It has frequently been remarked how the great historic cultures grew up around lakes or water holes which in consequence came to be sacrificial shrines. The most famous of these are Guatovita and Titicaca in South America. Among other ceremonial features of comparative interest are the conception of a "maize mother," the snake cults, the foot races, and the new-fire ceremonies. Of great festivals we have in Peru the June sun ceremony and in August that for driving out disease.
For the other parts of South America, we have but meager information. One striking feature in the Amazon region is the taboo against women, who are not permitted to take part or even to see the objects used in important ceremonies. Thus, it is stated that all women of the Uaupés tribe who happen to see the leading mask in their tribal ceremony must be executed, as required by the ritual. This masked ritualistic procedure is found throughout the whole of Brazil and has some curious analogies to a Pacific Island ceremony. This is also the land of the couvade, that curious procedure in which the father is put to bed at the birth of a child, which has received undue attention in sociological literature.[1] The other most universal ritualistic idea is that of the ceremonial whipping, usually a part of the puberty ceremony for both girls and boys, but also found in certain public dances of adults. Agricultural rituals are also in evidence, the two most distinctive being the manioc and the pineapple harvests.
Turning now to North America, we find a new-fire ceremony among the Mexicans, but here it occurs every fifty-two years, on the day marking the completion of the calendar cycle. Again, every eight years the Atamalqualiztli ceremony was performed, a kind of fasting observance, but also the occasion when a peculiar cult, called Mazateca, danced about with live frogs and snakes in their mouths, somewhat like the Hopi of Arizona. In addition, each month and day of the year had its more or less elaborate ceremonies, but to outline the whole gamut of Mexican and Maya gods would take us too far afield. Joyce[2] believes that the bewildering multiplicity of Mexican gods is in part due to the Aztec having assimilated the respective religious systems of conquered cities; yet the
