I. Bowman — A Buried Wall at Cuzco. 507 



hundred years as the time required to produce the last few 

 feet of the alluvial fringe, we should have to assume a much 

 longer time for the whole fringe to form. We have already 

 seen that the wall lies buried in gravel, that it was not set into 

 gravel, but that gravel was built against it and that it there- 

 fore antedates the alluvial fringe or at least the upper fifteen 

 or twenty feet of it. 



Finally, we shall consider the fact that the alluvial fringe is 

 being dissected and that it has for some time been undergoing 

 dissection. It follows that to the time required to form the 

 fringe must be added the time required to dissect it to its 

 present condition in order to arrive at a conclusion as to the 

 age of the wall buried in the alluvium. Here we have as yet 

 no reliable criteria. Erosion is in progress now and is active. 

 I think geologists would in general agree that the work of dis- 

 section in the lowest alluvial level would require at least 

 several hundred years. If we add these hundreds to the hun- 

 dreds required to form the upper part of the fringe, we shall 

 carry the process backward at least to the time of the Spanish 

 Conquest. I am strongly inclined to believe that when the ash 

 beds are studied in detail the lowermost beds will represent a 

 period decidedly earlier. If the upper layers represent hun- 

 dreds of years, the thick and more extensive lower layers that 

 surround the wall and overtop it represent thousands. Accord- 

 ing to the chronology of Markham, the first (pre-Inca) king of 

 which legends take note reigned about 900 B. C, or roughly, 

 3000 years ago. If the wall were built 2000 B. C, or even 

 4000 B. C, that is to say, from 4000 to 6000 years ago, it 

 would still fall within the period that the gravels appear to 

 represent, and without the period covered by the hundred 

 kings of legend. Not only is the wall pre-Inca ; the possibil- 

 ity exists that it may antedate the period in which ruled the 

 legendary pre-Inca kings. 



Extensive excavation about Cuzco would no doubt reveal 

 the older walls in relations that would establish their age in a 

 clearer manner than in the present case. The fact that the 

 better built walls, definitely known to belong to the Inca 

 period, stand upon an alluvial terrace, never beneath or in the 

 terrace material, while, as in the case of the buried wall 

 described here, some of the cruder walls do stand buried in the 

 alluvium, seems to indicate a marked difference in their ages, 

 the Incas building after the last period of alluviation and 

 before the present period of dissection set in. 



This conclusion is supported by at least one fact easily gath- 

 ered from the older buildings of Cuzco. It is noteworthy that 

 the buildings in some cases consist of an upper and a lower 

 section of different stone cut in a different manner. The 



