The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-04-03
BRINGS BACK 34OO SKULLSFROM PERU Smithsonian Man Describes
 the Cemeteries RELICS OF THE PAST One Cemetery Found Containing Nothing But Women, All of
 Whom Met Death By
 Strangulation
RELICS OF THE PAST

| Washington, April 2.-(Special.)-Dr. l Ales Hrdlicka of the United States Ma
 tional museum, who made extensive ex- plorations among the ancient cities of
 Peru last summer and brought back with
 him 3i0O skulls and thousands of human | bones gathered from nearly 40 ancient l cemeteries. has made a preliminary re-
 port to the Smithsonian institution of
 the results of his Investigations.
 l He announces that with this material, together with the collections from Ar
 con and other localities of Peru already available 1t will be possible now to learn definitely the, physical characteristics of l the population of the Peruvian coast for
 a distance of over 400 miles. and to estab-
 fish firm foundation for anthropological
 comparisons for the rest of the country. His elections proceed mainly from the
 ancient sacred city of Pachacamac, and from the once powerful empire of the Chimu. The results of the work will be | far-reaching, though.
 "It is not yet possible" says Dr. Hrd- l licka in his report, ito speak of the full scientific value of the collection. How ever, this is not readily overestimated. "A number of the more important points which presented themselves during the preliminary work in the Pachacamac ruins are as follows.
 Ut was seen first of all that the re- mains here were derived partly from mummies, which were especially numer- ous in the neighborhood of the Temple of
 the great deity of Pachacamac, and in
 part from simple burials; also that in rare
 instances cremation had been practiced
 "The mumnies were not only artificial
 as to their exterior, but there appeared evidence that the bodies themselves, or at least some of their parts, had been specially treated; thus number of skulls, mostly such as were damaged by 1 wounds, were found filled with cotton. All the larger cemeteries about the extensive ruins contained burials of males females and even children, but the | last were nowhere very numerous and were in a decided minority near the tenn pies. In one cemetery all persons in tered were women and none of these had
 died natural death but were victims of stangulation. All were adults and one of
 the skulls showed gray hair It is prob aDle that the NlcllIHS were stldllSltu as sacrifices to the deity of the temple
 "The people buried at Pachacamac were in general of moderate stature and me- dium physical development, with shorter
 and weaker individuals not infrequent." The investigation in the cemeteries in the valley of Chicama, the rgion of the Chimu, emphasized the relative scarcity
 of the remains of children. This is not
 due to the earlier decay of children's bones, for where such were found they
 were in just as good condition as those of the adults. It indicates either a scarcity
 of children, in Dr. Hrdlicka's opinion,
 separated interments, or else a low in- fant mortality
 The majority of the people in this val lev were found to have been of the same type exactly as those of the much more southern region of Pachacamac but 1t was also evident the valley of Chicama
 was peopled in the course of time by more
 than one tribe of ntives, though all or
 nearly all were of the same stock "Pachacamac was a famous religious center, comparable to the Egyptian | Thebes or the Mohammedan Mecca" says Dr. Hrdlicka Tt originally contained | the shrine of the creator god, Pachaca- mac to which focked pilgrims coming all parts of Peru, 300 leagues or more, 1 end later after conquest of the place by ! the Peruvians of the Highlands, it also 1 had a famous temple of the Sun. It was at the same time a political center, the | seat of a chief who ruled over the neigh
 boring populous valleys. It's decline dates l from the entrance of the Spaniards in | l533 and the destruction by them of the 1 venerated statue of Pachacamac. In the
 sixteenth century the Augustnian monks 1 tN 4ln f,, 1 the first part of the seventeenth century 1 the old place was already desolate pile of ruins.
 "The inhabitants disappeared, leaving | scarcely trace in history, but they left l behind a vast number of graves. It is estimated the total number of burials | within and about the ruins was between l 60 GOO and SO coo. There are six or more l aggregations of graves which may be re- garded as cemeteries, but burials often 1 two deep existed apparently in every available part of the ground, within the l temples, about and even within the dwell | ngs.
 | "These cemeteries, with the exception of one smaller one. have been for years the | prey of the peons, engaged in sarching for | pottery and precious metals, which are | carried to Lima for sale. The result is | the destruction of thousands of mummy | bundles, and often the mummies them- selves, scattering of the bones, damage l to the walls and foundations and destruc-
 ton or abandonment of everything that 1 could not be sold.
 "The skulls, bones, wrappings, damaged | fabrics, broken jars, etc., are left to litter the surface of the sands or are but part | ly buried by the earth thrown out from l the excavations. When 1 arrived the place looked like a yeritabe Golgotha, or | some great barbaric battlefield, with l skulls and bones whitening the ground | and ruins in every direction
 '1n one sense these conditions. how ever they may be deprecated, proved of great service. giving an invaluable oppor- l tunity for investigation and collection of | skeletal material It made possible the examination on the spot of thousands of individual skulls, a good proportion of which, however. were not removed be-
 cause of the damage done by the shovel | of the diggers or the elements.
 Prom an archaeological point of view, the exploration brought out with special force the fact that the scientific value of such Peruvian collections of pottery an other antiquities as have been made or are being made by the untrained loca
 collectors is very small. The peons | gather indiscriminately what is salable 1 and dispose of it now to this buyer and now to another. These buyers general
 ly, do not attempt in the least any typo
 or locality identification. In consequence
 every large collection that has been sola | from Peru by such collectors represents
 a heterogeneous mass of articles pro
 ceeding from different epochs and eve.
 djfferent peoples and what it can amount
 to scientifically under such circumstances
 can easily be imagined. If ancient Pert |. is to ha known properly, 1t will be neces