The Myths of Mexico & Peru

If the civilisation of ancient Peru did not achieve the standard of general culture reached by the Mexicans and Maya, it did not fall far short of the attainment of these peoples. But the degrading despotism under which the peasantry groaned in Inca times, and the brutal and sanguinary tyranny of the Apu-Ccapac Incas, make the rulers of Mexico at their worst appear as enlightened when compared with the Peruvian governing classes. The Quichua-Aymara race which inhabited Peru was inferior to the Mexican in general mental culture, if not in mental capacity, as is proved by its inability to invent any method of written communication or any adequate time-reckoning. In imitative art, too, the Peruvians were weak, save in pottery and rude modelling, and their religion savoured much more of the materialistic, and was altogether of a lower cultus.