I have now only to add, that if this sort of criticism—such as it is—has not been shown to be applicable to the Mexican astronomy and the Mexican chronology, it is only because the magnitude of the subject excludes it from the present volume.
b. When we separate the Peruvians from the rest of the Americans, on the score of a different physical conformation, we take something less than the whole nation, i. e. only a particular section of it. How this happens is explained by the following statements:—
1. In the parts about the Lake Titicaca, within the Aymara area, are found, along with vast stone ruins and other remarkable relics of an early age, several burial places of the ancient inhabitants; the skulls of which are flattened in front, behind, or laterally, as the case may be, with the suture of the cranium obliterated.
2. The present inhabitants of this area are not in the habit of flattening the skull.
3. The old race of the flattened skulls is the race which appears to have been the executors of the oldest portion of the Peruvian architectural antiquities, and as such, civilised or semi-civilised.
4. The present Aymaras exhibit no traces of being the descendants of a people more civilised than themselves.
These facts are generally admitted. It is also, perhaps, as generally admitted that, taken by themselves, they are not sufficient to disconnect what may be called the old Peruvians of Titicaca, from the modern Aymaras; since civilisation may become retrograde, and the habit of flattening skulls, like any other habit, may be abandoned.
But what if the flatness of the old Titicacan skulls be not artificial, but natural? In this case the Aymaras are anything but the descendants of the civilised flat-head ancestors in question, and the ancient stock itself is extinct—extinct without congeners, and without posterity.
This is no more than what follows from the position that the cranial depression is natural. On the other hand, if artificial, it falls to the ground.
Now, notwithstanding the very high authorities on the other side, I am not prepared to admit the necessity of a skull having been flattened in utero and in the way of normal development, simply and solely because the traces of artificial manipulation are not discoverable. All that any facts of the kind prove, is that Art can imitate Nature most skilfully.