380 SOUTH AMERICA— THE ANDES EEGIONS. 



The churches of all the native villages have been to a large extent built of 

 materials taken from the scattered remains of the old Aymara city, and even the 

 cathedral of La Paz has been brought, so to say, block by block, from this vast 

 quarry. The only tolerably well preserved monument of Tiahuanaco consists of a 

 sort of pylon, the so-called " Gateway of the Sun," a title suggested by a 

 remarkable central figure carved in intaglio and surrounded by undeciphered 

 signs or symbolic sculptures. On this astounding monument, which consists of a 

 single block weighing about 150 tons, are seen images of owls, snakes and other 

 ornaments, bearing a certain resemblance, even in the details, to the carvings of 

 Palenque and Ococingo, and certainly belonging to a cult distinct from, and 

 anterior to, that of the Incas. Some of the statues have been preserved and set 

 up outside the modern church. A colossal head forming the capital of a column is 

 also still seen half-way between Tiahuanaco and La Paz ; this was probably part of 

 an enormous human figure, which had to be abandoned after all efforts had failed 

 to transport it to the Spanish city. The local Indians consider this curious block 

 as a diabolical object, and when passing throw a handful of dust or mud in its 

 face, in order to conjure its evil eye. 



The origin of these remains has been much discussed ; but Stiibel, who has 

 most carefully examined them on the spot, and continued their study in Europe 

 jointly with Herr Uhle, argues convincingly that they can be assigned neither 

 to the Toltecs of North and Central America, nor to the Incas, by whom they 

 were more probably destroyed than erected, but must be attributed to the 

 Aymaras themselves, whose culture, if ruder, is also more primitive than that 

 of the Quichuas. This culture was characterised especially by megalithic 

 structures, which are more numerous in their domain than elsewhere in America. 

 In pre-Inca times Tiahuanaco itself appears to have been one of the two 

 distinct religious centres of Peru (using the word in its broadest sense), the other 

 being Paccaritambo, some 16 or 18 miles from the Inca capital, Cuzco. 



Tiahuanaco was specially dedicated to the worship of Yiracocha, tutelar 

 deity of the Aymaras, while Paccaritambo was the seat of the Quichua sun- 

 worshippers. But when the sway of the Incas was spread over the whole 

 of the middle Andean plateau (Peru and Bolivia), there was no longer room 

 for two rival religious centres ; and the political subjection of the Aymaras to 

 the Quichuas was followed by the inevitable suppression of the Yiracocha cult 

 at Tiahuanaco by the Incas, shortly before the suppression of the Incas them- 

 selves by the Conquistadores. Such appear briefly to have been the politico- 

 religious relations of the two great Peruvian nations (Quichuas and Aymaras) in 

 pre-Columbian times, though these relations have been strangely obscured by 

 Garcilaso de la Vega, who, because of his Inca descent, has been blindly followed 

 by nearly all writers on Peruvian subjects down to the appearance of Stiibel and 

 LThle's great work.* 



* This work, Die Ruinenstaette von Tiahuanaco im Horhlande des jilten Peru, &c., von A. Stiibel und 

 M. Uhle, Breslau, 1893, appeared too late to be consulted by M. Reclus, who is consequently not 

 responsible for the treatment of the Tiahuanaco ruins and associated questions in the English 

 edition. — Ed. 



