37© Philip Ainsworth Means, 



the Titicaca drainage the result was a sudden and very marked 

 lowering of the culture-level, while on the coast and in other 

 regions remote from Lake Titicaca the subsidence in culture, 

 though noticeable, was not so marked. One more thing seems 

 to be disclosed by known facts. As we have seen, Tiahuanaco 

 II art spread far from Tiahuanaco itself. As we shall see, a 

 decadent form of Tiahuanaco II art lingers on around the edges 

 of the old Tiahuanaco "Empire." It is chiefly at Tiahuanaco 

 itself and in the region between Lake Titicaca and Cuzco that 

 the drop in culture is most noticeable. This would seem to 

 indicate that the cataclysm, whatever it was, took place in the 

 mountain regions. The divergence in culture-level that thus 

 sprang up between the mountain regions and the coast resulted 

 in a wide breach between the later arts of the two regions.^^ 



The cultures which we are to consider in this section are both 

 coast cultures. The "Epigonal" art is mainly identified with 

 the southern parts of the coast — Pachacamac, Nasca and lea — 

 where the influence of the Tiahuanaco II period had been 

 strongest. Uhle is the scientist to whom the most credit for 



^The author thinks that it is only fair to warn his reader here that 

 the explanation offered to account for the marked lack of connection 

 between Tiahuanaco II art and Inca art is open to a number of objections. 

 In the first place, if Tiahuanaco II influence did spread into the Cuzco 

 region, it must inevitably have left its stamp upon the art of that region. 

 Archaeology does not permit us to deny that Tiahuanaco II art did spread 

 to Cuzco, — and far beyond it. Why, then, is there so little of Tiahuanaco 

 influence in Cuzco or Inca art? Why is there not at Cuzco, as at 

 Titicaca, Koati and Tiahuanaco, an intermediate type of art which, 

 though much lower in grade than Tiahuanaco II art, still preserves some 

 vestiges of the old tradition? If the forces that brought the Tiahuanaco 

 II art in the Titicaca drainage to an end .were unable completely to 

 obliterate the older style of that region, why ..were they so much stronger 

 at Cuzco than at Tiahuanaco that they .were able to wipe out completely 

 the older art? An answer to these three questions, which were suggested 

 by Dr. Roland B. Dixon, may perhaps be found in the study of the dis- 

 tribution in Peru of the type of culture represented by the Colla-Chulpa 

 type. An examination of this distribution shows that Colla-Chulpa culture, 

 or something very like it, is found throughout the Peruvian highlands 

 from Bolivia to Cuelap in Chachapoyas. It is not like the coast cultures 

 of the time (that is, the period just before the rise of the Incas). Place- 

 names, it is true, have a character remotely suggestive of the coast, but 

 this may have been the result of Inca mitimaes (transferred colonies). 



