56 MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA 
for the temple was possibly developed towards the end 
of the Archaic Period. It would be interesting to 
determine whether adobe moulded into bricks was 
known at this time, as it was at a later time in the same 
region, or whether walls were built up out of fresh mud 
possibly reinforced by slabs of stone. 
Extensions of the Archaic Horizon. The 
curious objects of ceramic art that we have found deeply 
buried under the débris of higher civilizations in the 
Valley of Mexico can be traced practically without 
change in form to Nicaragua. ‘They are encountered 
for the most part in arid and open country, and since 
we have every reason to believe that the earliest agri- 
culture was developed under irrigation, it is but natural 
to find the use of agriculture spreading first into other 
arid regions. 
In the Isthmian region (Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and 
Panama) many figurines of archaic type are found, and 
besides there are fine series of figurines that are obvi- 
ously developed from the archaic. Still further south 
and east in Colombia and Venezuela the typical art of 
the archaic horizon again appears in almost pure form, 
although local developments are also to be noted. 
Everywhere the remains are most plentiful in arid 
regions. It now seems that the trail of this ancient 
pottery art, marking the first dissemination of agricul- 
ture, can be traced across the northern part of South 
America to the mouth of the Amazon and southward 
along the Andes to the coastal regions of Peru. It is 
surely significant that figurines from the Island of 
Marajo near Para, Brazil, have fundamental similarities 
to those from Venezuela and Central America and that a 
stratification of human remains at Ancon, Peru, as 
explained by Dr. Max Uhle, shows plastic art in clay 
