HOLMES] ABORIOINAL AMERICAN ANTTQUTTTES PART I 137 



hesitate to distinguish the successive periods and stages and even 

 to suggest duration of time in centuries. 



It is assumed on excellent grounds that the earlier cultures de\el- 



oped in numerous eomewhat isolated centers, owing 

 inca Dominance to the pronounced physical barriers of the country, 



and that in course of time combinations took place, 

 the stronger groups absorbing the weaker and thus forming larger 

 social units, the process ending in the almost complete dominion of 

 the Inca element. The archeologist essays to separate and restore the 

 original groups by means of the antiquities, but he can never hope to ' 

 reach more than tentative results. However, he may come to under- 

 stand very fully the general course of history throughout the region. 

 It is generally agreed that although remarkable progress had been 



made in some branches of culture by the foremost 

 Relative Status peoples of the area, the status as a whole takes a 



rank somewhat inferior to that of the more advanced 

 nations of North America. Judged by the more delicate of tests of 

 progress toward civilization, the advancement made in calendric 

 knowledge, and in the recording and esthetic arts, the Incan status 

 must be regarded as distinctly lower than the Zapotec, xVztec, and 

 Maya. At the same time it is admitted that no other American peo- 

 ple, so far as is known, had achieved a system of government so 

 highly perfected as that of the Inca, and their agriculture and 

 ceramic, textile, and metallurgic arts compare favorably with the 

 best. 



In no other area do the antiquities have so wide a range or tell so 



completely the story of the life and the fate of the 

 Abundanco of An- ig_ ^A^^ljo^.g crround the more durable artifacts 



tiquities 1 i^ *^ 



and works only are ]H'eserved, but in the depositories 

 of the dead, especially in the arid districts, vast numbers of every 

 conceivable product of handicraft are preserved almost unchanged. 

 The entire personal and much of the household equipment is com- 

 plete. From the graves of Ancon, for example, every article neces- 

 sary to the building of a museum family group, showing the people 

 in their proper costumes and embellishments and engaged in their 

 daily avocations of a thousand years or more ago, could be assembled 

 without difficulty. One of the most striking features of the mortuary 

 class are the elaborately constructed and bedecked mummy packs. 

 Agriculture w-as by far the most important industry of the area 



and a chief concern of the Inca rulers. It was prac- 

 Acricuiture ticccl Originally in many centers, separated more or 



less completely by natural barriers, but later all sec- 

 tions were unified by the Inca, wdio employed every known device and 

 took every step calculated to increase productiveness. In arid dis- 



