T EL d 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
Vol. IV. — MARCH, 1870.— No. 1. 
ec GG ($e rex. 
THE PRIMEVAL MONUMENTS OF PERU COM- 
ARED WITH THOSE IN OTHER 
PARTS OF THE WORLD. 
BY E. G. SQUIER, M.A.* 
THERE is a class of stone structures in Peru belonging to 
what is regarded through the world as the earliest monu- 
mental period, coincident in style and character with the 
cromlechs, dolmens, and “Sun” or “Druidical” circles, so 
called, of Scandinavia, the British Islands, France, and 
Northern and Central Asia. The existence of such remains 
in Peru has not, I believe, been hitherto mentioned by any 
traveller in that country. They are not very numerous, at 
least not in the parts of Peru traversed by me, but their 
scarcity is probably in great part due to circumstances and 
causes to which I shall refer further on, and is by no means 
inconsistent with the supposition that they formerly existed 
in considerable, if not very great numbers. 
I think students will attach importance to these remains as 
indicating the existence at one time or another in Peru of a 
population identical in degree and stage of development with 
the people who raised corresponding lithic and megalithic 
*Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London; Honorary Fellow of the Anthro- 
pological Societies of London and Paris; Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries 
of Copenhagen, etc., etc. 
Entered according to Act of Co in the year 1870, by the PEABODY ACADEMY OF 
SCIENCE. in the Clerks Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts, 
AMER. NATURALIST, VOL. Iv. 1 (1) 
