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PERUVIAN ART 
Fig. 2. The central figure on the monolithic gateway at Tiahuanaco 
is represented as wearing a belt with this form of puma head on either 
end of it. A great number of variants of this head are common to Tia- 
huanaco art and wherever its influence extended. 
Figs. 34 are plainly derived from the preceding figure. Fig. 3, from 
Pachacamac, has the ring nose. Fig. 4, from Nazca, has a step-form 
nose in place of the ring. There is a close similarity in the outlines of 
these figures. We shall find other variations on this head in Figs. 7, 
9, and 15. 
Figs. 5-6. These two figures will show, to a person who has no 
knowledge of primitive art, one way in which animal figures degenerate. 
It would be very excusable if such a person did not recognize Fig. 6 as 
a great cat. In fact, a positive identification could not be made by 
anyone who had not seen the same form of the animal before the degen- 
eration had proceeded to the extent shown here. Now, looking at Fig. 5, 
we recognize that it shows the same animal in a more realistic form. It 
is still highly conventionalized, but the presence of the humped-up back, 
a characteristic of the cat family, and the tail, both omitted in Fig. 6, 
clearly identify it. To identify many highly conventionalized repre- 
sentations of animals in any primitive art, one must be long associated 
with large collections, which are seldom to be found except in museums. 
Only in this way can he become familiar with the peculiar art of a primi- 
tive people. He sees the animal forms represented with considerable 
truth to nature, and also a long succession of figures where, as it were, 
the original form is gradually fading away, until the degeneration has 
run its full course and left little more than a geometrical figure. 
Figs. 7-8. The Peruvians had a fondness for combining a number 
of animal heads in a design. Sometimes heads of the same animal, but 
often of two or more different kinds, were thus combined. Fig. 7 shows 
two puma heads joined by a curved band. The design is painted on a 
pottery vessel from Pachacamac. On account of the form of the band 
that connects the heads, this figure has sometimes been mistaken for a 
representation of a serpent, but a comparison of one of the heads with 
the four puma heads on the line above will show its true character. 
Fig. 8, on a web from Ancon, has the typical cat heads connected by an 
angular band. 
Fig. 9 shows part of a human face engraved on a piece of a stone 
vessel from Tiahuanaco. One eye is represented with the facial decora- 
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