Perhaps there is testimony far older than the colonial 
records of the Inquisition. In the collection of Hans 
Namuth of New York is a‘mushroom stone’ of extraord- 
nary features.” The cap of the mushroom carries the 
grooved ring that, according to Stephan F. de Borhegy1, 
is the hallmark of the early pre-Classic period, perhaps 
1000 B.C. The stone comes from the Highlands of 
(;uatemala. Out of the stipe there leans forward a strong, 
ager, sensitive face, bending over an inclined plane. It 
was not until we had seen the doncel/a leaning over a 
metate and grinding the sacred mushrooms in Juxtlahuaca 
in 1960, that the explanation of the Namuth artifact came 
to us. The inclined plane in front of the leaning human 
figure must be a metate. It follows that the face must be 
that of a woman. Dr. Borhegyi and I went to see the 
artifact once more: it was a woman! A young woman, 
for her breasts were only budding, a doncella.. How ex- 
citing it is to make such a discovery as this: a theme 
that we find in the contemporary Mixteca, and in the 
Sierra Mazateca, and inthe Zapotec country, is precisely 
the same as we find recorded in Jacinto de la Serna and 
in the records of the Santo Oficio. Again it is precisely 
the same, if our interpretation of the silent witness in the 
New York studio of Mr. Namuth be correct, as inastone 
‘carving that dates back perhaps 2,500 vears ! 
[ 188 | 
