Page:The American Indian.djvu/331

Rh here. The celebrated Walam Olum of the Delaware Indians gives us but the vaguest scraps of chronology, and little more can be said of the Popol Vuh manuscript for the Quiché of Guatemala and the annals of their neighbors the Cakchiquel. Hence, for historical chronologies that correlate with dated time we must look chiefly to Mexico and Central America. Here lies one of our most important problems, for on its solution depends our proper perspective of New World culture.

Though in the projection of the above chronologies documentary material of some kind gave the points of departure and the essential checks, the general method employed is, after all, about equally applicable to non-document producing cultures, for the period of discovery cross-sectioned all alike. This gives us a definite chronological point of regard from which we can work backwards. The most direct way of projecting relative chronologies is by the examination of stratified culture remains, as exemplified in the results of Paleolithic research in Europe. There are, however, many phases of culture that have no indestructible counterparts, or by-products, and so exist only in the aboriginal cultures as cross-sectioned by the discovery of the New World. Even here it is possible to discover chronological relations if one but resort to careful historical analysis. Unfortunately for us but little progress has been made in either of these groups of problems.

Perhaps the best known stratigraphic discoveries are those of Uhle at Pachacamac, Peru, where he found four distinct types of pottery so superimposed as to make their chronology clear. These are as follows:—

Subsequent analysis of the data for other parts of Peru shows that at the time the Tiahuanaco type held sway in Pachacamac, the ancient cities of Tiahuanaco, Nasca, and Trujillo were the leading culture centers and were