THE ANCIENT PERUVIANS. 101 



of the Indians that these edifices had been built by Amazons at a remote era, nor 

 are the Incas mentioned as having had any part in their construction.* 



" It is probable," says Humboldt, " that the edifices which are called in Peru 

 by the name of Inga-pilca^ or Buildings of the Inca, do not date further back than 

 the thirteenth century. Those at Vinaque and Tiaguanico were constructed at a 

 more remote period : so also were the walls of unbaked brick, which were made 

 by the ancient inhabitants of Quito. It is to be desired that some intelligent 

 traveller would visit the banks of the great lake Titicaca, the province of Collao, 

 and more especially the elevated plain of Tiaguanico, which is the centre of an 

 ancient civilisation in this region."! 



It will now be asked what evidence can be adduced to prove that the people, 

 whose remains we are considering, were the same with those who have left the 

 architectural monuments of Tiaguanico and Titicaca ? The fact is established by 

 the observations of Mr. Pentland, an intelligent English traveller, who has recently 

 visited the upper provinces of Peru. This gentleman states that in the vicinity 

 of Titicaca he has " discovered innumerable tombs, hundreds of which he entered 

 and examined. These monuments are of a grand species of design and architec- 

 ture, resembling Cyclopean remains, and not unworthy of the arts of ancient 

 Greece or Rome. They therefore betokened a high condition of civilisation; but 

 the most extraordinary fact belonging to them is their invariably containing the 

 mortal remains of a race of men, of all ages, from the earliest infancy to maturity 

 and old age, the formation of whose crania seems to prove that they are an extinct 

 race of natives who inhabited upper Peru above a thousand years ago, and diflfering 

 from any mortals now inhabiting our globe. The site is between the fourteenth 

 and nineteenth degrees of south latitude, and the skulls found (of which specimens 

 are both in London and Paris) are remarkable for their extreme extent behind 

 the occipital foramen; for two-thirds of the weight of the cerebral mass must have 

 been deposited in this wonderfully elongated posterior en amber: and as the bones 

 of the face were also much elongated, the general appearance must have been 

 rather that of some of the ape family than of human beings. In the tombs, as in 

 those of Egypt, parcels of grain were left beside the dead ; and it was another 



* Hist. Dec. Ill, Lib. IX, Cap. 1. 



t Monuments, I, p. 5. — See also Dr. M'Culloh, (Researches, p. 406,) who remarks, in confirma- 

 tion, "that a certain degree of demi-civilisation prevailed in the nations adjoining the Peruvian 

 empire, which was not derived from their communication with the latter.^' 

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