Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of PeruBingham, Hiram
History
Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of Peru
Bingham, Hiram
Incas; Peru -- Antiquities; Peru -- Description and travel
Shortly afterwards we descended to the Rio Grande Valley at Callanga,
where we pitched our camps among the most extensive ruins that
I have seen in the coastal desert. They covered an area of one
hundred acres, the houses being crowded closely together. It gave
one a strange sensation to find such a very large metropolis in what
is now a desolate region. The general appearance of Callanga was
strikingly reminiscent of some of the large groups of ruins in our
own Southwest. Nothing about it indicated Inca origin. There were
no terraces in the vicinity. It is difficult to imagine what such a
large population could have done here, or how they lived. The walls
were of compact cobblestones, rough-laid and stuccoed with adobe and
sand. Most of the stucco had come off. Some of the houses had seats,
or small sleeping-platforms, built up at one end. Others contained
two or three small cells, possibly storerooms, with neither doors
nor windows. We found a number of burial cists--some square, others
rounded--lined with small cobblestones. In one house, at the foot of
"cellar stairs" we found a subterranean room, or tomb. The entrance
to it was covered with a single stone lintel. In examining this
tomb Mr. Tucker had a narrow escape from being bitten by a boba,
a venomous snake, nearly three feet in length, with vicious mouth,
long fangs like a rattlesnake, and a strikingly mottled skin. At one
place there was a low pyramid less than ten feet in height. To its
top led a flight of rude stone steps.
Among the ruins we found a number of broken stone dishes, rudely
carved out of soft, highly porous, scoriaceous lava. The dishes must
have been hard to keep clean! We also found a small stone mortar,
probably used for grinding paint; a broken stone war club; and a
broken compact stone mortar and pestle possibly used for grinding
corn. Two stones, a foot and a half long, roughly rounded, with
a shallow groove across the middle of the flatter sides, resembled
sinkers used by fishermen to hold down large nets, although ten times
larger than any I had ever seen used. Perhaps they were to tie down
roofs in a gale. There were a few potsherds lying on the surface of
the ground, so weathered as to have lost whatever decoration they once
had. We did no excavating. Callanga offers an interesting field for
archeological investigation. Unfortunately, we had heard nothing of
it previously, came upon it unexpectedly, and had but little time to
give it. After the first night camp in the midst of the dead city we
made the discovery that although it seemed to be entirely deserted, it
was, as a matter of fact, well populated! I was reminded of Professor
T. D. Seymour's story of his studies in the ruins of ancient Greece. We
wondered what the fleas live on ordinarily.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account