Lake Titicaca, are
considered among the most ancient in Peru. They include stones from
fifteen to twenty feet high, some cut, others rough, standing in rows.
All the structures were in a very dilapidated condition when the
Spaniards came, and some very large stone statues in human form were
found, with stone columns. One of the most interesting monuments is
the monolithic doorway shown in the cut. The opening is seventy-six
inches high and thirty-eight wide. Rivero and Tschudi represent the
sculptured figures in the small squares as being profiles of the human
face instead of those shown in Baldwin's cut. There were several of
these doorways. Several idols and some very large blocks of cut stone
were dug up in 1846, and the latter used for mill-stones. The blocks
are described as thirty feet long, eighteen feet wide, and six feet
thick, being shaped so as to form a channel when one was placed upon
another.
[Illustration: Doorway at Tiahuanaco.]
A building on the Island of Coati, in Lake Titicaca, is shown in the
cut. Rivero gives a view and plan of another large palace, consisting
for the most part of a single line of low apartments built round three
sides of a rectangular court, and bearing some resemblance, as Mr
Baldwin remarks, to the Central American structures, except that it
does not rest on a pyramidal foundation. Rock-inscriptions of the same
rude class so often mentioned in the northern continent, occur also in
Peru, although somewhat less frequently, so far as may be judged by
the reports of explorers.
[Illustration: Ruin on the Island of Coati.]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: CONCLUSION.]
The contents of the preceding pages may be sufficient to show the
reader that the resemblance between the southern and northern
monuments, if any resemblance exists, is very faint. The Maya and
Peruvian peoples may have been one in remote antiquity; if so, the
separation took place at a period long preceding any to which we are
carried by the material relics of the Votanic empire, and of the most
ancient epoch of the southern civilization, or even by traditional
annals and the vaguest myths. There seems to be a natural tendency
even among antiquarians to attribute all American civilizations to a
common origin, constantly moving back the date as investigation
progresses. This tendency has much in common with that which so
persistently traces American civilization to the old world, old-world
culture to one centre, the human race to one pair, and the first pair
to a special creation, performed at a definite time and point in Asia.
Be the results of the tendency referred to true or false, it is
evident that superstition has contributed more than science to the
zeal that has supported them.
FOOTNOTE:
[XIV-1] _Rivero and Tschudi_, _Antigüedades Peruanas_, Viena, 1851,
with atlas; _Rivero_, _Antigüedades Peruanas_, Lima, 1841; _Rivero and
Tschudi's Peruvian Antiquities_, N. Y., 1855; this translation is in
many instances very faulty; _Baldwin's Ancient America_, pp. 226-56.
END OF THE FOURTH VOLUME.
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Italics in the footnote citations were inconsistently applied by the
typesetter.
Footnote IV-31: p. 379 is a possible typographical error.
Footnote IV-36 refers to Nebak and Nebah. One of them may be a
typographical error.
Footnote V-39: linteux should possibly be linteaux.
Footnote VII-57: pp. 53, 16 is a possible typographical error.
Footnote XI-43 is missing a volume number.
Footnote XII-24: "McGilvary's" is a possible typographical error.
Footnotes V-23 and IX-64 are repeated in the text.
Page 294: to fall the trees should possibly be to fell the trees.
The text refers to both Medellin and Medelin, Vera Cruz.