100 CRANIA AMERICANA. 



must have been vastly larger than w^e now^ see them. Before I proceed to a 

 further account of Tiaguanico, I must remark that this monument is the most 

 ancient in Peru : for it is supposed that some of these structures were built long 

 before the dominion of the Incas^ and I have heard the Indians affirm that these 

 sovereigns constructed their great buildings in Cuzco after the plan of the w^alls of 

 Tiaguanico, and they add that the first Incas w^ere accustomed to hold their court 

 in this place. Another very curious fact is, that in the greater part of this territory 

 there are no quarries nor rocks w^hence the materials for these structures could 

 have been derived. I asked the natives, in the presence of Juan de Varagas, (vs^ho 

 commands here,) if these edifices w^ere built in the time of the Incas ? But they 

 laughed at the question, repeating what I have already stated, adding that they did 

 not know who built them, but that they had a tradition of their ancestors that 

 these structures appeared in a single night as we now see them."* 



These statements, and many others to the same purpose, are confirmed by 

 the Vicar-general, Diego de Alcobaza, who also visited Tiaguanico, and has left 

 an account of the architectural wonders he saw there.f 



It will be observed by the preceding narrative, that tradition among the 

 Peruvians attributed these cyclopean structures to an era long antecedent to the 

 appearance of the Incas, and this tradition is sustained by history ; for the city of 

 Tiaguanico did not fall into the hands of the Incas until the reign of Mayta 

 Yupanque, the fourth king, at which period the edifices in question must have 

 been in existence for centuries, and were already in a state of ruin and decay. 

 Garcilaso de la Vega, himself of the royal Peruvian family, admits that these ruins 

 existed at the time the country was conquered by his ancestors ;t and a Peruvian 

 author, two centuries and a half nearer our own time, states that Tiaguanico is 

 indisputably anterior to the monarchy of the Incas, and speaks, as if from personal 

 observation, of a gigantic pyramid and colossal human figures cut from solid rock, 

 indicative of the power and genius of a great nation. § The first invasion of the 

 Incas was followed by the erection of some temples to enforce the new religion, 

 but their only great architectural monument in these parts, the Temple of the 

 Sun on the island in Titicaca, was not built until the reign of Tapac Yupanque, 

 the tenth Inca, early in the fifteenth century. Herrera also alludes to a tradition 



* Pedro de Cieca, Chronica del Peru, Cap. 105. ISmo. Anvers, 1554.— See also Acosta, Hist, 

 de las Indias, Lib. VI, Cap. XIV. 



t Garcilaso de la Vega, Commentarios, Lib. Ill, Cap. 1. 



t Idem. Loco citato. § Mercurio Peruano, Lima, 1791. 



