546 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1930 ' 



recalling textile and Peruvian art designs. Mayan textilelike de- 

 signs for mosaic and stucco work are striking exceptions to the rule 

 that realistic carving and design prevail. 



South American art areas. — Aboriginal textiles from the Inca 

 region of Peru have been preserved in great abundance in the rarefied 

 dry climate of the Peruvian highlands. These show complex color 

 designs producing realistic designs of men, birds, cats, fish in more 

 or.less conventionalized form, all with the geometrical basis of loom 

 weaving. 



There is a superior development of earthernware decoration 

 incorporating life forms in jars representing persons, birds, monkeys, 

 fishes, plants, as corn, potatoes, peanuts, gourds, and others. Deco- 

 rations are in color and in incised work. In color the Nasca and 

 Titicaca Avare is superior to anything yet discovered in the New 

 World. The painted designs upon this pottery are comparable to 

 those upon cloth in their realistic tendencies. Certain fixed con- 

 ventional forms appear both on pottery and cloth. 



As we go out from Peru in both directions pottery decoration 

 becomes inferior. Historical relations of this center with adjoining 

 regions have not as yet been worked out. 



This Andean highland culture spreading northward west of the 

 Rocky Mountains and southward along the western slope of the 

 Andean ranges is the true home of a most characteristic and the 

 highest development of art form and design in the Western Hemi- 

 sphere. There is no possibility of direct connection between this 

 peculiar development and other art centers in Oceania or on any of 

 the continental masses of the Old World. 



The geographical center of this great American development is 

 furthest removed from any possible contact with peoples from other 

 continents, the only possible routes of entry into America being the 

 Aleutian Islands south of the Bering Sea, and the islands of the 

 Bering Sea itself, and the more scattered islands of the south Pacific. 

 None of these were favorable routes for entry of ready made art 

 complexes. The infiltration of peoples must have been painfully 

 slow, perhaps occurring but once in the entire geographic history. 



On the other hand one can not ignore certain parallelisms of de- 

 velopment in the arts of tropical peoples of Oceania and South 

 America. Similarly one can not ignore a certain parallelism between 

 the high achievements of the Inca, the Aztec, and the Maya on the 

 one hand, with the Egyptian and Asiatic cultures on the other. An- 

 other parallelism, that of cultural types, Melanesian and lowland 

 South America might be placed alongside the observed parallelism 

 between New Guinea, Maori, and north Pacific coast cultures. There 

 is also something to be said for parallelism in African design with 

 that of eastern America. Similarly one might point out more gen- 



