AYMARAN, an important linguistic stock of South Ameri can Indians. The term has really no proper application to the tribes of this group, having arisen through an unfortunate blunder. It has, however, become too well fixed to make any change possible. The various tribes of the stock, of which the most important were the Collas, Lupacas and Pacasas, occupied originally the greater part of the high plateaux forming the closed basin of lakes Titicaca and Poopo and the "salars" of Coipasa and Uyuni in Bolivia and southern Peru. From the existence of Aymara place-names and small groups of Aymara-speaking peo ples further north in Peru, it is not improbable that tribes be longing to this stock had once a much greater northern exten sion, and were forced southward by the advancing Quichua (q.v.). Archaeological evidence in some measure confirms this sugges tion, since the pre-Inca Andean culture far to the north at Chavin on the upper Maranon shows undoubted relationship to that of Tiahuanaco near lake Titicaca, generally regarded as of Aymaran origin.
The Aymaran tribes had, at the time of the Spanish conquest, long been subjugated by the Inca, whose ruling class may itself have been of Aymaran origin. The considerable remains of the older Aymara culture still await adequate archaeological investi gation. Physically the modern Aymara are short and mainly brachycephalic or round-headed. The prehistoric population was, however, apparently dolichocephalic or long-headed, the change being probably due to long intermixture with the brachycephalic Quichua.
See for general discussion Sir Clements Markham, The Incas of Peru (1910), also E. W. Middendorf, Die Aymara Sprache (Leipzig, 1891) ; G. Rouma, "Les Indiens Quitchouas et Aimaras des Hautes Plateaux de la Bolivie," Bull. Mem. Soc. Anthropologie de Bruxelles, vol. xxxii. pp. 281-391 ; A. Chervin, Anthropologie Bolivienne (Paris, 1907).