A Survey of Ancient Peruvian Art. 369 



to the next, a little older, that is, in point of development ; the 

 age in point of time from our own day decreases as we go up 

 the series of sites. This does not mean, however, that one site 

 was abandoned before the next began to flourish. In fact, the 

 evidence proves that the first and last steps have much in com- 

 mon, and that they must have been at least partly contemporary. 

 The opinion of the writer is that one should conceive of the 

 slowly ageing art as the result of a slow spread of related peo- 

 ples in several directions during- a long time. While the spread 

 was going on new sites were founded and new phases of the 

 common art-ideal developed, but neither the old settlements nor 

 the old phases of art were thereby at once robbed of vigor. 

 What the political status of these people was we shall never 

 know. We must remain content with what evidence we can 

 wring from the vestiges of their culture. 



4. A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE EPIGONAL AND 

 RED-WHITE-BLACK CULTURES. 



So far, w^e have studied three cultures which we have just 

 seen to be intimately linked together by lines of cultural descent. 

 We have hitherto considered a cultural series that spread from 

 the coast to the mountains. We have now come to a fork in 

 that stream. 



It is clear from the evidence presented by the architectural 

 remains and by the artifacts that the three cultures so far con- 

 sidered were of a high order. What brought the last of them, 

 the Tiahuanaco II culture, to a close we can but guess at this 

 distant date. It is clear enough, however, that at the end of 

 the Tiahuanaco II period something happened which checked 

 the development of civilization in both mountains and coast. 

 Vague whispers of the cataclysm persisted in the folklore of the 

 country down to Spanish, and even into our own, times. The 

 early chroniclers report the traditions of the event in various 

 ways, none of which needs to be particularized here. In the 

 nature of the case, the character of the catastrophe must have 

 been gigantic in order to bring about the far-reaching results 

 that it did. Whether it was a terrible earthquake, an invasion 

 of savage peoples or some great epidemic of disease or a com- 

 bination of these things we cannot tell. We only know that in 



