The Mythology of All Races-Volume XI Latin-American

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ... no means certain that the political conditions which the Spaniards used to advantage might not, if left to themselves, have disrupted the great empire. There is reason to think that such a rupture had occurred at least once before in the history of Andean civilization. The list of more than a hundred Peruvian kings given by the Licentiate Fernando Montesinos (writing about 1650) was formerly viewed with much distrust, chiefly for the reason that the kings of the pre-Inca dynasties recorded by Montesinos are almost without exception unnamed by earlier and prime authorities on Peruvian history (including Garcilasso de la Vega and Cieza de Leon). Recent discoveries, however, both scholarly and archaeological, have brought a new plausibility to Montesinos's lists, and it appears probable that he derived them from the lost works of Blas Valera, one of the earliest men in the field, known to have had exceptional opportunities for a study of native lore; while at the same time the archaeological investigations of Max Uhle and the brilliant achievements of the expeditions headed by Hiram Bingham have given a new definiteness to knowledge of pre-Inca conditions.5 It has long been known that Inca civilization was only the last in a series of Peruvian culture periods. Back of it, in the highlands, lay the Megalithic Age, so called from the great size of the stone blocks in its cyclopean masonry, the earliest centre of this culture being supposed to have been about Lake Titicaca, and especially Tiahuanaco, at the south of the lake--a site remarkable not only for the most extraordinary of all ancient American monuments, the monolithic gate and the surrounding precincts, but also for the importance ascribed to it in legend as a place of origin of...