Noah's Nightmare

Abstract

TIAHUANACO is an important site in South American archaeology, and although it is not the only one, it has something about it which, like Glastonbury, stimulates the imagination of the uncritical, who tend to exalt it above all others. Here are some facts which must be borne in mind in considering it in relation to the subject as a whole. Not only its famous stone ruins but also its pottery belong to a very characteristic and easily recognized style. Their distribution in the Andes is restricted to the neighbourhood of Tiahuanaco itself, but on the coast a closely related style in pottery and textiles, little later than the culmination of the style in the Andes, is widespread. This is later than the well-known Mochica culture of the north coast, now dated with some certainty at c. a.d. 1000. When due allowance has been made for the time taken for Tiahuanaco influence to spread from the Andes to the coast, this shows that some time late in the first millennium is a reasonable estimate for its date. In the central and south parts of the coast, pre-Tiahuanaco cultures, earlier than the Mochica but still datable within the first millennium a.d., have yielded abundance of perfectly preserved textiles and other fragile and perishable materials in shallow graves, owing their very existence to continuous drought since they were buried. In the extreme north of Chile, it has been proved that the relation between land and sea cannot have altered more than about 15 metres at the outside (in the sense of a rise of land) since the arrival of pre-pottery man, long before any sign of Tiahuanaco influence.

Built Before the Flood

The Problem of the Tiahuanaco Ruins. By H. S. Bellamy. Revised and enlarged edition. Pp. 192. (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1947.) 21s. net.