gh. It is slowly disintegrating,
as might be expected. The wonder is that it should have stood so
long in a rainy region without any roof or protecting cover. It is
incredible that for at least five hundred years a wall of sun-dried
clay should have been able to defy severe rainstorms. The lintels,
made of hard-wood timbers and partially embedded in the wall, are all
gone; yet the adobe remains. It would be very interesting to find out
whether the water of the springs near the temple contains lime. If
so this might have furnished natural calcareous cement in sufficient
quantity to give the clay a particularly tenacious quality, able to
resist weathering. The factors which have caused this extraordinary
adobe wall to withstand the weather in such an exposed position for
so many centuries, notwithstanding the heavy rains of each summer
season from December to March, are worthy of further study.

It has been claimed that this temple was devoted to the worship
of Viracocha, a great deity, the Jove or Zeus of the ancient
pantheon. It seems to me more reasonable to suppose that a primitive
folk constructed here a temple to the presiding divinity of the place,
the god who gave them this precious clay. The principal industry
of the neighboring village is still the manufacture of pottery. No
better clay for ceramic purposes has been found in the Andes.

It would have been perfectly natural for the prehistoric potters to
have desired to placate the presiding divinity, not so much perhaps
out of gratitude for the clay as to avert his displeasure and fend
off bad luck in baking pottery. It is well known that the best pottery
of the Incas was extremely fine in texture. Students of ceramics are
well aware of the uncertainty of the results of baking clay. Bad luck
seems to come most unaccountably, even when the greatest pains are
taken. Might it not have been possible that the people who were most
concerned with creating pottery decided to erect this temple to insure
success and get as much good luck as possible? Near the ancient temple
is a small modern church with two towers. The churchyard appears to be
a favorite place for baking pottery. Possibly the modern potters use
the church to pray for success in their baking, just as the ancient
potters used the great temple of Viracocha. The walls of the church are
composed partly of adobe and partly of cut stones taken from the ruins.

Not far away is a fairly recent though prehistoric