A Survey of Ancient Peruvian Art. 333 



important one. In considering it one must not forget the presence 

 in the Titicaca basin of another and much lower-cultured stock 

 called Urus or Uros. The general trend of the evidence at hand 

 regarding the Urus shows them to be very low-cultured and 

 quite widely distributed. In fact, their area at the time we are 

 considering extended from Titicaca down to Lake Poopo or 

 Aullagas. It may have extended westward to the Chilean coast. 

 The stock was probably an old one. Boman (1908, I, p. y2) 

 suggests that the Urus were vestiges of the earliest pre-Yunca 

 (i. e. pre-Proto-Chimu) population, and that they were driven 

 south and east by the earliest high-cultured invaders. At the 

 same time, we must remember, that, in the same general area, 

 the higher-cultured Collas had a culture which was similar to that 

 found in the north-western parts of Argentina. It might be 

 suggested that one of these racial elements represents the inhabi- 

 tants of the Tiahuanaco II "empire" and that the other repre- 

 sents the invading race which may have helped to bring it to a 

 close. But which is which, and if this is the truth, we cannot 

 surely tell.^* To some it may seem more satisfactory to assume 

 that there were two strata of population — Collas and Uros — who 

 were mutually aloof. Such a state of affairs has been known to 

 exist in Asia, Oceania and elsewhere. Certainly the Titicaca 

 basin is spacious enough to permit isolated groups of Uros to 

 dwell wholly apart from the surrounding CoUa communities. 



7. EARLY INCA CULTURE. 



As has been said before, the culture of the mountain regions 

 away from the sea suffered a general and marked subsidence 

 after the Tiahuanaco II period, a subsidence which we have 

 studied under the name of Colla-Chulpa culture. Therefore, 

 when that gens of the valley of Cuzco which later became the 

 Inca dynasty began to raise its own culture-level and that of 

 the surrounding tribes it had not much artistic tradition on which 

 to establish its own art.^^ 



^^Cf. Chamberlain, 1910, 1910b, 191 1, 1913; Boman, 1908; Garcilasso, 

 II, pp. 223-227. 



^ It seems to the writer that the character of the Inca gens has never 

 been properly appreciated, save, in a measure, by the late Sir Clements 

 Markham. According to Sarmiento (1907, PP- 37 ff-)» the people in imme- 



