Page:The Incas of Peru.djvu/62

36 In both the pervading idea is of a figure of the Deity grasping a sceptre in each hand. The bands or rays terminating with heads or with circles and volutes are the same in both. At Tiahuanacu all the parts of the carving appear to have a symbolical meaning. The artist avoided all curves, preferring straight lines and correctly drawn rectangles. Everything seems to have an intention or a meaning. In the Chavin stone the conception is more confused, and there is much that is more ornate, but apparently conventional and unmeaning.

The two compositions, it may be concluded, are the work of the same people, with the same cult, the same art, and the same traditions, but with an interval of perhaps a century or two between them. There must once have been other stones of the same character. One was probably at Cacha, another at Cuzco, belonging to the same megalithic age. If they had not been destroyed, we could trace the transition from the earlier and simpler style, full of meaning, at Tiahuanacu, to the more elaborate and corrupt work on the Chavin stone.

Guided by the existence of megalithic ruins and by the carved stones, we are led to the tentative conclusion that the ancient empire extended its sway over the Andean regions from an unknown distance south of Tucuman to Chachapoyas, with Tiahuanacu (for want of the real name) as its centre of rule and of thought.