I Go Hard in the Muh-Muh-Muh Museum

Wednesday June 5th, 2013

I woke up and decided to buy some fruit and a yogurt for breakfast rather than sitting down at a restaurant. My granadilla was gooey and my banana wasn’t quite ripe. We walked to the Museum of Archeology, Anthropology, and History of Lima (National Museum Archaeology Anthropology and History). The museum was quite overwhelming! There were more artifacts than my brain could process. Near the beginning of the exhibits, encased there were five skulls from different periods. I observed that as humans evolved, certain physical characteristics of the skulls developed. The earlier skulls had a steep ridge that was the length of one’s forehead, like a unibrow above the eyes. The earlier faces were sloped with longer faces whereas the modern homosapien were flat-faced. I observed from the massive amounts of arrowheads that different styles developed in different regions. The arrowheads started out kind of dull being just the sharper end of a rock and developed into triangular sharp stones easily able to pierce various animals’ hides. It was quite intriguing that the most advanced arrowheads were serrated. 

 The ceramics came in various shapes and sizes. This pottery varied in size, shape, type and number of handles and spouts, color, pictures, chambers and purpose. The handles typically varies from connecting two spouts while providing a structural purpose to multiple handles especially for bigger pots to provide easier handling. The ceramics typically never got smaller than a baseball and the bigger ones carried no more than a few gallons. The single central spout was the most common although there were a lot of double spouts which allow for one side to expel water while the other spout acts as a breather. The multi-chamber ceramics were by far the most interesting. I don’t quite understand their purpose because the throw off the center of gravity in an abundance of cases. As the pots progressed through the eras, art became more popular on the side of exterior of these ceramics. The pottery itself could be shaped like something (i.e. a head, an animal); there might be bumps or curves to strengthen the aesthetics of a piece or the vase might be painted or have designs painted on it to exhibit an artistic, but purposeful meaning.

The museum also contained exquisite metal work which was done using castings. Dr. Brown explained how the men would build their fires carefully to provide an abundance of oxygen in order to make fire hot enough to make metal malleable. Additionally we saw a 24ft canoe made from one single tree and I finally got to see my first quipu! It was bigger than I thought and was difficult to follow the tiny threads. I have a fundamental understanding on seeing the difference between long knots and single knots as well as the candy-cane style threads versus the braid weave style threads. To my surprise counting knots is quite difficult due to picking apart the inter chords that make up a single chord.

The next museum we went to was the Larco Museum. It is a private museum and had superb foliage with vivid flowers in every direction. The museum had warehouse style rooms that were at least 12 shelves high packed full with artifacts and ceramics. The museum had paragraphs in multiple languages for nearly all of its displays. In one particular painting Dr. Brown asked us to seek out Peruvian and Christian symbols. The painting contained Jesus on the cross as well as the devil near the bottom. These Christian symbols were easily spotted, but compared to the Peruvian symbols which were a little more subtle. Dr. Brown pointed out the sun and moon, and I even spotted a pan flute in the corner which was an obvious Peruvian symbol. In another painting Dr. Brown explained how the Spanish thought of the conquest of Peru as just no big deal. They are just the next leaders on this chain of history. The picture contained leaders of Peru in chronological order and had the new leaders integrated rather discreetly.

On one particular artifact, I had a revelation. A leader’s vest was on display and it was made up of little silver squares that had an embossed circle center and little embossed circle around the perimeter of each individual square panel. When in the right light, this vest accomplished the same job as a disco ball. It took in light and expelled it in all new directions. The embossed surface further diffract the light to allow the leader to illuminate when light is present.

Another oddity about the Larco museum was its exhibit exclusive to sexual artifacts. The act of sex was just another part of life and through the years people have celebrated the romantic act of sex by integrating it into their ceramics.

Viva Peru!

~JH