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
in which the bones were found may be faced by younger gravel and that
the bones were found in a gravel veneer deposited during later periods
of partial valley filling, ... although it still seems very unlikely."
Reports of glacial man in America have come from places as widely
separated as California and Argentina. Careful investigation, however,
has always thrown doubt on any great age being certainly attributable
to any human remains. In view of the fragmentary character of the
skeletal evidence, the fact that no proof of great antiquity could
be drawn from the characters of the human skeletal parts, and the
suggestion made by Dr. Bowman of the possibility that the gravels
which contained the bones might be of a later origin than he thought,
we determined to make further and more complete investigations in
1912. It was most desirable to clear up all doubts and dissolve all
skepticism. I felt, perhaps mistakenly, that while a further study
of the geology of the Cuzco Basin undoubtedly might lead Dr. Bowman
to reverse his opinion, as was expected by some geologists, if
it should lead him to confirm his original conclusions the same
skeptics would be likely to continue their skepticism and say he
was trying to bolster up his own previous opinions. Accordingly, I
believed it preferable to take another geologist, whose independent
testimony would give great weight to those conclusions should he
find them confirmed by an exhaustive geological study of the Huatanay
Valley. I asked Dr. Bowman's colleague, Professor Gregory, to make the
necessary studies. At his request a very careful map of the Huatanay
Valley was prepared under the direction of Chief Topographer Albert
H. Bumstead. Dr. Eaton, who had had no opportunity of seeing Peru,
was invited to accompany us and make a study of the bones of modern
Peruvian cattle as well as of any other skeletal remains which might
be found.
Furthermore, it seemed important to me to dig a tunnel into the
Ayahuaycco hillside at the exact point from which we took the bones
in 1911. So I asked Mr. K. C. Heald, whose engineering training had
been in Colorado, to superintend it. Mr. Heald dug a tunnel eleven
feet long, with a cross-section four and a half by three feet, into
the solid mass of gravel. He expected to have to use timbering, but
so firmly packed was the gravel that this was not necessary. No bones
or artifacts were found--nothing but coarse gravel, uniform in texture
and containing no unmistakable evidences of stratification. Apparently
the bones had been in a land slip on the edge of an older, compact
gravel mass.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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