14 THE PRIMEVAL MONUMENTS OF PERU. 
and on parallel lines. Here we find quadrangles defined by 
huge, unhewn stones, worn and frayed by time, and having 
every evidence of highest antiquity, by the side of other 
squares of similar plan, but defined by massive stones cut 
with much elaboration, as if they were the work of later 
generations, better acquainted with the use of tools fit for 
cutting stones, who nevertheless retained the notions of their 
ancestors, bringing only greater skill to the construction of 
their monuments. The megalithie remains of Tiahuanaco 
rank second in interest to none in the world. 
Fig. 9 is of a singular monument, in the ancient town 
of Chicuito, once the most important in the Collao. It is 
in the form of a rectangle, sixty-five feet on each side, 
and consists of a series of large, roughly worked blocks of 
stone, placed closely side by side on a platform, or rather on 
a foundation of stones, sunk in the ground, and projecting 
fourteen inches outward all around. The entrance is from 
the east, between two blocks of stones, higher than the rest. 
This may be taken as a type of an advanced class of mega- 
lithic monuments by no means uncommon in the highlands 
of Peru. The features I seek to illustrate would be made 
more apparent by a greater number of views, plans, and sec- 
tions than I am now able to present, as may be inferred from 
the few accompanying this paper. When they shall come to 
be fully illustrated, I think all students will coincide with me 
in my already matured opinion that there exist in Peru and 
Bolivia, high up among the snowy Andes, the oldest forms 
of monuments, sepulchral and otherwise, known to mankind, 
exact counterparts in character of those of the “old world,” 
having a common design, illustrating similar conceptions, 
and all of them the work of the same peoples found in occu- 
pation of the country at the time of the Conquest, and whose 
later monuments are mainly if not wholly the developed 
forms of those raised by their ancestors, and which seem to 
have been the spontaneous productions of the primitive man 
in all parts of the world, and not necessarily nor even prob- 
ably derivative. 
