136 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 60 



dant and presents great diversity of style due to development in 

 numerous independent culture centers. The forms are varied and 

 the highland peoples, especially in Ecuador, displayed great skill 

 in modeling life forms employed in decoration, the vigor and artistic 

 character of the work reminding us strongly, of the pottery of 

 Oaxaca. The most striking evidence of the aclvance- 

 Skiii iu Metallurgy ment of the peoples of the region in the arts is fur- 

 nished by their works in metal. They early discov- 

 ered and utilized gold, silver, and copper, and employed them in the 

 manufacture of vast numbers of articles of ornamental and sacred 

 use, displaying a degree of skill and taste hardly to be expected of a 

 people so backward in other branches of handicraft. The mastery 

 displayed in the manipulation of gold is a never-failing source of 

 wondei-ment to the student of American culture. So far as recorded, 

 these tribes had not succeeded in making bronze, a fact due, possibly, 

 to the absence of tin. Kindred skill in the nietallurgic arts was dis- 

 played by the Incas, who alone made extensive use of bronze, and 

 also by the Central Americans and Mexicans. None of these peoples 

 were so plentifully suj-tplied with the precious metals as were the 

 iniiabitants of Colombia. 



18. TiiK Mn)i)LE Axdean-Pactfic Area 



This vast region is culturally a world in itself, and no brief sketch 

 can convey an ade(iuatc notion of its history, traditional and written, 

 and of its diversified and multitudinous antiquities. It extends 

 from Middle Ecuador on the north to the valleys of the Rio j\Iaule 

 in Chile and the Eio Salvador in Argentina on the south. 



The important linguistic stocks of the area, according to Brinton, 

 are the Kechua, Pequina, Atacameno, Aymara, and Yunca, the 

 Kechua being the dominant element of Inca rule. 

 Linguistic Stocks Tliese peoples Were bordered on the east by numer- 

 ous forest tribes and on the south by the Pam- 

 pean tribes of Argentina and the Araucanians of Chile, none of 

 which were advanced decidedly beyond the simple hunter-fisher state, 

 and many, especially on the east, had never risen above the lowest 

 round of the culture scale. 



The ethnic conditions of the area as known historically and as 

 further revealed by the antiquities were exceedingly complex, and 

 the earlier culture phases, representing distinct periods and peoples, 

 are overs])read more or less fully and deeply by a veneer of the Incan 

 civilization. That numerous stages of culture supervened one upon 

 another is clearly manifest, and some students of the subject do not 



