Fast cars, loose women

So the chicken made me sick (told you you'd hear about it). Fortunately it was only 12 hours of sickness (albeit a long 12 hours), followed by a day of... we'll call it fasting, since it makes me sound devout. Anyways, I had a solid meal today, which was nice.

But that's not the point. The point is that since I got so sick, I couldn't go anywhere, so I didn't get to take a tour of the Sacred Valley like I wanted, which is a shame since I was looking forward to it and had already spent the money on the multi-entry boleta turistica. And since I already have a ticket to Bolivia tonight, I'm forgoing the ruins. Instead I spend my day in poorly-lit museums (also on the tourist ticket), most of which featured 15th and 16th century Christian Baroque art. And I left with this question: was anyone happy in the 15th and 16th century? I mean I think we practice enough self-repression in the 21st century, but back then anything that felt good was evil, time was spent 'repressing the flesh,' and on top of that you had to deal with stuff like plague, famine, war, lack of hygiene, barely any medicine (leaches anyone?), and if you were a woman or non-white (God forbid BOTH), neither God, Jesus, nor any of the saints look like you (I thought the Catholic church had matron saints, but I guess they don't get painted. Just hall after hall of dudes). In the paintings I saw today, God really is the Old Bearded White Guy in the Clouds, and Jesus wears a posh sweater and is from Oxford. All I could really think of today in the Christian museums was David Cross and George Carlin skewering Christianity (which must have looked funny, some guy laughing at paintings of crucifixions and demons eating people alive): there's a list of 7 things you can't do, and if you do any one of those things, God will send you to a place of terrible, horrible, unimaginable agony - but he loves you. And that place is a billion miles below the earth, it's way below us, somewhere; I think it takes like a million years to get to either Heaven or Hell from earth, but they didn't have science when they wrote the Bible so they're morons anyways.

I mean I think the stupidity is obvious when you look at the painting of Jesus: a guy from Judea who's white as a fish-belly? I mean, if you can't trust the Church to understand basic human... well I don't want to say 'genetics,' because that'd a big word... let's say characteristics. If they can't understand that people from Mesopotamia aren't blond and blue eyed, can you really trust them to understand morality and talk to God for you (don't forget, that's what the Catholic Church does and why there was a Reformation)? I'm not just trying to say the 16th century church was ignorant. The feeling I got today looking at Baroque art was that their whole morality, philosophy and religion was wrong. And has much changed today? See many depictions of a non-white Jesus? Ever hear the term 'sins of the flesh'? I mean this is pretty much the same group of men who sat around and decided what would be in the bible at the Council of Rome and all the various other councils where it was decided what was the word of God and what was not. And people trust this? To me it's unbelievable.

I did see one painting of a non-white guy, a Quechuan guy by the name of Thupa Amaro, the 'precursor, producer, and martyr of the emancipation of the Americas.' He worked for autonomy from the the Spanish and was martyred when he was drawn and quartered in the central square of Cusco. That was in an Incan museum, which also included examples of Incan metalwork, pottery, medicine and burial methods. But what I thought was interesting was what was absent, namely the wheel and writing. The Incans had neither. Or more accurately, they used circular shapes for their calendars, and they had tops as toys, but they never used the wheel as a tool. I find it funny actually, because the Incans were expert masons who built an intricate series of paved roads throughout their empire in order to hasten communication, but then I picture a guy just running down them, as fast as he can, and it seems like an oxymoron. I mean humans aren't exactly the swiftest of animals. And the fact that their terraced irrigation systems are still in use today all over South America, but they never developed writing, well it's kind of mind-boggling.

There was another really great museum I went to, the Museum of Regional History. It's in the middle of being remodeled in a very modern feel, with good lighting and bi-lingual signs (which was nice because I could actually figure out what they were talking about, whereas in the Incan museum all I had to go on was my own intuition). Anyways, this museum was highlighting the ancient civilization of Caral-Supe (the two main cities of the civilization), something I had never heard of but found fascinating. How ancient were they? Caral-Supe developed almost in tandem with the civilization of the ancient Egyptians, circa 3000 b.c. And they were only discovered in 1994! So now, along with Mesoamerica, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China, Caral-Supe is considered one of the six cradles of civilization by anthropologists.

The cities of Caral-Supe built enormous, stepped pyramids, rivaling those in Egypt, in order to perform complex religious rites, most of which involved the burning of offerings. The pyramids had intricate, underground ventilation systems to facilitate massive, indoor fires. The people of Caral-Supe had a dualistic worldview, which was evidenced throughout their religion, politics, and civil society. For example, the civilization was built around a river in what is now northern Peru, and each side of the river had 9 cities on it; each city was divided in half, resulting in a political half and a religious half (in terms of which buildings occupied which part). There was a central government based in Caral, and there existed what we might call an independent Feudal system in the other cities. Citizens were organized into Ayllu, groups of family relations of about 100 people each; these were grouped into Pachacas, or settlements. Each Pachaca was governed by Curaca (civil servants), which were divided into various specialties, such as astronomy, agriculture, medicine, music, public works, or trading (other specialists in the society included artisans and hairdressers). The Pachaca was ruled by the Icho Huari and Allauca Huari, or First and Second Man. These rulers were the feudal lords who directed development of the settlement, collected taxes, and paid tribute to the Huno, or Lord in Caral who had his own set of experts, artisans, and workers.

The economy was based on trade, and there is evidence of extensive trade within all of the cities, as well as with minor groups of people outside Caral-Supe. Some of the trade goods found within Caral (approximately in the middle of the river valley surrounded by harsh desert) include fish and whales from the ocean, plants that grow only high in the Andes, and plant and animal products from deep within the Amazon. There is no evidence of weapons, or that the people of Caral-Supe made war with their neighbors. Caral itself specialized in cotton and textile products, which it traded for the various goods I mentioned.

Included among artifacts found in Caral are huge sundials - the city of Caral itself is suspected to be based on an astronomical calendar, with each building representing a deity. Each building appears to have a specific yearly ceremony associated with it. Other tools which were found include bolos, axes, slings, digging sticks, baskets and bags made from plant fiber, plus whole orchestras of wind instruments - flutes, horns, and antares (this word translated into antares in English, and I have no idea what they are aside from that only four were found and that they are wind instruments of some sort).

The people of Caral built petroglyphs like the ones from a later date in Nasca, had a sophisticated knowledge of natural medicine (including using willow extract for pain relief - the willow tree is where we today get aspirin). They made gods-eyes for offerings and employed mescaline and jirca coca (a type which grows above 3500 meters, high in the Andes) in their rituals inside large, sunken, circular plazas - these plazas are found in every city in fact. They also had a dedicated social hierarchy, with high priests at the top, followed by the civil servants, below which were the artisans, laborers and farmers. Each of these three groups occupied a strata of housing within each city, grouped into islands. The more important the person, the closer they were to the central religious chambers of the pyramids. Housing for the elite priests was palatial, measuring nearly 24,000 square feet, and including living areas, altars, servant areas, etc. Civil servants resided in slightly more modest abodes at about 6,500 square feet; the houses of commoners measured between 500 and 850 square feet, while the poorest people on the edge of the city made do with only about 200 square feet.

Anyways, I just thought the whole thing was pretty amazing - pretty much a whole new civilization, with advanced concepts of trade, agriculture, civil society, music, and religion. So if you're ever in Peru, make the journey North of Lima to Caral-Supe. Maybe someone from the Peruvian tourism ministry will read this and I'll get some free stuff.