462 



NATURE 



[March 16, 1905 



decorated, were lying in the cists, but a great part 

 of them, covered with soot, appear to have served 

 as cooking utensils. Several contained charred 

 maize and fragments of corn cobs. In one was 

 found some Millefiori beads, the manufacture of 

 which was an imf)ortant industry in Venice during 

 the latter part of the fifteenth century, and the 

 author says that, " Later on, I discovered a number 

 of this kind in a grave at Osori in the highlands." 



Thus it appears that these Indian towns were still 

 in existence at the time of the Spanish invasion. 



Mr. Hartman also opened a cache, similar to a 

 cist, but there was no proof that it had ever been 

 used as a grave; in fact, it was too small. It con- 

 tained sixteen clay vessels, some of them ornamented, 

 and much broken pottery. There were several 

 globular bowls and vases. " The practice of secret- 

 ing household articles as well as food in pits or in 

 caves has from early days been observed among 

 widely disseminated tribes of North America." 



The work-yard of the ancient stone-cutters was 

 happily discovered, and many unfinished idols were 

 lying about. 



In June, 1895, I roughly examined the mounds 

 and some of the graves near the hacienda of 

 Mercedes, and especially remember the two great 

 statues described by Mr. Hartman. People resident 



decayed for removal. Summarising his year's work, 

 he says of the culture of the Guijtares " that it 

 proves to be that of a stone-age people of high stand- 

 ing, possessed of ornaments of .gold and copper, but 

 with no tools or weapons of metal at all. \Ve have 

 no data whatever to enable us to determine how far 

 back into the past this culture reaches, but the 

 presence of beads of glass in the graves goes to show 

 that it continued to exist after the arrival of the 

 Spaniards. No traces of a more primitive culture 

 were met with." 



Similar cists are to be found on the slopes of 

 Popocatapet! in Mexico, Zaculen in Guatemala, 

 Chiriqui in Panama, and at Arayo in the Cauca 

 valley of Colombia. In outline and elegance, the 

 clay vessels of the Guetares are inferior to those 

 found in Chiriqui, but the objects in stone from the 

 two sources closely resemble each other. 



It is to be regretted that Mr. Hartman has not 

 given us his views as to the ethnological relations of 

 the Guetares to the other aboriginal tribes of Central 

 America. No doubt, in his travels subsequent to the 

 researches so elaborately detailed in his valuable 

 volume, he must have formed opinions of much im- 

 portance to the student of aboriginal America. Costa 

 Rica was a debatable ground between the Mexican 



I-IG. I.— Shallo*, iripod bowl found in Field II., Chircot. Hei-jnl, i2-8cni.; 

 Diameter, 22 cm. Fr »m *' Archcc^logical Researches in Costa Rica." 



in the vicinity, who know much of the region, said 

 that the whole Santa Clara district, occupying the 

 slopes of Turrialba, Irazii and Barba, and the 

 heavily forested lowlands to the north and east, are 

 dotted with ancient burial grounds. 



From the coast lands, Mr. Hartman ascended to 

 the highland plains near Cartago, one and a half 

 miles west of which town is the water divide, 

 5100 feet elevation, between the Atlantic and Pacific 

 Oceans. Cartago is about 4800 feet above sea-level, 

 and lies upon the southern slope of the volcano of 

 Irazu, the only one of Costa Rica which has ejected 

 compact lavas. In its eruptions of 1841 and 185 1 it 

 almost completely destroyed Cartago, which was 

 the former capital of Costa Rica. In its vicinity Mr. 

 Hartman uncovered numerous cists similar to those 

 of Mercedes, but they contained a greater variety of 

 potsherds and ornamental pottery. He made 

 especially rich collections at a spot called Chircot, 

 where lie observed that a favourite figure of the 

 ancient artists was a flute-playing god. In the 

 stone-bordered necropolis at this place he found 205 

 cists, many of them in three layers. In about thirty 

 there were skeletons, or fragments of skeletons, which 

 averaged five feet in length. The skulls were doli- 

 ■ hc.ocphalic, but most of the remains were too 



NO. 1846, VOL. 71] 



. of .Stone. Found i 

 ind, Mercedes. Fru 



race and the warlike Carib of the northern shore of 

 South .America. It may, perhaps, be conceded that 

 an offshoot of the highland people of Mexico pressed 

 south and cast from Chiapas into and through the 

 long strip of the Pacific coast occupied by the 

 Chorotegas or Mangues, followed the Pacific slope of 

 the Cordillera and the narrow belt of land between 

 Lake Nicaragua and the ocean, penetrated into 

 north-western Costa Rica, settled and helped the 

 Mangues to develop a considerable civilisation in the 

 Guanacaste and Nicoya districts, and in part subdued 

 all the mountainous area lying north and west of the 

 river Reventazon. The culture which was 

 characteristic of the region indicated was infinitely 

 superior to anything attained by the Guetares, for 

 the .Mangue-Ndhua people carried some of the arts, 

 such as pottery, sculpture, weaving, and tilling the 

 ground, to greater perfection than any of the tribes 

 occupying the territory between theirs and that of 

 the Chibchas of the plateau of Bogota. In their 

 graves are found examples of the ceramic art and 

 gold ornaments showint; taste in design superior to 

 any that the present civilised Indian of Costa Rica 

 can equal. Their graves produce beautiful specimens 

 of obsidian, greenstone, and finely wrought ne|)hrite 



