HOLMES] ABORIGINAL AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES PART I 339 



141 represents a life-size group, recently constructed in the National 

 Museum under the direction of the writer, to ilhistrate graphically 

 our understanding of the methods of stone Avorking practiced by the 

 more civilized peoples of Middle and South America. 



The marvel grows when gradually we come to realize the vastness 

 of the monumental remains of hewn stone which 

 Works" °'''''*^^ mark the culture centers of tlie ancient peoples of 

 Middle and South America. Not only did the huge 

 blocks employed in the building of a hundred cities have to be pecked 

 out and hewn and fitted into their places, but the countless sculp- 

 tured embellishments, the massive stelae, and the individual sculp- 

 tures in relief and the round, which are the marvel of the western 

 world, had to be wrought into shape by the tedious process of crum- 

 bling. When the imagination traverses the field from Central 

 Mexico to Argentina and recalls the traces of former enterprises in 

 such centers as Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Palenque, Quirigua, Copan, 

 Tiahuanaco, Cuzco, Machu Picchu, and the rest, the magnitude of 

 the industrial achievement of a Stone Age people is borne in on us 

 with almost overwhelming force. 



At Tiahuanaco the writer gazed with wonder on the huge monoliths 

 assembled on the site, brought no one knows whence or how far, but 

 apparently never built into the structures for which they were in- 

 tended, for if once placed in orderly form what force or agency could 

 have arranged them as they appear to-day? All had to be hewn 

 from the quarry with picks of stone or bronze, a work followed by 

 transportation in which marvelous difficulties were overcome, and 

 finished by crumbling and abrasive methods. The vast achievements 

 of the ancient Peruvians in quarrying and dressing the great stones 

 employed in their Cyclopean structures, as described by Squier and 

 others, attest the efficiency and possibilities of the crumbling process. 

 Describing the fortress of Olantaytambo, Squier writes as follows: 



The stones composing it or lying scattered over its area are of a hard red 

 porphyry, brought from quarries more than 2 leagues distant, upward of 3,000 

 feet above the valley, and on the opposite side from the fortress. They are 

 nearly all hev/n into shape and ready to be fitted, and among them I noticed 

 several having places cut in them for the reception of the T clamp, which I 

 have mentioned in describing the remains of Tiahuanuco. One of these por- 

 phyry blocks, built in the wall of what appeared to be the beginning of a 

 square building, is 18 feet long by 5 broad and 4 deep, not only perfectly 

 squared but finely polished on every face, as are also the stones adjoining it, 

 to which it fits with scarcely perceptible joints. 



The most interesting series of stones, however, are six great upright slabs 

 of porphyry supporting a terrace, against which they slightly incline. It will 

 he observed that they stand a little apart, and that the spaces between them 

 are accurately filled in with other thin stones,, in sections. The sides of these, 

 as well as of the larger slabs which they adjoin, are polished. The following 



