THE PROBLEMS OF ARCHEOLOGY 537 



ments, their weapons and utensils. The colors of their garments, 

 the flesh still clinging to the bones, the metal and wood of the uten- 

 sils, the food and amulets which were buried with them, are as per- 

 fect to-day as the mummies of ancient Egypt. Many thousands of 

 drinking-flasks, jugs, and other vessels of clay have come to light 

 from these graves. Upon them are depicted the most various orna- 

 ments, men, gods, beasts, whole battle-scenes, judicial processes, 

 death-dances, and banquets. Unfortunately old Peru had no Saha- 

 gun, to collect with equal diligence and intelligence the primitive 

 traditions of the aborigines. The Exstirpacion de las Idolatrias of 

 Padre Arriaga offers us but a poor compensation. We lack the 

 picture-manuscripts and the expositions of learned men, so that 

 we stand face to face with this mass of phenomena almost without 

 comprehension. All we can do for the present is to register the 

 collected material and to seek analogies for which not only the 

 objects heaped up in the museums, but also the splendid publica- 

 tions of Reiss and Stiibel and Professor Arthur Bassler give op- 

 portunity enough. One thing emerges clearly from such a survey 

 as has been possible, the difference between the Indians of the 

 highlands and those of the coast, and between the civilizations 

 of the two, as well as the distinct artistic style of the monuments 

 and all kinds of antiquities found on the plateau of Lake Titicaca. 

 There, at Puno and at Tiahuanaco, this difference is accompanied 

 by a difference in language; but it may be traced far beyond the 

 linguistic diversity, down to the coast, where lea and Arica have 

 long been known as places where antiquities of a distinct type 

 were to be found. The sequence in time of the various civilizations 

 may some day be determined with more or less certainty by such 

 careful excavations as Max Uhle has now, for a number of years, 

 been carrying on in Pachacamak; and no doubt it will be possible 

 to deduce from the archeological material as yet unclassified an 

 overlapping and fusion of indigenous civilizations with forms whose 

 origin points to the highlands and the conquering Incas. This Inca 

 influence may be traced plainly beyond the boundaries of their 

 empire, by way of Ecuador towards the north, southward across 

 the Rio Maule into Chile, and on the other side of the Cordilleras 

 into the nearest parts of Argentina, the districts of Salta and Cata- 

 marca, where with the Spaniards the speech of the Incas, the Khe- 

 chua, found its way. 



But in another way the old Inca Empire was a point of departure. 

 When Karl von den Steinen pressed on in 1883 from Cuyabd to the 

 sources of the Xingu, he found there, to his surprise, a number of 

 tribes similar in conditions of civilization, though differing in lan- 

 guage, who were still living in the Stone Age, and to whom the 

 knowledge of white men had never penetrated. The objects they 



