Indians of Central America -- Nicaragua -- Antiquities; Nicaragua -- Antiquities
Relief representing a male figure with the face of a skull. It was of
much rougher workmanship than the reliefs before described. The face
was formed only by an evenly curved, broadly oval elevation, with two
circular cavities to mark the eyes, an irregularly triangular one for
the nose, and a linear one for the mouth. The chest was evenly rounded,
the arms only indicated by two round bands along the breast, ending
abruptly with five narrow, round staves, placed at right angles to the
arms, and designed to represent the fingers. The lower part of the
slab with the legs was lost. Above the head were two sugar-loaf-shaped
elevations, and above these a third one with parallel sides, downwards
rounded. The slab had square incisions at the same height with the neck
and the hands. The length of the figure from the crown of the head to
the beginning of the hip was 82 cm. The length of the face was 32 cm.;
its breadth 20 cm. The breadth across the shoulders was 24 cm.
* * * * *
Several fragments of broken statues were found on the plateau, but so
shattered, disfigured, and intermixed with one another, that it would
have taken much time and patience to reconstruct them. Several of the
statues, mentioned by SQUIER as being in comparatively good condition,
for inst. his nos. 3, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, and 18 were no more to be
found in the place. Some of these have possibly been destroyed by human
violence or by the effects of the climate during the thirty years
between our visits, others may have been carried off to be deposited in
museums or to form the hearth-stone of some Indian rancho.
In general, the statues of this locality chiefly remind of the last
described group of statues at _Punta del Sapote_. Perhaps, from an
artistic point of view, they must be considered as inferior even to
these. None of the statues at _Punta de las Figuras_ can be compared as
a work of art, to the figures of the mound 1 at Punta del Sapote.
The fact that in most of the statues, found in Zapatera, the organs of
generation were represented, and often more conspicuous than natural,
gives corroboration to the suggestion of SQUIER that a phallic worship
or a worship of the reciprocal principles existed among the Niquirans.
[Illustration]
III
ROCK-CARVINGS IN THE ISLAND OF CEIBA.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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