THE 



AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 



Art. XXVI. — The Discovery of Pre-IIistorio Human 

 Remains near Cuzco, Peru ; by Hiram Bingham, Director 

 of the Yale Peruvian Expedition. (With Plates I and II.) 



The Yale Peruvian Expedition was organized to do archaeo- 

 logical, geographical, geological, and topographical reconnais- 

 sance. We spent the first part of July, 1911, in and about 

 Cuzco. On the morning of July 6, while walking up a gulch 

 called Ayahuaycco quebrada west of Cuzco (fig. 1), in company 

 with Professor Harry W. Foote, the collector-naturalist of the 

 Expedition, and Dr. William O. Erving, our surgeon, I noticed 

 a few bones and several pieces of pottery interstratified with 

 the gravel bank of the gulch and apparently exposed by recent 

 erosion. This led me to examine both sides of the gulch very 

 carefully. A hundred yards above the point where the first 

 bones were noticed we found that erosion had cut through an 

 ancient ash-heap containing a large number of fragments of 

 bones and pottery. Still farther up the gulch and on the side 

 toward Cuzco I discovered a section of stone wall built of 

 roughly finished stones more or less carefully fitted together 

 (fig. 2). At first sight this wall appeared to have been built to 

 prevent further washing away of that side of the gulch. Then 

 I noticed that above the wall and flush with its surface the bank 

 appeared to consist of stratified material, indicating that per- 

 haps the wall antedated the gravel deposits. 



Fifty feet up the quebrada another portion of -wall appeared. 

 Between this and the section first seen the gravel bank some- 

 what protruded. On top of the bank was a cultivated field. 

 In order to see whether the wall extended behind this gravel 

 bank, under the field, and whether the two portions were con- 

 tinuous, I excavated and found, after half an hour's work on 

 the compact gravel, that there was more wall behind the 



Am. Jour. Sci.— Fourth Series, Vol. XXXIII, No. 196.— April, 1912. 

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