7«/)'5, 1877] 



NATURE 



191 



PERU^ 



STUDYING in Mr. Squier's new work the records and 

 luins which attest the civilisation of Peru before the 

 Spanish Conquest, one finds oneself repeating the often- 

 asked question, Did these advanced arts and institutions 



arise out of native savagery, or were 



they at least developed under the guid- 

 ance of ideas imported from the Old 

 World ? Mr. Squier holds that they | 

 were indigenous, and his opinion (which 

 is that also of Mr. Markham) must have 

 great weight, not only from the minute 

 care with which he has examined the 

 ruins during his two years' exp'oration, 

 but from his familiarity with the Spanish 

 literature on the subject. Some readers, 

 however, like the present reviewer, while 

 admitting that much of the Peruvian 

 culture has such a stamp of pe;uliarity 

 that it must be home-made, may not 

 feel quite so certain of the whole being 

 absolutely free from foreign influence. 

 It is much to aflirm of a bronze age 

 people like the Peruvians (for particulars 

 and drawings of their somewhat special 

 types of bronze implements, see pp. 175, 

 579) that they invented this alloy inde- 

 pendently. For an e.xcellent case of 

 mingled native originality and similarity 

 to Old World types, attention may be 

 called to the stone-circles of Sillustani, 

 as exemplified by Fig. i, reproduced 

 from Mr. Squier (p. 3S4). He calls them 

 "sun-circles," which, however, is begging the question of 

 their as yet unproved purpose. At any rate there they 

 stand, circles of erect unhewn stones like the cromlechs 

 of Europe and Asia, but with a special feature in the sur- 

 rounding pavement or "platform" of well-fitted hewn 

 stones, with a gutter running all round the circle near the 

 inner edge. 



On the hill above are seen the ruins of 

 chulpas or burial-towers. Fig. 2 shows two of 

 these, the left-hand one being a beautiful ex- 

 ample of building in close- titling blocks of 

 hewn-stone, an art which had attained in Old 

 Peru to a perfection hardly reached elsewhere 

 in the world. This tower is thirty-nine feet 

 high, and widens as it rises from sixteen fett 

 at the base to nineteen feet at the spring of 

 the dome top. In a still larger chulpa there r 

 are hewn trachyte blocks as large as twelve 

 feet long on the curve of the face, by seven 

 feet high, and five feet deep. The stones, fit- 

 ting together face to face without mortar, are 

 imbedded within in the mass of the structure, 

 which is of rough stones laid in clay. Extra- 

 ordin;iry skill in masons' work is shown by 

 these blocks being not only cut in the sides 

 and outside curvature to a radius from the 

 centre of the monument, but in the gradual 

 swell of the structure as it widens out, as well 

 as the curve of the dome, being accurately taken 

 in each block (p. 382). The blocks were not 

 shaped after being put in position, as is proved 

 by numbers of them lying on the ground, per- 

 fectly cut to conform to their places in towers that were 

 never finished, so that they were hewn to plans in which 

 every dimension of the structures had been previously 

 fi.xed. Yet with all this skill there was not the mechanical 

 knowledge to provide anything like pulleys or cranes to 

 hoist the heavy blocks into their places. The inclined 



■ " Peru. Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas." 

 By E. George Sqviier. (London: Macmillan, 1 877. ) 



planes of earth and stones built up against the chulpas 

 still remain, up which the stones were moved, probably 

 with levers, and possibly with rollers also. Looking at 

 the woodcut, one sees a low opening cut through a block 

 at the base of the tower, just large enough to admit the 

 body of a man ; this leads into the circular burial 



■^, 



1^ 



Fi.,. 1.— Sun-Urcle, Sillustani. 



chaiTiber, vaulted with flat, over-lappirg stones. This 

 primitive arrangement of the " false arch," which reminds 

 one of those which children make with their bricks, is usual 

 in Peruvian as in Central American architecture. Yet, as if 

 to complicate the problem of architectural history in 

 Ameiica, there are exceptional cases where, as at Pachaca- 

 mac,truearchesofsun-t'riedbricksarestilltobeseen (p. 71). 



(if the nioic usuil Pciuvian masonr), where the blocks, 

 accurately faced, are kept in position by their mere bear- 

 ing on one another, without cement or moitar of any 

 kind. Fig. 3 presents a specimen. It is interesting for other 

 reasons, being one of the Ynti-huatana, or "sun-) ears," 

 by which the solar year was determined. The following pas- 

 sage from Garcilaso de la Vega's " Royal Commentaries 

 of the Yncas " seems to describe structures of this kind : — 



