Hisnr.i.'KA] DTSCOVERTKS ATTHTBTITF.D TO KARTA' MAN H 



with whose aid we cut tbroiii;li the wall and found it was about 3 feet thick 

 and 9 feet in height, carefully faced on both sides and tilled in w:th I'ubble. 

 As this type of stonework is not uncommon in the foundations of some of the 

 older buildings in the western part of the city of Cuzco, and as it is usually 

 called by the inhabitants Inca'c, I was at once struck by the idea that this 

 kind of wall nmst be very much dldcr than we should be led to suppose by 

 our present ideas of Inca civilization. Such a thesis would be necessary to 

 account for a wall comi)letely covered over to a depth of 6 or 8 feet by a 

 compact gi'avel liank, a l)ank later eroded to a depth of 10 feet. Further 

 investigation in this part of the gulch revealed numbers of potsherds and bones. 



A few days later I followed the Aiiuhmtycco qucbrada uj) to its head, using 

 a road on 'ts east side. In various places I was struck by evidences of ancient 

 civilization. Ash heaps, recent and ancient, a stone-paved area which may 

 have been a threshing floor or market place, and numbers of bones and 

 potsherds offered a most interesting field for speculation and study. Ayahuaycco 

 means " the cadaver quebrada " or " dead man's gulch," or " the valley of 

 dead bodies." There is ii tradition that this valley was once used as a burial 

 place for plague victims in Cuzco, possibly not more than three generations 

 ago. Such a story appears to be well borne out by the great number of 

 human bones that occui- in the talus slopes. I was nu)st anxious to see 

 whether anything could be found definitely in silu, where the stratification 

 had not beeii disturbed. After proceeding up the valley for more than half 

 a mile it Uitrrowed and the east side, along which I was walking, became very 

 precii):tous. The road had apparently recently been widened and this made 

 the bank ;,t Ihis place practically perpendicular. About 5 feet above the road 

 I saw what al first looked like one of the small rocks which are freely 

 interspersed throughout the compact gravel of this region. Something about 

 it led me to examine it moi-e closely, and I then recognized that it was 

 apparently the end of a human bone, probably a fenun-. 



I was at once so impressed by the possibilities, in case it should turn out to 

 be true thai this was a human bone and had been buried centuries ago under 

 seventy-five or a hundred feet of gravel, that I refrained from disturbing the bone 

 until I could get the geologist and the naturalist of the expedition to witness its 

 excavation. Prof. Isaiah Bowman, who had already made studies in the Central 

 Andes, and was the geologist-geographei- of the expedition, was at this time 

 only a few days away making a preliminary study of the Anta Basin. On his 

 return to Cuzco Professor Bowman was requested to make a physiographic 

 study of the gulch in which the human remains had been found. . . . 



On the afternoon of .Tuly 11 Professor Bowman and I excavated the femur 

 and found behind it fragments of a numbei- of other bones. These we took out 

 as carefully as possible. They were excessively fragile. The femur was 

 unable to support 4 inches of its own weight, and after that nnich had been 

 excavated the exposed end fell off. The gravel was somewhat damp but could 

 hardly be called moist. The bones were dry and powdery. It is difficult to 

 describe their color. Perhaiis " ashy gray " is as near as anything. The end 

 of the femui- first seen was so like the pebbles as to be distinguished from them 

 only with the greatest difficulty. 



The bones were cai-ried to our hotel, where they were again photographed, 

 soaked in melted vaseline, and then packed in cotton batting. On my return 

 to the States in December the bones were subjnitted to Dr. George F. Eaton, 

 curator of ossteology in the Peabody IMuseum, for examination. 



