16 THE PRIMEVAL MONUMENTS OF PERU. 
I have only to add one word in respect to caverns. There 
are many of these in the serras of Peru, in which the mod- 
ern traveller is often glad to find refuge, as was the Indian 
voyager before him. But few of these however, seem to 
have been inhabited. Generally they appear to have been 
used as burial places, and abound in desiccated human bodies, 
human bones, objects of human art, and the bones of indige- 
nous animals, often cemented together with calcareous de- 
posits. Some of the many Peruvian traditions affirm that 
the ancient inhabitants of the country emerged from the 
limestone caverns in the frontier Amazonian valley of Pau- 
cartambo.* The best accepted perhaps of the Peruvian tradi- 
tions assigns to the Sun-born Manco Capac, his birth-place 
and early residence in a shallow cavern on thé island of 
Titicaca, out of which the sun rose to illuminate the earth, 
and which was regarded as the most sacred spot in the Inca 
Empire. That man should first seek shelter in caverns, in a 
cold and arid region like the plateau of Peru, where wood is 
scarce or unknown, is equally natural and probable; but 
the evidences of such a practice do not exist, or rather have 
not yet been discovered. 
That considerable aboriginal Peruvian tribes once lived in 
houses built on piles, or on floats, in the shallow waters of 
the Andean lakes, is not only probable but certain. The 
remnants of such a tribe, bearing the name of Antis, still 
live in this manner in the reedy lakes formed by the spread- 
ing out or overflow of the Rio Desaguadero, the outlet of 
Lake Titicaca. These people spoke and still speak a lan- 
* The old Jesuit, Arriaga, in his rare and valuable work Zztirpacion de la Idolatria 
del Peru (1621), tells us not only that the inhabitants of the coast of Peru reverenced 
the re their ancestors and also giants, but the buildings erected by 
them." He adds: * They reverence also their Pacarinas, or places of ancient residence, 
to the — of preferriug to live in them, wd; that they are built in lofty, 
rocky, arid places. only possibly to be reached, and even 
then ds difficulty, on foot.” n 
The word Pacarina, as given by Arriaga, is embodied jn that of Paucartambo, the 
name of one of the € r Amazo nian Valleys, running parallel to that of emp near 
Cuzco, whence, one of th f their civiliza- 
tion and em empire. The name is phare: a corruption of itus Pad to be born; d. ps 
dwelling or stopp 
ie a e e T ~ 
