This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 Excerpt: ...has seen and examined the original stone. Both Sir Clements Markham and Mr. Joyce are mistaken in thinking the stone to be twenty-five feet long. Markham, 1912, p. 34; Joyce, 1912, p. 176. Chimu, Proto-Nasca and Tiahuanaco II arts. Several able studies of the stone have appeared, chief among which are two by Markham ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 Excerpt: ...has seen and examined the original stone. Both Sir Clements Markham and Mr. Joyce are mistaken in thinking the stone to be twenty-five feet long. Markham, 1912, p. 34; Joyce, 1912, p. 176. Chimu, Proto-Nasca and Tiahuanaco II arts. Several able studies of the stone have appeared, chief among which are two by Markham and that by Polo.18 With the aid of our Plate IX we will now examine this stone and its bearing upon our subject. The characteristic of the stone which first strikes the beholder is the tremendous elabo'ration of the design. One has to study it carefully before it resolves itself into its component parts. When this is done, it becomes apparent that the design falls into halves, the lower of which shows a personage holding two staves, and the upper of which is made up of a mass of inverted faces with their secondary decorations. We will study the halves in that order. The personage is unquestionably derived in part from the Weeping God motif. The face is square and is edged with serpent-heads faintly analogous to the tab-like ornaments of the Weeping God. The face, on the other hand, is utterly different in both content and treatment from that of the Weeping God. Indeed, it is very difficult to decide just which of the numerous complex features belong to the face of the personage. One may assume, if he chooses, that the two upper dots are his eyes and the involutions just above them are conventionalized eyebrows while the two dots below are nostrils. This is, perhaps, the most satisfactory interpretation.10 The mouth which, from one aspect, looks like an adaptation of the toothed and fanged rectangular mouth seen in coast Tiahuanaco II, again presents difficulties because, on turning the Plate upside down, it turns out that the mouth is formed by...
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