8 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. GO 



a Peruvian grave contains no hint of the record which it was in- 

 tended to keep, and is without significance except such as it may 

 acquire through the efforts of the archeoh)gist.^ 



The pictorial record (e) alone, while it endures, retains and con- 

 veys a considerable measure of its purpose and significance; for the 

 story, graphically told, is intelligible in part at least to all men of 

 all times. 



It is apparent from the above that the enduring portions of all 

 material forms of record may in time become part of the subject 

 matter of Archeology, so, as before shown, it is plain that this science 

 must traverse the entire field of human history, howsoever recorded, 

 drawing its data from the whole record, purposeful and fortuitous, 

 present antl past, contributing the product to the ever-growing yet 

 insufficient and never fully permanent body of written history. 



To-day the realm of unwritten fortuitously recorded history is 

 still vast as compared with that of written history, research having 

 made hardly more than a beginning in its exploration of the scat- 

 tered archives of past ages; but the inquisitive turn of the civilized 

 mind respecting antifjuity will have its w^ay, and in time the story 

 of the past of man in most of its essential details will have been, 

 through the agencies of Archeology and contributing sciences, so 

 fully told, though never to be completely told, as to become in its 

 principal outlines a part of common knowledge. 



Although we speak of permanent records, harboring the delusion 

 that civilization has achieved means of perpetuating a knowledge 

 of human events, it must be allowed that, as has been shown, no 

 known record really perpetuates indefinitely; stone crumbles with 

 time, and books are eaten by worms or destroyed by fire and decay. 

 Nothing of histoi'v approaches permanency save through purposeful 

 repetition in books and on monuments, and even this means affords 

 but a shadow of perpetuity, since this repetition can continue only 

 so long as a kindly nature continues to fertilize a mutable and finite 

 world, permitting the race to survive and its higher phases of culture 

 to flourish. 



^ An extraordinary example of oh.iective mnemonic record is furnished by the practice 

 " of the Incas of I'eru. The nnimmied bodies of the earlier rulers were brought out at 

 stated periods and awarded the same daily service by their descendants as when living. 

 By this practice a body of memories relating to the most important personages and events 

 in the history of the nation, extending over a period of several hundred years, was pre- 

 served ; yet the record tlius kept alive was necessarily restricted in scope and in a few 

 generations must have become in large part vague and merged with myth. 



