Nazca Family Values

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At the end of a long driveway on a dusty lot several blocks from the center of downtown Ica, sits the Ica Regional Museum.  We pay about three dollars as an entrance fee and as we step into the museum a guard asks me if I plan to take pictures.  Expecting him to tell me that taking pictures is prohibited, I say, “no.”  He tells me, if I decide to change my mind, there is a $1.45 fee. 

 

At the first exhibit, I immediately decide that taking pictures is worth $1.45.  Despite, the shabby appearance of the museum, the museum holds extremely well preserved archeological artifacts from the pre-Colombian Nazca and Paracas cultures.  These were coastal cultures that predated the Incas by centuries and were the creators of the mysterious Nazca Lines.  The pottery and textiles are amazingly well preserved considering that they are at least half a millennia old, if not much older.  The museum shows paper replicas of several pieces of textiles, as over the past few years, thieves have simply broken the glass, removed valuable textiles, and run out of the museum, taking pieces that fetch $40,000 in Europe.

 

I lazily skim the inscription of the first piece I get close to.  It reads something like, “Two headed pot shows father teaching son the custom of decapitating enemies captured in battle.”  I do a double-take at the jar.  There is a goofiness and yet straightforward sincerity about the inscription and the faces on of the jar that makes me suppress a laugh.  My own son is accompanying me to the museum and we begin to imagine what the dialogue between the two would be:

“OK, son, now just grab by the hair and give it a good whack…”

“I can’t Dad.  I can’t cut through the spinal cord.”

“You just need… to put… your shoulder into it.. and… see, comes right off.”

  

Recently there has been an important exhibition organized in Paris of Paracas textiles, which causes me to examine them more closely.  The textiles are finely woven and amazingly well preserved.  Local hotels have picked up on the decorative motifs of the Paracas textiles for their hotel lobbies and I look closely for this as well.  It takes me a good five minutes before I really begin to make out this motif as more than just a fabric pattern.   

 

As I look at it, my mind is trying to match it with acceptable associations: I think about the space man theories of the Nazca Lines, about ceremonial dress, and about the decorative animal motifs repeated through the design.  Then I look closely at this figure, or shall I say hmm… male figure, and again have to hold back a laugh.  The frankness and sincerity of the artwork is fresh and appealing. 

 

This next pot epitomizes this aspect of the culture.  I mean, hey, when you’re happy, you’re happy.  Don’t hide it, right?  I move on believing I have discovered the true predecessor of the 1970’s-era yellow circle happy face.

 

We arrive at a section of the museum on quipus.  Quipus were an Inca technology used to keep track of numbers.  Because quipus are so close, yet so far, from the revolutionary technology of writing, I have seen this technology referred to as “mnemonic devices.”  Yet, as early Incan chronicler Guaman Poma de Ayala writes, the quipu was a sophisticated and effective technology for public administration,

 

Both the Inca and his Council of the realm were served by secretaries…such people were highly esteemed because of their ability to use the quipu.  The secretaries calculated dates, recorded instructions, received information from messengers and kept in touch with their colleagues who used the quipu in all parts of the country.  They accompanied the rulers and judges on important visits, recording decisions and contracts with such skill that the knots in their cords had the clarity of written letters.  (The Peru Reader, p78 )

 

My son quickly tires as he sees me trying to find the right angle to photograph the quipus and squinting at the cords and knots.  “Dad,” he says impatiently, “you can see quipus whenever you want in Lima,” referring to a museum near our house.  Quipus fascinate me.  They represent how differently cultures can develop while still being quite recognizably human and ultimately interested in similar things, such as a way to remember important things or to transmit messages to others.  I mean, how could you come up with a system of writing using knots instead of, well, writing?  These artifacts represent that real, factual divide between our Western heritage and a pre-Colombian heritage. 

 

I think, as I contemplate the knots, that as a technology, quipus are like the microcomputer circa 1975, before the Apple II.  The microcomputer then was a hobby technology, and could play chess pretty well.  I remember reading somewhere that an early microcomputer designer thought that the technology might be good to provide to shut-ins to give them something to do, but that, other than that, there didn’t really seem to be a serious application for the technology.  The microcomputer was on the cusp of something huge, which, when combined with telecommunications and joined in networks, in thirty years would transform the way we work, track knowledge, and communicate.  But back in 1975 you wouldn’t know it.

 

Quipus functionally covered some of the same needs as writing.  The Incas perhaps, may have made that leap, to the much more powerful, flexible, and transforming technology of true writing, had they realized the need to change media.  That technological development was cut-off, of course, with the arrival of Pizarro in the early 16^th century.  And so, what we are left with is this wonderful gap between this intriguing pre-Colombian world, and our familiar Western one.

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