NOTE.—All pictures in this Mentor are reproduced by permission of the National Geographic Society and the South American Exploration Fund of Yale University, under whose auspices the Peruvian Expeditions directed by Dr. Hiram Bingham have taken place.
NOTE ON PRONUNCIATION.—The letter “ä” with two dots above is pronounced as in “father”; the “ā” with a horizontal line above is pronounced as in “ray.”
Entered as second-class matter March 10, 1913, at the postoffice at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1918, by The Mentor Association, Inc.
There is probably no part of the world that stimulates more curiosity in an archeologist or even in a casual traveler than that part of South America which was once inhabited by the Incas of Peru. Tiahuanaco’s (tee-ä-wane-ä´-ko) finely carved gateway and its ponderous stone platforms, Sacsahuaman’s (saks-ä-wa´-män) gigantic walls, Ollantaytambo’s (ol-yän-tie-tam´-bo) monolithic fortress, and Machu Picchu’s (mä´-choo peek´-choo) picturesque grandeur fill one with an admiration for their builders which is only equaled by the sorrow that today, over three centuries after the advent of Pizarro (pee-sä´-ro) and his conquistadores (con-kees-tä-do´-rays), we can do little more than make conjectures concerning the ancient Peruvians.
RUINS OF PATALLACTA—A Typical Inca Temple
And, furthermore, it is doubtful if we can ever go very far in solving the problem of man in the Andes. Although they made great progress in architecture, agriculture, engineering, and the science of government, the ancient Peruvians did not achieve the art of writing, nor did they even reach the stage of hieroglyphics. Their records were kept on quipus (kee-poos), variously colored strings with many different kinds of knots. These seem, however, to have been used only for accounting purposes. Thus far, the quipus in possession of our archeologists have been of no particular aid in deciphering the history of their makers. Accordingly, what we know of the Incas consists of traditions gathered together by early Spaniards, and the work of present-day students who, by modern archeological methods, are slowly bringing some light to bear on this apparently insolvable problem.
PISAC