INVESTIGATIONS IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA. 85 



conceptions. If we inquire into the stage which the evolution of the religious 

 sentiment had reached among the people of Santa Lucia, we shall find that they 

 were passing from the adoration of the sun and other heavenly bodies to the wor- 

 ship of man — Anthropomorphism. Among the deities in the sculptures can still 

 be found the sun and moon, but both represented witli human forms. The entire 

 body is not given, but only the upper, nobler part. In the images of the deities 

 are preserved the natural liuman features, not disfigured by any addition of animal 

 organs or fantastic attributes. 



The sculptures prove, alas! that human sacrifices were practised by their makers. 

 The mode of immolation was peculiar. It was not the entrails of the victims which 

 were dedicated to the gods, nor the heart torn from the breast and thrown at the 

 feet of the idol; but we see here the noblest part of the body, the head, severed 

 and presented to the deity. 



Finally, the language of a nation and the methods of representing it are valuable 

 indications of tlieir status in culture. The same may be said of their numeral sys- 

 tem. It has been frequently affirmed that the aborigines of America had nowliere 

 arisen high enough in civilization to have characters for writing and numeral signs; 

 but the sculptures of Santa Lucia exhibit signs which indicate a kind of cipher 

 writing, higher in form than mere hieroglyphics. From the mouth of most of tlie 

 human beings, living or dead, emanates a staft' variously bent, to tlie sides of which 

 nodes are attached. These nodes are of diflerent sizes and shapes, and variously 

 distributed on the sides of the staff, either singly, or in twos and tlirees — the last 

 named either separated or in shape of a trefoil. This manner of writing not only 

 indicates that the person is speaking, or praying, but also indicates tlie very words, 

 the contents of the speech or prayer. It is quite certain that each staff, as bent 

 and ornamented, stood for a well-known petition which the priests could read as 

 easily as those acquainted with a cipher dispatch can know its purport. Further, 

 one may be allowed to conjecture that the various curves of the staves served the 

 purpose of strength and rhythm, just as the poet chooses his various metres for the 

 same purpose. 



In the supplications of human beings this staff and its knots have a simple form, 

 in the speeches of death the bends arc angular; but the staves emanating from the 

 deities are exceedingly complicated, and proceed, not from the mouth, but from 

 the head or neck. To the variously bent and ramified staves of the deities, divers 

 flowers, fruits, and mythological emblems are attached in addition to the ordinary 

 nodes. 



Besides the modes of writing just mentioned the sculptures exhibit anotlier method 

 of representing emotions and aspirations not expressible in words. It consisted in 

 wavy ridges or lines originating either from the mouth (Xos. 3 and 14), or from 

 the girdle (Nos. 2, 5, 6, 8) of the suppliant, and uniting at the upper extremity, 

 or separated like the conventional sign for flames (Nos. 3 and 6). The artists of 

 Paienque have expressed a somewhat similar conception by a figure blowing a horn, 

 from the end of which proceed similar wavy lines to designate either the music or 

 the escaping breath. (Stephens, Incidents of Travels, c. ii, 351.) Besides these 

 methods of expressing thouglit there are, as before mentioned, hieroglyphics, chiefly 

 a circular ridge inclosing the head of an animal or a pointed trefoil. 



